pouët.net

I always asked to myself about the twelve tone musical system this question: why 12 intervals?

Today I remembered my question and I found there are already different interval systems - Wikipedia rules. I've found there is a lot of theory on it but... I'm a visual but not musical person, so I did not really understood what I read.

So, well, since some of you do music and synthesizers, you probably know about microtonal music. Could you tell me any examples of microtonal music to listen to? Can you tell me if there is any big difference with the 12 tone system as it sounds? Does it is possible to explain the differences as something visual? I mean, for example, could it be similar to have more colors in a palette or not? And, finally, have any of you composed using any other tone system?

some asian music is based on difference tone scales, might sound weird at first for some, but you usually end up understanding the logic and falling into the hypnosis just the same. its all math relations in the end.

forgot to pimp ryoji ikeda. he's much into microsound and microtonal, and does beautiful stuff with it. not for the pophearted kind of listeners though.

Oh well. I read about and experimented with microtonals for a couple of years. The nice thing is, that you don't have to leave the western music world to find micotonal intevals, and the music must not sound strange by definition...



Just listen to a blues recording that features a guitarrist (bb king or early clapton will do for starters). If you listen closely you'll find out that they *never* play the third of a scale straight. It's always pitched up, either slightly or almost up to the major thid.

Reason for this: There are two additional nice-sounding thirds between the minor and major third. The first one is related to the scales used in tribal african music. It survived the centuries in the music of african slaves and made it into the westen music with the blues-aera.

The second microtonal third is the pure major third (as opposed to the well-tempered third that we're used to hear).

You'll find additional microtonal intervals between the major sixth and around the flat seventh. Partly these can be explained with the classic music theory as chord inversion of the thirds I've mentioned above. They also appear if you don't derive the scales from overtone-series but if you use the subharmonic series (aka how Oscar Sala shaped the sounds out of his trautonium)

Want to hear some Microtonal shit in action? Just listen to the fist four seconds of "These Boots are made for walking".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5qx3fuTUHM&feature=related

i think that's a very nice idea up to a point. for vocal music, certainly. for instrumental music, blue notes are as much dictated by what notes you can actually bend as anything else. if you've ever tried to bend a diatonic harmonica, you'll know that some degrees of the scale are possible and some aren't - but it's not so much to do with the scale per se

http://www.wendycarlos.com/+bitb.html <- might find this interesting.

interesting to read .. but say .. that's how I tried to code music all the time .. out of frequency tables .. if it sounds good in harmonix or addition its ok .. and also good for psychoacoustix .. crazy flyarounds .. so I don't know .. d-.-b

Arabs use a 24 tone tonal system for their singing. It sounds absolutely fucking terrible, so there...

Penderecki's "Threnody for the victims of Hiroshima for 52 stringed instruments" is my favourite microtonal piece. Sounds like the scariest horror movie ever, gigantic shrieking clusters of violin going berserk. But that's pretty avant garde.

I've done ten-tone equal temperament before for a Tangerine Dream-ish piece and it came out sounding pretty nice. I used just intonation for some ambient pieces as well and even with the subtle tuning difference, they sounded much prettier.

I guess the main difference in listening is that some of the notes sound flat or sharp until your brain stops caring. I could start explaining tuning theory but it would get wordy.

If you want to experiment with xenharmonic/microtonal stuff yourself, get the program Scala and find a VSTi which accepts .tun files. u-he Zebra2 does. I think Cameleon5000 did, not sure if Alchemy does too.

our system arose from the principle of consonance. this means the pitch frequency C matches nicely to G with simple rational multiplicative factor. and there are more of such combinations (D and G are also factor 3/2).. and that's how there came to be 12 tones in one octave. indeed, the chinese had a different tonality (i don't know how maybe different factors).

eventually, because people wanted to translate pieces from one base note (pitch) to the other.. the exact rational factor was dropped and replaced with a "sliding" exponential scale.. this means all music nowadays is just a slight bit dissonant (!!)

i must point out that i can't make music to save my life but i'm just interested in the physics and technology involved.

k-bird: A couple of years ago I listend to a chor piece written for just-intonation. I must say that first it was strange, but after my ears adapted to the tuning I've heared the most beautiful major chords ever.

To bad I forgot which piece it was. My guitar teacher had it on CD, but now he's dead..

kinda. sometimes i use alternative (traditional) tunings for pianos and organs, and there are many exotic instruments that are tuned differently which I also use in their original tuning. Never did anything with more than 12 tones per octave, though.



I used it to accompany a recording of paniq lamenting over not being preselected in the mekka 2002 music competition (in a satirical way). Pendereckis stuff is great.

Arabs don't use 24TET for their singing, it's only for notation. The actual intervals are trained by ear and memory. And I personally think it often sounds great, at least in their pop music.

I've sometimes experimented with 72TET because it provides some purer intervals (closer approximations to integer ratios) than 12TET. Music software just often tends to be too tightly knit to 12TET, so weird workarounds are often required.

I used to use various alternative intervals in my synths... but then I fixed it.

JCO,

I remember that recording! Felix and I laught our asses off. Any chance to get that recoding again? It was so much fun...

Like many tracker musicians that didn't know or care for the base tuning of the samples they used. :P

Fuck! That is one dangerous CD! Don't mess with microtonals, people.

*g*

Actually someone (Doh/drd) tried to make a module in a different scale. don't know if it fully lives up to it but still ...

http://amp.dascene.net/modules/D/Doh/MOD.oktafonik%20yannick.gz

finding the right microtones in granular synthesis to fit your harmonical progression with can be quite a bitch. there was some work developed (in csound and max/msp) using fft regression (or whatever it was called) to retrieve a "fixed" chord/tone to solve these issues. richard devine used some of that on his earlier work i believe. glitchcore idm kind of stuff. i believe autechre also experimented with that at some point.

nice http://ccrma.stanford.edu/STANM/stanms/stanm45/stanm45.pdf