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.