'1/4 Tone Experiment #2' - New Original Music! - Electronic/Microtonal Experiment + Walkthrough!

grapthar (74)in #music • 6 years ago

So, like the song idea I shared

yesterday, this is another attempt (my second so far) at using quarter tones. This is definitely much more of a song than yesterday's, that was sort of just a little riff. This builds up a bit, at one point using 3 instruments playing in quarter tone tuning, which I didn't make too complex on purpose... I still am getting used to having 22 notes to choose from haha, it makes you try really basic things to get a grip of it all. I made a little graphic here so you can see what notes are the quarter sharps when I play this on my midi keyboard. They are marked with a . after the note (IE: C. or D#.), and are all in green. All red notes are our normal, western twelve tones.

Listen to 1/4 Tone Experiment #2 here.

The song begins with Track 1

with a progression I had initially been writing for this song, but wound up disliking it, so it just became a weird little fade in thing, then we get into the real song. 1/4 Tone 2 is the next track that plays, and is our main bass notes. This instrument is super heavy and dark, so with the quarter tone progression, it makes things really, really ominous. It plays a C, CquarterSharp, and D#. Everything else builds around that.

1/4 Tone 2, described above.

Listen to 1/4 Tone Experiment #2 here.

1/4 Tone 1, described below.

The next Track is 1/4 Tone 1,

which provides a harmony layer. I really like how this turned out, it is definitely dissonance, but has a pretty reasonable resolve to it all too. Check out the screenshot above and see if you can figure out the names of the notes (including quarter sharps and flats). C2 and C4 are C's, so that gives you a point of reference.

Listen to 1/4 Tone Experiment #2 here.

Track 8 (pictured as 8 MIDI)

is a piano riff that ALSO is using some quarter tones, particularly as passing tones to get a crazy bending sort of melody. I think this worked nicely with the drums, gives it a really dark, horror-sort of feeling. Speaking of drums, Track 10 has our beat, which is made up of various Timbale samples. I like the sort of tribal or even orchestral feeling of the low timbale, it seemed to fit nicely by inserting a solid rhythm amidst all the tonal chaos.