In music theory, limit or harmonic limit is a way of characterizing the harmony found in a piece or genre of music, or the harmonies that can be made using a particular scale. The term limit was introduced by Harry Partch, who used it to give an upper bound on the complexity of harmony; hence the name. "Roughly speaking, the larger the limit number, the more harmonically complex and potentially dissonant will the intervals of the tuning be perceived." "A scale belonging to a particular prime limit has a distinctive hue that makes it aurally distinguishable from scales with other limits."