Temperanotes is command line Musical Temperament Editor useful to transform temperament descriptions such as the ones found on wikipedia (e.g. Werckmeister temperament II) into practically usable formats, such as the input format for timidity described here, or a midi MTS bulk tuning file, and likely even something like Pianoteq format (if the specs can be found)

The input temperament needs exactly 12 entries (lines). Comments are allowed on any line (entry or non-entry line) and must start with #. Each entry line must be of the form:

frequency_ratio [, cent]

where both frequency_ratio and cent can be a python expression such as sqrt(2) or 103 or 2 ** (1/32). Note that sqrt and log are automatically imported from math, and that floating point division is automatically performed even from integer input. The cent value is optional and will be rounded to the closest integer.

If present on one entry, the cent value must be present for all 12 entries. The cent values are used only for validation, in that if frequency_ratio and cent do not agree, a warning is printed.

Simply run something like

python temperanotes.py input/Werckmeister_I_III.txt -t > Werckmeister_I_III.timidity

to generate the timidity frequency file, which can be then used as argument file for the --freq-table option when invoking timidity.

At the moment I'm focusing on Meantone and Well Temperaments from the late 1600s to the early 1700s and on timidity only, but I may expand to other eras and software later (and pull request will always be welcome)

Temperanotes name is a portmanteau of temperament and note.

The logo is an Italian tongue in cheek since in Italian temperare (the act of creating a temperament) means more commonly sharpening a pencil.