Is microtonality “new?”

#microtonal #chat #xenharmonic

[cgibbard]

Pretty true, though of course there must have always been a few people willing to think outside the box, or we'd never have ended up with any different tuning systems to begin with.

I think a big part of why microtonality feels really new right now is the advent of synthesized instruments that aren't necessarily expensive or difficult to retune -- at least, it shouldn't be as long as people don't make the mistake of building in extra technical limitations by design! They finally let us explore the space of possibilities more freely and fully, and figure out what acoustic instruments we'd actually care to build (if we feel the need at all as synthesis and physical modelling keeps getting better).

Truly generalised keyboards like the Lumatone are now possible, which just give you a grid and let you remap intervals to it however you like at any moment, with very little labour compared with retuning a piano, or building your own version of Partch's Chromelodeon, Bosanquet's Harmonium, or Vicentino's Archicembalo. Of course, such instruments are glorious, but if you build something like that and decide it's not quite what you wanted after all, it would have been so costly to just start over and try again.

There's something to be said for instruments with movable frets too though... historical lutes with gut frets, and sitars. And everything fretless where you're using your ear to tune the notes is arguably a microtonal instrument usually played in just intonation (especially the voice -- choirs drift to strange keys not on the piano to stay in tune with each other). But yeah, in those cases, there might still not have been quite as much free experimentation with tuning systems outside the cultural standard, and there are also only so many just intervals which it's really easy to nail down by ear.

Oh, another modern thing which has made higher heights possible in microtonality is electronic tuners! I remember someone from the Kepler quartet talking about how important the electronic tuner was to their production of Ben Johnston's works, and just being able to learn what the intervals and chords were supposed to sound like in the first place.

[れいく-eyi]

this also got me into thinking microtonalities in traditional Chinese music. Before 1950s no one realised them because of harmonic analysis only comes on the grids of 12et in China then as an "more advanced Western theory."

[Xotla]

This is one of my favourite thoughts on microtonality, because it defines microtonality whether or not you started with 12edo. Any totally new tuning system, or equally any old tuning system in a new context (like pelog in techno or maqam in rock) can be microtonal. 12edo in gamelan is arguably just as microtonal. That might be changing the definition a little but I think it's less euro-centric that way and more honest to 'the xen sound', the sound of novel intervals to a specific context (rather than simply novel to some listeners).

[Gnurklesquimp]

Great point! I'm gonna stop answering that with a no...

[FoxywithaRubikscube]

I love this clarification. I have always felt that microtonality is both new and not, but never knew how to describe it.
Like, tuning systems besides 12 tet have existed for a LONG TIME as you said, but the idea of breaking out into tuning systems other than 12tet or other temperaments in western music theory DOES feel like a relatively new idea.

[spastickitchen]

Food for thought, though: every tuning system was developed by someone who had a different tuning system culturally thrust upon them.

[albiewitz]

Ur the best here's a comment for the algorithm

[mrcet]

I think what you’re saying here is _largely_ true, but not _entirely_ true:

For example, Christian Huygens (in the late-1600s, IIRC) very definitely *_noticed_* 31-tone-per-octave equal-temperament’s excellent approximations of seven-based harmonies, which of course include the 7:4-frequency-ratio harmonic (subminor) seventh, and the comparatively-consonant 7:5 tritone.

Now, as for whether Huygens ever composed for or performed those harmonies, or otherwise promoted them, that’s more debatable.

[mrcet]

Fans of Ivor-Darreg, my mentor in the field, might suggest that while Microtonality is not new, what is (comparatively) new, is Xenharmonics.

Way-short summary, Xenharmonics is Microtonality for the purpose of sounding way-different from ordinary 12TET. That, as opposed to, for example, only for providing closer approximations to traditional harmonies.

[Beatsbasteln]

i think it's new that some technology trys to enable you to make microtonal music. for the longest time in digital history there were just midi notes interpreted as 12tet

[amj.composer]

"Microtonality" is just a catch-all term for stuff between 12-TET lol. There's medieval music in 31-TET and that blows me away all the time

[yagiz]

How about polyphonic microtonality? Can we find any cultures that feature microtonal polyphony? I think you could say gamelan with its tuning system but apart from this, what else do we have?

[tirelat]

Interesting point, but Vicentino was writing microtonal music well before 12-EDO became the established tuning. Whether you consider that as "new" in a historical sense depends on how far back you go ... it's certainly "new" compared with Pythagoras.

[StudyWithJimmy-yg]

Is a 12.5 equal tone temperament a thing?

[tescheurich]

Plenty of obtuse takes make a game of missing this

[DougerArt]

no? not really. there's stuff like that in the 1400s.