11/4/2023 0 Comments Microtonal music compositions![]() It must sound audibly different." - Ezra Sims "These well temperaments are what we might call paper tunings: fine in theory, but in practice indistinguishable from the modern twelve tone equal temperament." - J. "All the world's music is microtonal." - Johnny Reinhard "Microtonal music is music which sounds audibly different from the standard Western tuning, and may include individual scale-steps which are either larger or smaller than the conventional semitone of Western music - or both." - Ivor Darreg "Microtonal music means music whose individual steps are smaller than the standard Western semitone." - Grove's Dictionary Of Music and Musicians "It is not sufficient merely that a scale be numerically different from the conventional tuning in order to call is microtonal. Let's take a look at several popular definitions of microtonality to see what's involved: Definitions of music have changed enormously over the past 2500 years of Western history, and as a result the very definition of what is and is not standard practice in Western has transformed beyond all recognition. The difficulty in defining exactly what microtonal music is arises from the long history of Western music. ![]() A "cent" is defined as 1/100 of a semitone.) He performs it on the Radio Baton, invented by Max Mathews.While microtonal music may not be easy to define, most people know it when they hear it.Ĭonventional Western music uses 12 logarithmically equal semitones in the octave (the octave is a frequency ratio of 2:1 in Western music, or 1200 cents. I had the pleasure of watching Dr Boulanger perform Solemn Song again, 20 years later, at the first Bohlen-Pierce Symposium in Boston. One of my earliest pieces was Stick Men, also in the Bohlen-Pierce Scale. Wonderful music!įrom then onward I was dedicated to writing microtonal music. The notes were from outer space, yet it was still music. My hair stood on end as the alien notes washed over me. Richard Boulanger surprised us by performing and singing his piece, Solemn Song for Evening, which he composed in the Bohlen-Pierce Scale. I was introduced to the idea of microtonal music in 1990 at Berklee College of Music in Boston, when one fine day in Electronic Music Composition class, Dr. Rather, they might notice that the music has a different "flavor" - and it’s not vanilla. They don’t realize it’s microtonal, nor do they necessarily know what "microtonal" means. When performing microtonal music with my band ZIA over the years, the reaction of our general audience is usually the same. I reserve my left brain for building keyboards and chaos music. I compose microtonal music strictly by ear and leave it to others to analyze, so you won’t find ratios or mathematics here. You might want to read Wikipedia: Microtonal Music ![]() I prefer to use only equal tempered tunings, meaning that each step in the scale is the same musical interval.Īfter hearing 12 tone music for so many years, it can be quite refreshing (or torturous, depending on the person) to be immersed in a new tonality. Simply put, microtonality is music that contains more, or less, than the usual 12 notes per octave.
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