microtonal

Wanna know about the vast world of experimental and nonwestern harmonies? Look no further! This is a potpourri of all the music out there that bends the rules away from 12 equal notes per octave.

Message me if you find any tracks that should definitely be included!

For a YouTube-based playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_zQK5KSD4m0MAFWAM2ELgZzlRI7iYA5f

Xenharmonic & Microtonal

My works for two to five performers. Xenharmonic works are marked in parentheses with their tuning, and 12-equal/indeterminately pitched works are not labeled in such a way.

Small Ensemble

Three types of things populate this area: MIDI melodies that I plan on turning into compositions; computer music projects that failed to be great; xenharmonic doodles. You can tell which one each is by its corresponding picture.

Sketches (unfinished ideas)

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

I used MIDI piano synth to have files of some of my better melodic personal compositions. The names are based off what I think the pieces sound like. These were not inspired by significant events, but are simply great melodies that I thought up. 

MIDI To Linger

MIDI Spirit Of Apology

MIDI Prime Fib

MIDI Feeling Of Falling

some ideas I haven't done anything with
Let me know which ones to finish

18 TET Dance

I've been working on this piece for years and it's been played at Ball State (twice), as well as Un12 2019! This is the Un12 recording, and the tuning is all in 9-tone equal temperament.

Keyboard: Stephen Weigel
Violin 1 and 2: Hans Gunter-Lock
Trombone: Jacob Barton

Conceptually, this piece is about a battle between harmony shared with 12 (the hexatonic, or Augmented[6] scale), and not shared with 12. Each of the four instruments follows their own respective idioms, but as time passes, they start imitating each other more both with motive and with harmony. Asymmetrical meter, strong contrasts between moods, the use of major and minor at the same time, and an overall sense of nothing belonging together define this piece.

As a quirky and absurd showcase of xenharmonics, it seemed relevant to give instruments themselves the idea of "being opposed" to non-hexatonic systems, and also to get them to "accept" non-hexatonic 9edo harmonies after being exposed to them for a while. Hopefully this piece is a showcase of what is possible with lots of different kinds of chords, providing a large gamut of what can be done, with little pockets (or zones) of lasting novelty based somewhat in being perpetually xenharmonic.

Zones of Lasting Novelty (9-EDO)

This work used a drone and long pauses, as well as the voice, to achieve an eerie and otherworldly effect. The drone continually morphs over one chord, but transitions between timbres. I wanted the piece to sound like it was too confusing to understand, but with hints of intelligibility. I also used Max MSP's vocoder capabilities to create the robotic effect in the voice. I also manipulated several sounds using granular synthesis and ring modulation, as well as convolution. The lyrics (which I wrote) are:

'Darkness drips with pallid sheen, and it makes its way to earth, whose halo hung with light cannot handle hubris.'
'Time passes, future and past, what writings ever shall last?
Ideas rock to and fro, never revealed or shown.'

Meant to sound very lofty, inaccessible, and even contradictory by confusion.

Invisible Machines

Movement 1 (9-EDO) - 0:00
Movement 2 (8-EDO) - 5:30

A video with more info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no3KsYIymyc

This piece is playable using 12-tone equal tempered guitars, which were precisely what was used: this is orchestrated for acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and electric bass. A composition professor of mine at Ball State University (Derek Johnson) asked me to write a 9-tone guitar chorale after hearing my other 9-tone piece thus far, "In Our Own Little Worlds." So I did, capitalizing on the fact that 9 and 12 are both divisible by 3 (so all of the fret positions are multiples of 4, or 0). 12 and 8 are, likewise, both divisible by 4, which is why I also picked 8-tone to use (so all of the frets on that one, likewise, are also multiples of 3, or 0). Two guitars were used for each player, making a total of 6 guitars onstage (Wow)! This is because movements I and II are tuned differently, and thus require different guitars for playing.

The notation for this is surprisingly convenient as well. I used 12-EDO cent deviations and TABs to notate this. The cent deviations are easy in 9 and 8 tone, because the deviations are always by the same amounts, meaning that they don't need to be specified in the music! This makes things a lot less confusing. TAB was easier for the performers to read. In 9-EDO, the step is 133.33 repeating cents, and in 8-tone, it is 150 cents. Every note in 9-EDO deviates from a 12-EDO note by only 33.3 cents, or is part of the C E G# 3-EDO augmented chord. Every note in 8-tone, likewise, deviates from a 12-EDO note by only 50 cents, or is part of the C Eb F# A 4-EDO fully diminished seventh chord. 

As for the feelings and aesthetics of this piece, the 9-tone ended up feeling like a journey through many places, and the 8-tone more like something dark and mysterious. (The contrast is intentional). In both movements, I induced chromaticism by moving through the kind of third that did not fit with 12-EDO... so for 9-EDO, this was the minor third flattened 33.3 cents, and for 8-EDO, the 12-EDO major third sharpened 50 cents.

I also found out that voicings played a huge role in categorical perception, and, depending on the way I voiced a chord, it could take on a completely different identity. The two best examples of this are:
(1) In 9-EDO, clusters of subminor thirds (the flattened minor third by 33.3 cents) can sound either like a dominant seventh or a half-diminished seventh chord (the ending chord is a good example).
(2) In 8-EDO, if you voice a 'major triad', you'll get an interval that is halfway between a major third and perfect fourth, and an interval halfway between a perfect fifth and major sixth. Relative to this construction, putting the 'super-major third' in the bass makes the chord sound minor, because it can be legitimately construed as a minor chord as well (even with spelling!).

The 9-EDO modulates almost all the way through a circle of subminor thirds, hinting at the next one in each section, and the 8-EDO stays 'in C'. The 8-EDO has a much simpler structure; a lot of the music theory parallels Sethares' quick example of speculative 8-equal theory from Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale... it goes between a tonic and dominant chord built adjacently to each other. It is much harder to get 8-EDO to sound chromatic than 9-EDO.

Thank you performers!
Daniel Sitler, bass
Samuel Gordon, electric guitar
Acoustic guitar was myself.

Tenacious Chorale (9-EDO and 8-EDO) (Live)

For more information on Tenacious Chorale, check the live performance description, as well as this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no3KsYIymyc

This recording is only of movement 1, in 9-equal. The live performance of the second movement in 8-equal was so good that I didn't feel a need to re-record it in the studio.

Tenacious Chorale (9-EDO) (Studio version)

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)

(Re-uploaded for loudness purposes)
HUGE thank you to the members of the ICE ensemble who played this piece for BSU's Spring 2017 In-Artist Residence!!

Rebekah Heller, bassoon
Ryan Muncy, alto sax
Alice Teyssier, flute
Campbell MacDonald, clarinet
Michael Lormand, trombone

This piece was born out of the feeling of an exotic road trip. Picture a mountain as you drive by: it's jagged and impressive, but also very regular and slow-moving. That's the feeling I hoped the ostinatos would capture. There are no traditional chords here, but lots of repetition. Individual repetitive parts will combine in as many different ways as texturally acceptable to "clash" within any given section, and different groupings are juxtaposed against one another. A "waiting" patience was often used as a musical motive for the more melodic-sounding ostinatos. Additionally, there were many textures where other parts echoed an eighth note later, and then two eighth notes later, etc. This was also a great ingredient for beginning slow texture changes in the piece (also common).

Future versions of this piece will use:
>slightly more idiomatic extended techniques
>more idiomatic quarter-tone trills for the flute
>other mild textural changes that enhance the sounds of certain polyphonies

Performed in 24-tone equal temperament, on February 13, 2017.

Quintet in Quarter-Tones (24-EDO)

Turn Up The Love

This is a string duet, using the Mavila scale, created in response to the xenharmonic community’s ‘Tuning of the Month’ challenge of June 2017. Charlotte New Music Festival 2017 required its creation, to be played by the Beo String Quartet, as a vigorous speedwriting challenge. So, I picked sixth tones to write with because they are more xenharmonic than quartertones, but still overlap with 12-equal quite a lot. This piece is obsessed with a constant state of beginning, as the two voices constantly seem like they are entering against each other, as in the exposition of a fugue, or a canon. Dedicated to Lou Harrison’s life, the performance is a memorial of how he brought gamelan to the United States in an influential way, although not indicative of the gamelan style in any particular way. I also share interests with Lou Harrison, namely, non-Western music and a birthday, so pondering his legacy is very special for me specifically. Openings of each of Lou Harrison’s gamelan pieces are all quoted, as well as one of his piano sonatas. The instruments also play in the same key (D) as his American Gamelan, and only one note of the scale is inaccurate to what that ensemble played, namely, the minor third of Harrison’s ensemble is represented in this piece by a significantly flatter note, the septimal minor third (267 cents) of 9-equal. 

Huge thanks to Sandro Leal-Santiesteban (violin), and Ryan Ash (cello) of Beo String Quartet for playing this at CNMF 2017!

Gamelan, Origin, Creation (9 - EDO)

This piece was written for the flute players of Duo Zhonda, at Charlotte New Music Festival 2017. Music commonly thought of as lost and forgetful could have a variety of attributes. With an erratic nature, the music can be hasty, jumping from place to place in panic. With a monotonous nature, it can be pacing around in a circle wondering where it should go. In this piece, I purposely fade between the two ideas over the entire course of the piece, inversely with both rhythm and pitch. This piece is dedicated to my professor Jody Nagel, who often says, “Symmetry removes one’s ability to orient.” This short piece is an exploration of that idea, and inspired by that very phrase, as 36 is highly composite.

A sincere and heartfelt thanks to Orlando Cela and Wei Zhao for playing this!

Exponentially More Lost And Forgetful (36 - EDO)

This song will be part of the "Agnostic Depression Characteristic of the 21st Century Voice" collection.

You don’t insist upon your way
You don’t insist upon your way
You don’t have labored points to prove
You don’t steal goods in desperate times
You don’t take sides when they’re not there
You don’t treat petty tricks as art
You don’t shun truth and common sense    
You don’t insist upon your way
You don’t insist upon your way
You don’t raise your voice
You don’t raise your voice

Unusual Unreal Unbelievable You (11 - EDO)

from NANA WODORI - knowsur - album at Split Notes Microtonal Netlabel
http://split-notes.com/spnt004.php