Microtonality

WHAT THE HECK IS MICROTONALITY?

Check out the 4 part article I wrote on New Music Box that explains microtonal (xenharmonic) music and even how to get started with it on your own.

Simply put, microtonality is music that contains more, or less, than the usual 12 notes per octave. I prefer to use only equal tempered tunings, meaning that each step in the scale is the same musical interval.

After hearing 12 tone music for so many years, it can be refreshing (or torturous, depending on the person) to be immersed in a new tonality.

You might want to read Wikipedia: Microtonal Music

WARNINGS FOR FELLOW MICROTONALISTS

I compose microtonal music strictly by ear and leave it to others to analyze, so you won’t find ratios or mathematics here. I reserve my left brain for building keyboards and chaos music.

Also, I've always had the notion to compose microtonal music that sounds pleasant and not weird and jarring for the sake of being weird and jarring. When performing with my band ZIA over the years, the audience generally didn't realize it was microtonal, even if they knew what that meant. Rather, they would notice that the music had a different "flavor" – not vanilla.

BACKGROUND

I was introduced to the idea of microtonal music in 1990 at Berklee College of Music in Boston, when one fine day in Electronic Music Composition class, Dr. Richard Boulanger surprised us by performing and singing his piece, Solemn Song for Evening, which he composed in the Bohlen-Pierce Scale. My hair stood on end as the alien notes washed over me. The notes were from outer space, yet it was still music. Wonderful music!

From then onward I was dedicated to writing microtonal music. One of my earliest pieces was Stick Men, also in the Bohlen-Pierce Scale.

I had the pleasure of watching Dr Boulanger perform Solemn Song again, 20 years later, at the first Bohlen-Pierce Symposium in Boston. He performs it on the Radio Baton, invented by Max Mathews.

At the same symposium, I performed Stick Men and a newer piece called Love Song with Dr Boulanger on the sonome (the hexagon keyboard invented by Peter Davies) rearranged for the Bohlen-Pierce Scale. I built the other two keyboards especially for this performance. The one I’m playing is a “Vertical Keyboard”, arranged for Bohlen-Pierce, in Dur II mode. I call it the “BP-tar”. The other keyboard, which Dan Sedgewick is playing, is a Korg Poly-800 rearranged for Bohlen-Pierce, in Lambda mode. Dan’s wife, Marji Gere, is playing a BP-tuned violin. It was humbling being on stage with such talented performers, me being the only one without a doctorate.

Here is the entire Bohlen-Pierce Symposium playlist, including lectures by myself, Dr B, Max Mathews and Heinz Bohlen as well as various performances.

In 2000, while at NYU, I wrote a research paper on the Bohlen-Pierce Scale.

PIANO-STYLE KEYBOARDS

For years I’ve modified piano-style keyboards (mostly M-Audio Keystations) to be microtonal, and also made Vertical Keyboards (starting with ones I made for the 2010 Bohlen-Pierce Scale Symposium). That tapered off a bit when shipping rates when sky high. Since then, I’ve been working with an engineer on my rearrangeable piano-style key invention (from many years ago, but these things take time!).

The invention makes it easy to remove and rearrange the piano-style keys with no tools other than your hands. You won’t even need to unscrew the keyboard case. We’re planning to make the body in the Vertical Keyboard style, with the handle and guitar strap. There will be a cello stick option, or you can play it like a sitar. If you absolutely must, you can play it like a keytar, or put it on a normal keyboard stand, but they’re meant to be played vertically with the left hand approaching the keyboard backwards. It’s really fun and a much more intimate way to play a piano. Plus the audience can actually watch your fingers! Although I’m not regularly modifying M-Audio keyboards anymore I do have a bunch of them lying around the house, plus drawers of black and white keys, so I’m always open to making one for anyone who can still afford the shipping costs. I do need to get rid of this inventory sooner or later.

HEXAGON KEYBOARDS

I also really love to compose on the sonome style hexagon keyboards. (I had always wished they lit up, which of course they do nowadays, and always highly preferred piano-style verticals for performance, so I’m in both camps!) There is a lot of history behind hexagon keyboards that people nowadays are losing track of, namely the two companies that once existed at the same time– C-Thru Music and Shape of Music. I knew both companies and here is a bit of background.

Back in 2008, C-Thru lent me a couple of their AXIS 64 keyboards for some corporate gigs and YouTube videos, with the agreement that one of them end up at Berklee College of Music. That came about because my friend, Dan Weingartner had gotten one for his tour with the Leonard Cohen band. During that time I looked up Peter Davies because he was listed as the inventor of the Harmonic Table and for pioneering learning the instrument. He was originally with C-Thru Music but split off due to patent issues and moved back to England to form Shape of Music. I got to know him quite well and even met with him in England once, while conveniently also visiting Dan and watching a Cohen gig (Dan was stage tech and their keyboard play played C-Thru’s AXIS64 keyboard.

I was working with Peter Davies on figuring out microtonal layouts, namely how the MIDI note#'s for each row might need to be shifted to accommodate some of the layouts. He had incorporated some of those mappings into the presets. C-Thru went on to make smaller, less expensive hex keyboards, and we bought a bunch of those for the electronic music lab where I taught at the time. Peter Davies’ company made high end ones, same size as the AXIS64. They had wooden bodies with professional guitar paint and actual weighted hexagon keys. Both companies eventually failed to hit a workable price point, and thus both went out of business. It's a difficult industry! Since then, other great hexagon keyboards have popped up to fill the market. Everyone knows about the Lumatone https://www.lumatone.io/, and another that I was just introduced to, which offers the sonome layout I’m used to is the HexBoard.

LECTURE ON MICROTONALITY

In this playlist you can find a general lecture on Microtonality that I did at FAU.

MICROTONAL COMMUNITY

I stay in touch with other microtonalists through the Xenharmonic Alliance group on Facebook. Introduce yourself! Don't be shy!

MY FAVORITE TUNINGS

Below are some music samples in my three favorite tunings, plus hexagon and piano-style keyboards that I’ve developed for each tuning. As you listen, see how long it takes for your ears to “tune-in”. Does each tuning sound like a different “flavor”? I would love to hear your feedback.