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Microtonal music is music using microtones — intervals of less than an equally spaced semitone, or as Charles Ives put it, the "notes between the cracks" of the piano.

Terminology

The term is Microtonal music refers to any music whose tuning is not based on Equal Tempered semitones, such as: An alternative term explicitly covering such possibilities is xenharmonic music.

Microtonal scales that are played contiguously are chromatically microtonal, those which are not use the various contiguous pitches as alternative versions of larger intervals (Burns, 1999).

History

The Italian Renaissance composer and theorist Nicola Vicentino (1511-1576) experimented with microintervals and built for example a keyboard with 36 keys to the octave, known as the archicembalo. However Vicentino's experiments were primarily motivated by his research (as he saw it) on the ancient Greek genera, and by his desire to have acoustically pure intervals available within chromatic compositions.

Some Western composers have embraced the use of microtonal scales, dividing an octave into 19, 24, 31, 53, 72, 88, and other numbers of pitches, rather than the more common 12. The intervals between pitches can be equal, creating an equal temperament, or unequal, such as in just intonation or linear temperament.

Microtonalism in rock music

The American hardcore punk band Black Flag (1976-86) made interesting vernacular use of microtonal intervals, via guitarist Greg Ginn, a free jazz aficionado also familiar with modern classical. (During their peak in the late '70s and early '80s, long before American punk was mainstream, the band was considered, not unwarrantedly, a thuggish and hostile street unit, although time has given their work a considerable measure of musical acclaim.) A worthwhile song is "Damaged II," from 1981's Damaged LP — a live-in-studio recording in which intentional (and surprisingly scale-aware) use of quarter- and eighth-steps suggests a guitar in danger of detonation. Another is "Police Story," most versions of which end in a cadence played a quarter-tone sharp, to similar effect.

Other rock artists using microtonality in their work include Glenn Branca (who has created a number of symphonic works for ensembles of microtonally tuned electric guitars) and Jon and Brad Catler (who play microtonal electric guitar and electric bass guitar).

The British rock act My Vitriol make use of microtonal tunings on their debut album Finelines, which features songs tuned a quarter step down from E in order to better emphasize vocalist Som Wardner's ethereal singing style.

The American band Zia founded by composer Elaine Walker has released several partially microtonal rock albums since the early 1990s. Their works include use of the Bohlen-Pierce scale. http://www.ziaspace.com/ZIA/sections/music.html

See also

Western microtonal pioneers

Pioneers of modern Western microtonal music include:

recent microtonal composers

Reference

  • Burns, Edward M. (1999). "Intervals, Scales, and Tuning", The Psychology of Music second edition. Deutsch, Diana, ed. San Diego: Academic Press. ISBN 0122135644.

External links

General

microtonal tuning theory

Theory pages

Discography

Microtonal music on the web

Microtuners and other microtonal music software

Tuning

Mikrotonale Musik | Microtono | מוזיקה מיקרוטונאלית | 微分音 | Mikrotonal musik

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Microtonal music".

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