Microtones (a poll)

Well, most of the music around the world is 'microtonal', so unless all except western music is experimental... I guess microtones aren't experimental-only when propoerly used with experience and knowledge... but then... to have the 'experience' one has to 'experiment' first I guess... makes me wonder...

You can easily play any microtones is you have Kontak... it's really the best way... but maybe you don't have the few thousands to buy the program. The way I used before having those programs is by learning the sound in theory for every intervals has a specific sound (like a pure fifth doesn't sound like a pure major third... a fourth augmented of a quarter tone has it's own color too) and if you learn their 'color' it's easy to write down music in coffee shops after that ! eheh... but of course... rewieving at home is always useful !

There is Open Music which plays micrtones. You can of course use Scala has previously mentionned. You can just use any program that can transpose sound to listen to intervals. If you have a synthetiser that allows you to tune, just check this out and program it. At worst... ask a musician to play them ! I can produce any microtones easily... I can work with you via MSN if you're serious (for I don't have much time to spare). I got a lot of references (books or links). All the music I write is microtonal so I have a few recordings from solo instrument to orchestras passing by the voice.

There, have fun and PM if you wanna find more.

Just by the way, Sibelius has a plug-in, which allows you to realize the notational microtones which are normally available.

Is it possible to write microtonal music which doesn't sound mysterious? Or is this just because that is the way that it is programmed into us because of our western background? I have listened to some of your music on your website, but mostly it sounds mysterious and suspenseful. I am trying not to be closed-minded about it, so help me out some.

Colin Thomson

Colin, of course it's possible... it's more my personnal taste that make my music... you can do anything with microtones... the timber and rythmic are even more important carriers of the character of a piece (and metric and articulation also in a slightly lesser way). Of course, there are several ways to use microtones and each have their particular effects and shades on the listener's mind. Using microtones doesn't mean always using complexe tones... the interval I probably use the most in my recent musics is the pure fifth ! eheh (well I wrote a lot for strings recently)... but I don't thing you have my recent pieces on the website... I'll have to check that... it's not me who's doing the site and taking care of it... so...

A good way to start to understand better intervals is by studiing indian music. They have what they call 22 Shruti that are in fact intervals that we mostly use in our music too but we just give them the same name here instead of giving them different names depending of the context. But since they give them different names... seeing what all these intervals refer to (in terms of character and expression) in their culture is a good way to learn to listen to different tone colors !

Let me give you a 'simple' example... of course, one has to know a bit of the basic stuff to understand, but I'll try to make it as simple as I can.

In this example the main tonality (in the broad sens) is C (either major or minor or else, we don't care).

We will take the example of what we call the minor 7th (Bb) in our music here !... in fact depending of the context we can discern a variety of minor 7th in the practice of instrumentalists... here are some :

The values in cents (1/100 of a semi-tone, it's a unite that gives a total of 1200 (12x100) cents per octave) of a whole major tone is 204 cents. It's name in frequency ratio is 9/8... but let's skip this for now. The value in cents of a pure minor third is 316 cents (6/5 is it's ratio). The 7th harmonic of C has a value of 969 cents... and finaly the pure fifth (G) has a value of 702 cents.

So... let's find 3 different Bb with that....

1. The octave (1200cents) - a whole major tone (204) = 996 cents
2. The minor third (316) above the pure fifth (702) = 1018 cents
3. The 7th harmonic (Bb) of C = 969 cents

So, you can see that depending of the context how the intervals will be ajusted by the instrumentalist... but when doing microtonality... you can choose to specify these notes so that the player will have to reach a particular 'context color' that you specify thus altering the mood (or the vibrations) of an interval...

So... if you play the 996c Bb with a pure fourth (F) at 498c... you get another pure fourth (996-498=498)... BUT if you decided to 'impose' a 1018c Bb but still with the pure fourth... then you get 1018c-498c = 520 which is a kind of large fourth that is more agressive and called Kshitih in Hindu which is one of the 22 shruti...

Well, that's too much things to cover by writing here... but it gives you an idea of some possibilities of the microtones

My brain hurts.


And I didn't know you had a website.

Well, Edd... it's simple theory... do any science and it will get very very much worst than that !! eheh

I've never heard any pieces that used microtones...I'm gonna have to look for some. THe closest I've heard to microtones are pitche bends and untuned guitars.
Heh...could you imagine doing ear training with microtones?

~Kal

Of course.... well you can already go to my website : http://www.vogagnon.com