A Moment of Repose

Although microtonal, this piece was intended to be a little more palatable harmonically.  I use 1/6th and 1/3rd tones so I guess technically it's 36 tet.  The microtonal adjustments were only applied to the underlying harmony rather than the melodic voices so it could also be considered poly-microtonal (12 tet and 36 tet together).  But I consider the microtonality in this to be really "lite", but let me know what you think!  I also kinda was thinking of this as a VGM track rather than a concert-piece although I guess it didn't really end up that way.  I'd appreciate any of your suggestions, comments, critiques or just observations.  Thanks for listening!

Edit:  I've included a version of the piece with syntonic commas instead of 1/3rd and 1/6th flats/sharps.  This should better approximate justly tuned 3rds in this piece.  Also - my comments about the piece being in 36tet no longer apply in this version (#2).

The harmony is definitely confusing, it gives the piece a very different, interesting feel. I'm not sure if its supposed to be peaceful, ominous or romantic. Or perhaps all 3? Sure, this could work in a video game, maybe in a somewhat serene, but darker scene. You know what would be fun? If you converted this to normal harmony, so we can get a side by side comparison. My guess is that this would be very romantic.

Hey Peter, 

This is definitely among the more accessible and coherent-sounding microtonal music I've heard; well done! I probably wouldn't call it poly-microtonal since 12tet is a subset of 36-tet. But then again, is anything poly-microtonal, if you can just define a new tonal system that has all the notes used? 

I am wondering if it would be possible to create satisfying harmonic movement in this system. I think the major appeal of 12tet music is that you can make really convincing resolutions (like IV-V7-I). Microtonal music / experimental music often lacks those tension releases, in my opinion. Of course if that is your intention, you do you :). For example how would it sound if you changed the E-1/3-flat the 2nd violins keep landing on to a E-1/3-sharp, or even E-2/3-sharp, to emphasize that it's a leading tone? Same goes for b.9-10, 2nd vlns. I would try it myself, but my notation program doesn't really allow microtonal playback and I don't have the patience to manually tune each note in playback lol

btw I especially like bar 11-12 with the microtonal echo of the melody, that's really spooky!

And the way the 2nd vlns approach that B-1/3-flat on bar 11 is quite sweet.

P.S. I'm not really sure but maybe I got 1/3's mixed up with 2/3's - I'm not at all familiar with 36-tet notation

Hey @Marius_!  Thanks for your review!

10 minutes ago, Marius_ said:

P.S. I'm not really sure but maybe I got 1/3's mixed up with 2/3's - I'm not at all familiar with 36-tet notation

That's okay!  Let me try and address all of your suggestions.

10 minutes ago, Marius_ said:

For example how would it sound if you changed the E-1/3-flat the 2nd violins keep landing on to a E-1/3-sharp, or even E-2/3-sharp, to emphasize that it's a leading tone?

I think basically what you're suggesting here is to make those leading tones super-major.  I think I've done that before - the problem with that is that the interval between the leading tone and it's target tone of resolution is shortened and the resolution becomes less satisfying.  What my intent was with the E 1/6th flat is to bring the major third of the chord down to be closer to a justly tuned major 3rd.  Thanks again!

Hey Peter, 

I did a little resolution building with a make-shift notation for the microtonality. I wanted to see if there exists something like a '36-tet dominant chord', something that sounds even more dominant than the normal 12-tet. I didn't find anything at all, but I still think both resolutions sound kinda cool. For the first one I tried resolving with smaller intervals, for the second I used bigger ones. I think you're right about the supermajor chords - I'm not really a fan either. 

About that E-1/6-flat that was made to sound like a perfect third (just intonated third): I didn't perceive it as such, and I think I know why. A perfect third is a little less than 14 cents lower than 12-tet (according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy's_intense_diatonic_scale), and the third of the dominant only 12. So by lowering that E by 33 cents, you overcompensated, and ended up further away from the perfect third (5 or 9 cents further, but flat instead of sharp). 

Kind regards, 

Marius

Hi Marius,

Thanks for your message!  Your experiment certainly contrasts the different kinds of thirds that are possible!  When I say that I was trying to approximate just thirds by bringing down the major third by 1/6th of a tone - I had apparently miscalculated that interval thinking that it would be 16.66 cents flat which would be close to the justly tuned major 3rd at 14 cents flatter than the 12 tet version.  I understand now why I actually preferred using syntonic commas before when I first started experimenting with microtones since the syntonic comma is about 21 cents.

1 minute ago, Marius_ said:

I wanted to see if there exists something like a '36-tet dominant chord', something that sounds even more dominant than the normal 12-tet.

There is an interval called the "harmonic 7th" which is the 7th that occurs naturally in the harmonic series and sounds especially good in barbershop quartets but doesn't have the strong impetus to resolve like a regular dominant 7th does.  It's about 31 cents lower than the 12 tet 7th.  But because of that can be more easily approximated with a 1/6 flat sign (which I haven't thought of yet to actually do - I always approximated the harmonic 7th with a 1/4 tone flat).  I think you use something close to this 7th in measure 4?

Thanks for your clarifying message!
Peter