Microtonal

Just a little sketch in 19-tone equal temperament.

19 edo In Five

So I tuned absynth to what I think is and should be 16 edo?  I'm not actually sure since I have never played in 16 edo before.  Whatever it is it sounds really cool.  I made an interesting harmonic progression, looped it and did some exploratory improvising over it.  I did pitch bend some notes outside 16 edo bc I thought it sounded cool.  All the midi input to Absynth was done using a 12 tone piano which made is less than ideal for this tuning system to say the least.  I need to read up on theory and scales for this.  IDK how to practice them though since I don't have and can't really get a proper control device with keys that fit this tuning systems and its unique scales.

16 edo exploration

Chord sequence exploring the flavors of the decatonic major scale in 22 EDO discovered and described by Paul Erlich. [Edited to add: The temperament is called "pajara", and it was discovered independently by Erlich and Gene Ward Smith.] It's mellow, just chords. This is the scale in cents, along with 22 EDO sagittal notation:

 0:          1/1           C
 1:        109.091 cents   C||\    D!!/
 2:        218.182 cents   D
 3:        381.818 cents   D/||\   E\!
 4:        490.909 cents   F
 5:        600.000 cents   F||\    G!!/
 6:        709.091 cents   G
 7:        872.727 cents   G/||\   A\!
 8:        981.818 cents   A/|     B\!!/
 9:       1090.909 cents   A/||\   B\!
10:          2/1           C

Image courtesy of "chooyutshing" on Flickr, CC attribution-non-commercial sharealike license. 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25802865@N08/4563936947/

Chord sequence in Paul Erlich's 22 EDO decatonic major (pajara).

Using an overdriven rhodes sound to demonstrate how awesome 50EDO is for thirds. Here are most of the thirds, used once each in the sequence. ~15/13 (240c), 7/6 (264c), 13/11 (288c), 6/5 (312c), 17/14 (336c), 5/4 (384c), 9/7 (432c), 13/10 (456c). Which means I've only missed out 16/13 and 81/64(or a mistuned 14/11 if you like).

See if you can work out what's going on by ear. I tried to make the difference tones as obvious as I could by using the gnarliest overdriven sound I could find. I quite like this little chord sequence, but might expand it to try and fit in the other two types of thirds.

Definitely a demo, a few muckups trying to find my way around unfamiliar tonal territory... Enjoy!

Chord sequence for Difference tones in 50EDO

Minds at Work - 16 EDO Gorgo[6]

==16-EDO VERSION==

These musical examples are tuned to what is known as "mavila" temperament. It is named after the Mavila village of the Chopi people in southern Mozambique, where this tuning system was first discovered by Kraig Grady.

Because of the structure of this unique tuning, it is true that every existing piece of common practice music has a "shadow" version in mavila temperament. That is, when Beethoven wrote Fur Elise, he actually wrote two compositions - the one that you know, and the anti-diatonic equivalent in mavila temperament. It's only that the anti-diatonic versions have never been heard before.

Mavila is a tuning system whereby four stacked perfect fifths, rather than getting you to a major third, gets you to a minor third - meaning that the fifths are flat. Conversely, four stacked perfect fourths gets you to a major third, rather than a minor third. This has some very strange implications for music. The mavila diatonic scale is similar to the normal diatonic scale - except interval classes are flipped. Wherever there was a major third, you'll find a minor third, and vice versa. Half steps become whole steps and whole steps become half steps (closer to neutral second range, however). When you sharpen the leading tone in minor, you end up sharpening it down instead, meaning you flatten it. Also, minor is now major - you end up with three parallel natural/harmonic/melodic major scales, and only one minor scale. Instead of a diminished triad in the major scale, there is now an augmented triad.

In these examples, the chosen mavila temperament is 16-equal, which was chosen because it strikes a good middle ground between approximating the harmonic series and making the interval categories as distinct as possible. In contrast, 23-equal improves the fit of this temperament to the harmonic series, whereas 25-equal makes the intervals more distinct from one another.

A special thanks goes out to Graham Breed; his custom Lilypond code and several weeks worth of gchat discussion are what made all of this possible.


The Mavila Experiments - Beethoven - Fur Elise - 16-EDO

The Mavila Experiments - Mozart - Rondo Alla Turca - 16-EDO

The Mavila Experiments - Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata - 16-EDO

Completed January 13 (Friday), 2017.

Everyone despises you, but they won’t tell you why. They know that something is different about you, but they can’t quite put their finger on what that would be. Perhaps it is some invisible quality that cannot even truly be detected by quantitative means. Perhaps it is the opposite: so obvious, that your obliviousness towards it, at least for the duration of your lifetime, has been quite an achievement. They despise you, they somehow loathe you, in a hidden, societally unacceptable way, because you check all the boxes perfectly. They have told you that you look good, are gifted, are smart, are apparently kind, are cool, are funny, and friendly, which means that you must objectively be likeable. And yet, somehow, even with   these qualities in the bag, you are still an object of secret scorn. The thing that they hate most about you is not even something that they could collectively name, which may be the source of your latent frustration. It likely has to do with how mysterious and guarded you are, how you are extroverted but cannot flirt, how you are joyful but cannot actually ignore your own depressing thinking. Your success is just as false as your happiness. It is that perceived incongruence, real or not, that is so off-putting, that stinks within you, actively repelling the subconscious of all, save the neophyte and the troglodyte. And perhaps everyone who does appear to like you is faking his or her emotions. Why not? There’s no reason to assume the contrary. In fact, there is better reason to assume a lie, considering mainstream motivations and easily manipulated desires. 

Your artistry, all of it, is profound only as a gimmick or an as obscure phenomenon, there for those haters to simply marvel and gawk at because they have not done the same. Who has ever become ethical by simply being new and unique? You have never done so, and never will, even though others may have. To be inventive in the moral realm is a slippery slope to evil with the wrong evolution, and you have been so dull, and so lacking of self-awareness, that the wind and the rain have simply tossed you from one viewpoint to another as you “think” they would. Your worldview is no better than anyone else’s if you consume your own logical medicine like sustenance instead of candy like everyone else claims. Your role as a mere machine or cog, and your inability to conjecture, undermines you as equally as the ant, or anything that nature conjured. And, you try to make things equivalent that are not supposed to be equivalent, or will not be perceived as such.

But maybe no one despises you after all, and you are simply unlucky. “It’s Friday the 13th” you say, knowing full well that this thirteen has lasted the whole month for so many, so many who are not yourself, and who suffer more than you. Your bad luck is their delight, you privileged fool, and they would trade their sanity for your shoes. How dare you entertain this paranoia that you have some fatal flaw, that you let this conceptual femme fatale ensnare your thinking and drive you around in circles? Don’t you know that it’s wasteful to lust after such intellectual falsehood, that its distortion causes suffering that does not even exist to others, or possibly even yourself? A mere mention of this would inspire laughter. What reason do you have to be uncertain compared to anyone else? And why should they believe your anxiousness, since you exude confidence like an expert?

A Mean Little Voice (Bohlen-Pierce, or 13-ED3)

This is written in Mavila[9], then Mavila[7], and then finally, Mavila[5]. This evokes something very specific for me - enjoying writing with sounds so much that I neglect to eat.

Hunger Wanders In An Empty Room (16 - EDO)

Na escala antidiatônica Mavila [7] 16-EDO.
Vocais por Löis Lancaster, sineta por Tonanti Deathstar

Ó minha bola de natal, és a única testemunha
Do fim do turno do Papai noel, quando bebe uísque e se acabrunha.

Ó minha bola espelhada, semblantes que se vêem balões
Bananas lembrando melões, visões da vaidade fracassada.

Bola de Natal - música natalina em Mavila 16-EDO

A collection of short pieces utilizing unique tunings other than 12-TET. 

Microtonal

aaronpom