Ancient Greek Musical Scales & Sculptures

An improvisation for solo chelys (tortoise shell form) lyre in a documented ancient Greek microtonal scale, accompanied by a slideshow of some of the finest examples of ancient Greek sculpture to have survived from Classical Antiquity.

The improvisation is based on a hauntingly evocative documented microtonal scale from ancient Greece, known as the "Archytas Enharmonic Genus":

The use of quarter tones in this ancient Greek scale adds an intensity to the resulting music improvised in it in an entirely different dimension to the artificial constraints of our monotonously standardized 12 note chromatic system.

I will shortly be releasing a new single, based on a development and extension of this improvisation in this fascinatingly evocative scale, which will called "Microtonal Music for Lyre (Etude in the Archytas Enharmonic Genus)". This single will be released on all the major digital music stores and streaming sites in September 2016 - it is already available from my Bandcamp Store:

The feeling of intensity is further enhanced by the authentic use of the clearly focused intervals, tuned here just intonation. For this improvisation, I used the 'Pythagorean Just Intonation' setting on the Cleartune App (available from Google Play Store) - which also has the great benefit of displaying quarter tones on divisions of the tuning wheel on the display panel - I sincerely hope almighty Apollo would approve of my efforts!

For an everlasting 'musical magic carpet ride' back to ancient times, with a new video of beautiful lyre music published each and every Sunday at 22.30 GMT, subscribe here:

Many thanks for watching!