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RE: The Harmonic Series #11: Brendan Byrnes - Neutral Paradise [microtonal music at its most accessible and exciting heights]
This is certainly interesting music, but I've decided it's not suitable for listening to whilst working!
Micropangaea might be a little better for that, but yeah it's probably too attention grabbing I would imagine. Work music for me has to be either instrumental or with harsh vocals that have fairly static volume level.
Yeah, I'm ok at ignoring lyrics, but I either need to know the music very well (something I'm not sure my mind is capable of with this microtonal stuff), or it has to be predictable.
The need for predictability I get. When you say you're not sure your mind is capable of knowing it, do you mean you don't think you can wrap your head around it or something else? If that's the case, you're a good musician, you definitely can. Something else to keep in mind is that microtonality actually exists in a lot of music already, whether naturally in things like choral music, or in the inflections of style, such as in blues. The thirds sung in traditional blues aren't in tune with equal temperament; they're sung the way they are deliberately, but the musicians likely didn't think of it as microtonal or extra flattened so much as "the way I sing."
I understand what you're getting at, and maybe the models most people use to describe tonal music (if that's the correct name for 'normal' music ;) ) are incomplete.
Perhaps I could learn it with a lot of exposure, but I think maybe after years of listening to tonal music, you develop mind/brain structures that are well suited to storing and operating on it, and it would take quite a lot of adaptation. Probably a similar principle to how if you learn a foreign spoken language when you're young, it's more 'natural' to you.
I know we 'slur' notes etc. and how important that is, but can you sing a repeatable microtonal scale? I'm pretty sure I couldn't.
The thing with "microtonality" is, it doesn't relate to "tonality" in the same way as "atonal" (no distinct key center) or "polytonal" (simultaneous multiple key centers) which refer to gravity between chords and harmonies and "key."
I don't think it takes as much adaption as you may imagine, rather just beginning to approach it through the familiar principles of tonal music. A term that gets thrown around a lot in microtonal music is "new consonance," meaning intervals not found in traditional tonality, but pleasing to the ear nonetheless. In microtonal music we can still have 3rd's and 6th's and 7th's, but now we have more options, like the neutral 3rd - a pitch equally between the minor and major 3rd.
The fact is, the equal temperament system is a compromise against the natural harmonic series. Its existence owes to the desire of composers to have access to all 12 keys equally in tune, with the advent of keyboard instruments. This means that, scientifically speaking, equal temperament is actually always out of tune. If we wanted to play in just one key with perfect tuning, Just Intonation (which derives its intervals from the harmonic series, and is more often than not considered "microtonal") is actually much more "in tune."
The greatest example of this is the tritone. In western music it's considered very dissonant, owing to being out of tune with the harmonic series, but in many eastern traditions and in Just Intonation, the tritone is exceptionally consonant, being an equal division of the octave in 2 halves. A perfectly tuned tritone in this regard has no "subharmonic beating" (the sound you hear when tuning a guitar string to the adjacent string is the most obvious example of this).
This comment sort of got away from me because this topic has a lot of depth, but basically I like Byrnes' music a lot because it tends to be fairly close to recognizable tunings and serves as an easy gateway into more esoteric sounds. Here's a video of Byrnes himself explaining his 22-EDO guitar and playing some music on it:
As for your question about singing microtonal scales, yes it's undoubtedly quite difficult in the abstract, but singing at its root is most about blending. Byrnes has been quoted talking about the tracks in which he sings and how it's more about intuitively feeling how your voice sits into the harmonies you're singing over. I'd definitely encourage you to also check out at least some of this choral Requiem by composer Toby Twining. It's in what's know as "zero-limit" Just Intonation, and is entirely a capella. It's likely the most difficult piece of choral music ever performed as it also makes heavy use of extended vocal techniques, but chiefly it's an incredible testament to the deeply human and natural sound of harmonic series based tuning. Here's the Kyrie:
Thanks. It is really fascinating, and I know so little music theory, that it's hard for me to even discuss. People frequently ask what chord I'm playing in a song, and I'll have no idea, because I choose based on whether or not I like the sound, and often through fortunate mistakes! I get the feeling some people with a moderate understanding of music theory can feel limited by it - perhaps not for those with deeper knowledge though, or musicians who are more self-assured and open-minded.
I consider myself lucky to be able to create music that I quite like, even though I've no idea what I'm doing as expressed in another language. I think music is probably more fundamental than any modern 'natural language' we use to discuss and analyse it.
Do most of us actually prefer things to be slightly 'out of tune'? Could it be that tonal music theory is a bit like classical mechanics, and microtonal (or 'scientific') theory more analogous to quantum mechanics? Do both views perhaps have merits, but neither all the answers? Just throwing around ideas here really with very little knowledge.
I will listen to those videos more, they do both seem almost 'normal', and certainly very clever.
I hope you find time to record another of your acoustic compositions soon too!
the harmony and dissonance is quite interesting. I'm hearing some kind of instrument subtly accompanying which sound like overtones. There is a lot of discipline here! I'm quite impressed.
That's very perceptive about the overtones! In fact, much of microtonal music seeks to evoke the higher and more unusual overtones, and sometimes capture the sounds of overtone series itself directly in its harmony.