[HN Gopher] Resources for microtonal music
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Resources for microtonal music
Author : drumttocs8
Score : 89 points
Date : 2022-11-17 14:15 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sevish.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (sevish.com)
| Nabi wrote:
| Aleksi Perala makes great microtonal electronic music.
| https://aleksiperala.bandcamp.com/
| https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/colundi-aleksi-perala-inter...
| zaplin wrote:
| came here to mention Perala
| jlarcombe wrote:
| Saw Horse Lords again last night, absolutely incredible band with
| microtonal guitar and bass, highly recommended.
|
| https://horselords.bandcamp.com/album/comradely-objects-2
| IndySun wrote:
| A short but quality list. Missing the Aphex / Oddsound
| endeavour... https://oddsound.com/mtsespsuite.php
| flats wrote:
| This is just a list of Sevish's tools (the Scale Workshop is
| really useful for things like building scales for use in Max,
| _way_ easier to work with than Scala). Thank you for sharing
| the MTS-ESP Suite, though! I love the idea of a single piece of
| software that can handle tuning across plugins and MIDI
| devices.
| bboylen wrote:
| Microtones can create absolutely gorgeous guitar music
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XnhXg4XuqU
| standardly wrote:
| This is epic, thank you for sharing
| newobj wrote:
| KGATLW fans have entered the chat.
| kortex wrote:
| Also Altin Gun and Gaye Su Akyol, both Turkish artists that use
| a hybrid of standard guitars and baglamas, and operate mostly
| in 12TET but employ lots of embellishments from Turkish makams.
|
| Flying microtonal banana, KG, and LW are fun (24TET with a few
| missing quarter tones), but I'm really hoping their next foray
| is 19TET or 31TET, which both approximate 12TET well enough but
| also have some neat intervals.
| patrickscoleman wrote:
| welcome to the gizzverse
| slothtrop wrote:
| also Secret Chiefs 3
| rfreytag wrote:
| Mike Battaglia gives a great microtonal example on the 31-EDO
| Lumatone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z40RWIN-0cc
| kortex wrote:
| Microtonal and xenharmonic mega-playlist with over 1200 tracks
| and growing:
| https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1OcPPq0ohnUarvDCERaxaR?si=...
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Microjazz is a enjoyable album for microtonal bebop
| dmonitor wrote:
| King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard has some quality microtonal
| albums as well. Flying Microtonal Banana, KG, and LW.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| All of Brendan Byrnes's work is very microtonal and
| absolutely rocks my face off.
| wyclif wrote:
| Best band name ever!
| zmibes wrote:
| Sevish makes awesome music
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| I've been a big fan for a couple years. Initially it was really
| weird to me. Now it's not! I've gotten more used to
| microtonality, for one thing, and for another I think he's
| toned down the really xenharmonic aspects of his music. When
| his latest album comes up on Spotify the harmonies don't sound
| particularly strange to me, just a little smoother than what
| you would get out of 12 Edo.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| I take it back. Some of those tracks are pretty freaky.
| lelandfe wrote:
| Their most well known track:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9wINwlgxRU
|
| I think most of their stuff sounds pretty silly, usually - like
| someone's mucking around with knobs in Ableton over a decent
| drum loop: https://sevish.bandcamp.com/track/tritavium
|
| I thought Aphex Twin's work on Syro was some of the most
| "listenable" microtonal electronic music around:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEO56WG0p48
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| I make microtonal (usually 41 tones per octave) music using a
| Lumatone keyboard and the Pianoteq synth plugin. Microtonality in
| Pianoteq is surprisingly easy, given how difficult MIDI makes
| microtonality. If you divide the octave into 41 pieces, you only
| get about three octaves per MIDI channel. Pianoteq allows you to
| use a sweet hack whereby raising the channel value by one raises
| the octave by one.
|
| Of course, editing those midi notes after they've been recorded
| is still quite a chore.
| mdp wrote:
| For those of us that didn't know the term Microtonal Music -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1XOnIk2ai8
| nlnn wrote:
| I once took a year of oud lessons, and the nuances in
| microtonality really blew me away.
|
| There were all sorts of things in the aural traditions, like
| scale X having a fractionally sharper 3rd ascending than scale Y,
| but with both notated in the same way.
|
| But a lot of the larger subdivisions (i.e. quarter tone
| sharp/flat notes) were surprisingly natural to learn, and no
| different to semitones (from a listening/playing perspective)
| after a while.
| strogonoff wrote:
| Those who find the typical sound of microtonal music too much of
| a dissonance right off the bat: give a listen to Neurogenesis[0]
| by Robert Rich and you might appreciate the subtle enthralling
| patterns.
|
| [0] https://robertrich.bandcamp.com/album/neurogenesis
| iainctduncan wrote:
| The best current resource is the Kyle Gann book, "The Arithmetic
| of Listening". It's fantastic, by a world authority on the topic.
| https://www.kylegann.com/Gannbooks.html
|
| Also for anyone interested in just intonation based
| microtonality, I did a video demo of a tool I made using my open
| source Scheme for Max extension to Max here:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L7edwef-5k&t=2s&ab_channel=...
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| If you have never seriously tried to listen to microtone music I
| would recommend this video as your point of entry
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGZ0JlMwZpY
|
| Be sure to enable the subtitles because he puts a lot of notes on
| the video. The descript also has a little essay about different
| common tuning arrangements.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| How are the extra notes entered? The keyboard looks regular, is
| there some note modification going on, or are the extra notes
| actually added as dedicated keys?
| kortex wrote:
| The video details explain the process. Basically manually
| retuning note by note (probably using melodyne/autotune or
| similar).
| tarentel wrote:
| He's using software. The keyboard he is playing isn't the
| sound you're hearing. In the description he says he's using
| pianoteq. He also explains the process of changing from 12
| tones in the description.
| crazygringo wrote:
| That's utterly fascinating, I've never heard microtonal music
| before outside of older traditions like chanting. Some
| observations:
|
| 1) When microtones are used in the melody improvisation, it
| sounds totally natural because we're used to it with string
| bending in guitar. It's surprising yet satisfying to hear the
| same done on a piano
|
| 2) When microtones are occasionally used to make a chord
| "bluer", it's also very natural and satisfying as another
| flavor of dissonance, which totally fits with the kind of
| dissonant jazz we're already used to with piano
|
| 3) But when microtones are used for most/all the notes of the
| chord, such as the root... at least to my ears it sounds
| horrible, like the piano just went out of tune for that chord.
| Which makes me wonder if you could get used to it or not?
|
| Thanks for the link!
| zeruch wrote:
| A modern improviser that uses microtonal scales a lot is
| guitarist Dave "Fuze" Fiucynski:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWM6xRGoGcQ https://www.youtu
| be.com/watch?v=KWxV7u8Zm4I&ab_channel=Berkl...
|
| (he typically plays a double neck guitar, one with standard
| tuning/frets, the other fretless)
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| For your last point, if you just continued to adapt 12tet
| music into other systems I think it would continue to sound
| strange? Not totally sure, you'd get used to it to some
| extent but I think it would always sound noticeably off esp
| if you were familiar with the piece in 12tet like we are with
| this one.
|
| But there are entire music traditions using other tuning
| systems and they sound "normal" to the people who grew up
| with them. Notably the 24tet used in arabic music but there
| are literally dozens of others around the world.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| For #3, a lot of it IS jarring and often it is supposed to
| be... although in jazz there are no wrong notes, just bad
| resolutions (jacob collier). Oftentimes in microtone you will
| find a passage that sounds horrible at first but makes sense
| at the end, hopefully.
|
| I think that you can definitely get used to it. It is a
| little weird to hear non-typical notes, especially if you
| have done any kind of pitch training, but at the end of the
| day it isn't the notes themselves that matter but their
| positions relative to each other in a chord or passage.
|
| The youtuber I linked also has a bunch of Lumatone
| performances which is an instrument with a hex grid layout
| where you can change the pitch of a chord by shifting your
| hands up or down on the grid while maintaining the same hand
| shape. That approach makes some really good microtone music
| whereas a lot of straight piano layout players end up getting
| stuck in "ambient space noise" modes.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Another grand master of microtonality is Jacob Collier:
|
| https://youtu.be/2qUCyW7ewPs
|
| https://youtu.be/zua831utwMM
|
| Probably the best example, especially the middle:
| https://youtu.be/mPZn4x3uOac
| biorach wrote:
| How is Bitwig with alternate tunings?
|
| I've been a bit frustrated with the inability to work easily in
| Ableton 9 with non-Western or microntonal tunings.
| IndySun wrote:
| Would this make it possible? I am unaffiliated.
|
| https://oddsound.com/mtsespsuite.php
| agentdrek wrote:
| Cubase should be no problem
| zmibes wrote:
| Very good support for microtunings in bitwig
| sporkl wrote:
| Bitwig has a built in device that can do any 12-note tuning or
| equal division of the octave tuning (with tweakable octave I
| think). That said it cannot really do other tunings. But these
| two types of tuning are the most common, and I guess with the
| new Note Grid device it should in theory be possible to do
| pretty much any tuning.
|
| Edit: it looks like sevish has multiple notes tuned the same in
| order to get less than 12 notes per octave, so that's also
| possible.
| dekhn wrote:
| Great album with microtones which are used commonly in classical
| Indian music: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sounds_of_India
| The first track starts out: "Ragas are precise melody forms. A
| raga is not a mere scale nor is it a mode. Each Raga has it's own
| ascending and descending movement. And those subtle touches and
| uses of micro tones and stresses on particular notes like
| this..."
| beebmam wrote:
| For more examples of awesome microtonal music, check out all the
| artists that contribute to STAFFcirc compos on Soundcloud. Many
| of them feature tons of microtonal music, including Sevish too!
|
| Here's an example of one in which every track has a different set
| of microtones: https://on.soundcloud.com/MpTau
| sporkl wrote:
| If anyone's interested, I've been working on a plugin for
| automatic adaptive pure intonation, which can make things like
| microtonal modulations relatively easy to do! Hoping to release
| publicly before the end of the year.
|
| https://www.dmitrivolkov.com/projects/pivotuner/
|
| I use the plugin at 1:56 in this thing in order to modulate up
| about a quarter tone for the end (it's otherwise in 12edo)
|
| https://youtu.be/N5QaUjhXPUE?t=115
| jcpst wrote:
| Cool to see Sevish on the front page of HN. He was inspiring to
| me on my microtonal journey. I started with Harry Partch and Ben
| Johnston's compositions and writings.
|
| Here's a work of mine that focuses on 7-limit JI intervals:
| https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/josephpost/daLO
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