Quarter-comma meantone each kind, a perfect fifth of meantone contains four diatonic and three chromatic semitones, and an octave seven diatonic and five chromatic semitones, it follows that: Thus, in Pythagorean tuning, where sequences of just fifths (frequency ratio 3:2) and octaves are used to produce the other intervals, a whole tone is and a major third is An interval of a seventeenth, consisting of sixteen diatonic and twelve chromatic semitones, such as the interval from D to F, can be equivalently obtained using either This large interval of a seventeenth contains staff positions. In Pythagorean tuning, the size of a seventeenth
Octave oldest extant written documents on tuning are written, Sumerian and Akkadian, have no known word for "octave". However, it is believed that a set of cuneiform tablets that collectively describe the tuning of a nine-stringed instrument, believed to be a Babylonian lyre, describe tunings for seven of the strings, with indications to tune the remaining two strings an octave from two of the seven tuned strings. Leon Crickmore recently proposed that "The octave may not have been thought of as a unit in its own right, but rather by analogy like the first day of a new seven-day week". Monkeys