The past is a treasure trove of cool musical ideas that have, for one reason or another, faded from popularity, waiting for you to dig them up and be inspired by them.

One such idea is the temperament system developed by Johann Philipp Kirnberger which, along with the rest of the well tempered movement, has largely been buried by newer, more efficient approaches, but that’s no reason not to take another look.

Understanding why Kirnberger and his contemporaries thought the way they did about tuning gives some great insight into how our own systems work, and besides, with modern synthesizers it’s really not hard to try these historical inventions out yourself!