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Introduction
In a previous article called “The Essence of Music: Frequency, Timbre, and the Organization of Sound,” I talked about the infrasonic, ultrasonic, and acoustic ranges of frequency, discussing how they were different, while emphasizing that the human ear can perceive all sounds, leaving aside disabilities in hearing, within the range of 20 Hz and 20 kHz (20,000 Hz). I also discussed some of the essential differences between Noise and Tone.
But more importantly, I delve deeply into the concept of scales and examine the nature of frequencies in relationship to the formation of anything resembling music. As a way of understanding this I contrast the fact that Equal-Temperament is just one of the tuning systems which grew in prominence in the West with others, no longer in broad use, including Pythagorean Intonation, Mean-Tone, Just Intonation, and Well Temperament. Taking into account the information about the acoustic range of frequency and the fact that all frequencies within that range can be considered a tone, I go on to share with you my concept for a definition of scale as “any quantity of notes which have been designated or selected for use in a given musical context... whether it consists of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, or 12 notes.”
So since any frequency can be considered a note so long as it’s assigned a letter name or some other designation, and a scale is any set of allowable notes used in a composition, then any instrument, including the human voice, can be tuned or modulated to access the sonic material found only in microtonal music.
Definition of Microtonal Music
According to some, microtonal music is music which uses intervals of less than an equally spaced semitone, or smaller than the white and black keys on a piano. Sometimes microtonal music also refers to music which uses intervals not found in the Western system of 12 equal intervals to the octave. The term implies music containing very small intervals but can include any tuning that differs from the western 12 tone equal temperament. By this definition then any scale in any mean-tone tuning; the traditional Carnatic system of 22 śruti; the Indonesian gamelan music; as well as music using just intonation, mean-tone temperament, or other alternative tunings; and Thai, Burmese, and African music which use 7 tones in each (approximate) octave can be considered microtonal music.
As you’ve read about in past articles I’ve written and will read in this article I have a deep interest in experimenting with composing music in this manner. Yet I am not the only one. Many other artists, composers, and musicians have also taken an interest in microtonal music and have used the theories to bring microtonal elements into their work.
Pioneering Applications of Microtonal Music in the West
Julian Carrillo (1875-1965) who discovered the sixteenths of tone, while experimenting with his violin. In other words, sixteen clearly different sounds between the pitches of G and A emitted by the fourth violin string. He named his discovery Sonido 13 (the thirteenth sound) and wrote on music theory and the physics of music. He invented a simple numerical musical notation that can represent scales based on any division of the octave, like thirds, fourths, quarters, fifths, sixths, sevenths, and so on (even if Carrillo wrote, most of the time, for quarters, eights, and sixteenths combined, the notation is able to represent any imaginable subdivision). He invented new musical instruments, and adapted others to produce microintervals. He composed a large amount of microtonal music and recorded about 30 of his compositions.
Ivan Wyschnegradsky, used third tones, quarter tones, sixth tones and twelfth tones, non octaving scales, as well as the term ultra-chromatic, for micro-intervals, and infra-chromatic, for macro-intervals.
Ivor Darreg, who proposed the term xenharmonic (from the Greek xeno, foreign, and Greek harmonic, hospitable) for any scale other than 12-tone equal tempered scale. He also built the first fully retunable electronic synthesizer capable of any division of the octave, just or equal or non-just non-equal and built an orchestra of instruments all in his home to include guitars refretted in equal temperaments 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, and 31, as well as the magalyra series of sub-contrabass steel guitar instruments.
Claude Debussy, who heard a Balinese gamelan performance and was exposed to their non-Western tunings and rhythms. Some scholars have even ascribed Debussy's subsequent innovative use of the whole-tone (6 equal pitches per octave) tuning in such compositions as the Fantaisie for piano and orchestra and the Toccata from the suite Pour le piano to his exposure to the Balinese gamelan at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889. Others believe that this exposure gave him the confidence to assert his rebellion "against the rule of equal temperament" marking his fully mature piano works, with their many bell- and gong-like sonorities, exploiting the piano’s natural resonance. Still others have argued that Debussy's works like L'Isle joyeuse, La Cathédrale engloutie, Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, La Mer, Pagodes, Danseuses de Delphes, and Cloches à travers les feuilles are marked by a more basic interest in the microtonal intervals found between the higher members of the overtone series, under the influence of Hermann Helmholtz's writings.
Berliner's introduction of the phonograph in the 1890s allowed much non-Western music to be recorded and heard by Western composers, further spurring the use of non-12-equal tunings.
Prominent microtonal composers or researchers of the 1940s and 1950s include Adriaan Daniel Fokker (31 equal tones per octave), Partch again (continuing to build his handcrafted orchestra of microtonal just intonation instruments). In the 1960s and 1970s experimenters included John Eaton (who created his own microtonal synthesizer, the Syn Ket, to produce microtonal intervals), Harry Partch, Easley Blackwood (who composed and performed the well-known Twelve Microtonal Etudes for Electronic Music Media with compositions in every equal division of the octave from 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 and 24 equal pitches per octave); Augusto Novaro, the Mexican microtonal theorist who composed studies in 15 equal; Barbara Benary, who formed Gamelan Son of Lion around this period; and Lou Harrison, who created American gamelan orchestras at Mills College.
And in Europe, the "Spectralists" in Paris created their first works from 1973 on with an extensive use of microtonal harmony. The main composers from this period are Hugues Dufourt, Gérard Grisey, Tristan Murail, Michael Levinas, and György Ligeti.
Microtonal Music by Inventors and Instrument Builders
Inventors and instrument builders are also becoming increasingly interested in creating new instruments and altering established instruments to gain access to even further subdivisions of the octave. A few pioneering musicians are also part of this movement.
Here are a few examples of those involved:
Explicitly microtonal jazz has also made a niche for itself. Trumpeter Don Ellis uses a quartertone trumpet built to his specifications. There’s also woodwind player Joe Maneri, who has mapped what he calls the "virtual pitch continuum." Other examples of these tuning techniques can be heard in albums released by percussionist Emil Richards, Lothar and the Hand People, as well as the xenharmonic intonational inflexions of John Coltrane, and many others.
The Japanese band Syzygys (Hitomi Shimizu and Hiromi Nishida) have released two albums utilizing the 43-tone scale of Harry Partch, using a modified reed organ (Szygys 2007). To hear a selection of their work, click on...Complete Studio Recordings
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And in the November 2004 WSES Official Newsletter for Acoustics, Science, and Technology of Music it’s mentioned that "bands from Sonic Youth to Art Rock Circus have written music with non-standard and microtonal guitar tunings." Sonic Youth uses alternate tuned guitars with several strings tuned slightly different from each other, creating a beating sound. In their early period the band played their guitars with screwdrivers, based on the techniques of Glenn Branca, who took this idea from Harry Partch's Kitharas and John Cage's prepared piano.
The third bridge technique led to the microtonal scale used on the Yuri Landman's Moodswinger and his clarification based on this scale about the physical consonant paradox present in experimental rock (Landman 2008).
These Are Powers modified their bass guitar into a microtonal adjusted instrument (Carr 2008). Because the fretboard isn't representing the 12TET anymore because of the preparation, the chord combinations and tone progressions form an altered microtonal spectrum. To sample some of their work, click on...Cracks In The Lifeline
Likewise Micachu, being heavily inspired by the works of Harry Partch, alters her instruments with shortening bridges to create a different, more random, microtonal tonal palette. For samples, click on...Jewellery
Microtonal Music Concepts by Pioneers of Electronic Music
Even hardware such as digital synthesizers and inexpensive software synthesizers has expanded the ease and popularity of exploring microtonal music. But before they existed experimenters did what they could with what was available. In 1954, Karlheinz Stockhausen built his electronic Studie II on an 81-step scale starting from 100 Hz with the interval of 51/25 between steps (1964). And in Gesang der Jünglinge (1955–56) he used various scales, ranging from seven up to sixty equal divisions of the octave.
Wendy Carlos, in her 1986's Beauty in the Beast we find her experimenting with many microtonal systems including just intonation and other alternate tuning scales she invented for the album: "This whole formal discovery came a few weeks after I had completed the album, Beauty in the Beast, which is wholly in new tunings and timbres" (Carlos 1989–96).
Marc
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