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Microtonal music is music using microtones -- intervals of less than a semitone, or as Charles Ives put it, the "notes between the cracks" of the piano. The term is also used to refer to any music whose tuning is not based on semitones, such as western just intonation, Indonesian gamelan music and Indian classical music. An alternative term explicitly covering such possibilities is xenharmonic music.
The Italian Renaissance composer and theorist Nicola Vicentino (1511-1576) [1] (http://www.hoasm.org/IVO/Vicentino.html) experimented with microintervals and built for example a keyboard with 36 keys to the octave, known as the arcicembalo. 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, 43, 72 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.
Pioneers of modern Western microtonal music include:
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).
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. A worthwhile song is "Damaged II," from 1981's Damaged LP -- a live-in-studio recording in which intentional use of quarter- and eighth-steps suggests the guitar as in danger of detonation. Another is the solo of "Rise Above," from the same album, which ends with a phrase played sharp, to similar effect.
See also
Source
- 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
Discussion of tuning theory and microtonal music
Theory pages
Discography
Microtonal music on the web
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