Whynotmicrotonality: Difference between revisions

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I've seen at least a few people make the distinct claim that strange new tunings require a period of adjustment before they start to sound "natural". While I did find it to be the case that the sound of new tunings can become less bothersome with repeated exposure, no amount of immersion in microtonal tunings ever "cured me" of my 12-TET perceptual categories. No matter how foreign the harmonies or how unlike the diatonic scale, no amount of time ever got me to stop hearing things as just variations on the musical categories I grew up with. It was a constant and futile struggle on my part to keep these 12-TET categories from informing my music, but I was desperately committed to it. For at least two solid years, I played and composed only microtonal music--I didn't dare write or play in 12-TET, for fear it would forever prevent me from realizing my full xenharmonic potential.  

The only problem was, any time I succeeded in making music that sounded extremely unlike 12-TET--for instance, using a bunch of quarter-tones in a melody, or playing big near-Just otonal chords--I hated it. My favorite microtonal music, both among my own compositions and those of others, was always the stuff that sounded more or less like something that could be pulled off in 12. When I realized that, I was pretty much forced to admit to myself that I was a hypocrite, and that I was also a complete fool to try to constantly thwart my own taste through my own compositions (and an even bigger fool for being mad at myself for failing at that!).  

==Mistake #2: Not Knowing What I Actually Wanted in a Tuning==

The world of tuning theory is riddled with dogma and proselytization, as well as various conflicting ideologies that are constantly vying for attention. Neophytes like I once was are easily taken in. This is a shame, because people--including myself--can be taken in before they have a chance to figure anything out for themselves, and can end up wasting //years// learning about things that are completely irrelevant to their approach to music-making. Much discussion is devoted to making various tuning theories more accessible, but little discussion is devoted to figuring out when theories are and are not relevant in the process of making actual music, or what kinds of music for which they might be relevant at all.

 

My mistake was being taken in by a lot of theoretical ideas that proved not to be relevant or useful, simply because I made little to no attempt in the beginning to critically assess whether these ideas were useful enough to me to be worth learning. I entered the tuning world as a //tabula rasa,// when what I should have done was figured out first and foremost what it was in 12-TET that I was and was not satisfied with, and what I hoped to get out of alternative tunings in the first place. Perhaps this was an impossible mistake to avoid at the time; this wiki did not exist, and the community was much smaller and much less diverse (with considerably fewer practicing musicians in it, and particularly fewer rock guitarists like myself), so who could even tell me what possibilities were engendered by alternative tunings? Nevertheless, if I had had clearer goals in mind and the ability to critically asses the relevance of various theories to my personal musical goals, I could have narrowed the field of potential tunings by a good bit, and saved myself a lot of fruitless floundering.

The problem was a sort of "grass is always greener" mindset: I could never stick with one tuning for very long, because there was always another shiny new tuning around the corner whispering promises of theoretical superiority in some new aspect. Because I always chose tunings based on theoretical considerations alone, inevitably those theoretical considerations came to dominate my compositional focus. And if I //didn't// make the theory come through clear enough in the composition--if it was too artistically "free", for example--I considered it a failure, rather than a success.  

Thus, my microtonal corpus consists almost entirely of brief forays into a plethora of different tunings, each one focused on some particular scale or form of harmony or some other abstract theoretical principle. Which is precisely why I've felt the need to disown my microtonal corpus, or at least distance myself from it. Regardless of what anyone may think of it, to me it is not art. It is not an expression of my self.  

12-TET-bashing used to be a lot more common in the community than it seems to be these days, which is an encouraging sign, but for a long time I was as vehement an anti-12 crusader as anyone. I used to decry 12-TET as being hackneyed, cliched, boring, stifling, washed-up, limiting, and superficial. That was stupid. 12-TET is an excellent tuning, and all the microtonal theory more or less agrees. For some people it may not be the //best//, and there are probably arguments to be made that it should share some space with a few other good tunings. But for me, it really is the holy grail. It's easy to navigate because it divides into more equal parts than any other ET less than double its size--12 has factors of 2, 3, 4, and 6. The fact that it also has very acceptable 5-limit harmony and can at least imply 7- and 9-limit harmony (to say nothing of its good representations of ratios of 15, 17, and 19, which add to its harmonic versatility) is extremely remarkable, bordering on miraculous. It also supports more of the best 5-limit temperaments than its nearest competitors of 15, 19, and 22: meantone, schismatic, srutal, injera, diminished, augmented, ripple, and passion. It's incredible, truly incredible, that such a simple equal temperament could be so good.  

I've seen at least a few people make the distinct claim that strange new tunings require a period of adjustment before they start to sound &amp;quot;natural&amp;quot;. While I did find it to be the case that the sound of new tunings can become less bothersome with repeated exposure, no amount of immersion in microtonal tunings ever &amp;quot;cured me&amp;quot; of my 12-TET perceptual categories. No matter how foreign the harmonies or how unlike the diatonic scale, no amount of time ever got me to stop hearing things as just variations on the musical categories I grew up with. It was a constant and futile struggle on my part to keep these 12-TET categories from informing my music, but I was desperately committed to it. For at least two solid years, I played and composed only microtonal music--I didn't dare write or play in 12-TET, for fear it would forever prevent me from realizing my full xenharmonic potential. &lt;br /&gt;

The only problem was, any time I succeeded in making music that sounded extremely unlike 12-TET--for instance, using a bunch of quarter-tones in a melody, or playing big near-Just otonal chords--I hated it. My favorite microtonal music, both among my own compositions and those of others, was always the stuff that sounded more or less like something that could be pulled off in 12. When I realized that, I was pretty much forced to admit to myself that I was a hypocrite, and that I was also a complete fool to try to constantly thwart my own taste through my own compositions (and an even bigger fool for being mad at myself for failing at that!). &lt;br /&gt;

&lt;!-- ws:start:WikiTextHeadingRule:4:&amp;lt;h2&amp;gt; --&gt;&lt;h2 id="toc2"&gt;&lt;a name="Why NOT Microtonality: The Trials and Tribulations of My Xenharmonic Life-Mistake #2: Not Knowing What I Actually Wanted in a Tuning"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;!-- ws:end:WikiTextHeadingRule:4 --&gt;Mistake #2: Not Knowing What I Actually Wanted in a Tuning&lt;/h2&gt;

The world of tuning theory is riddled with dogma and proselytization, as well as various conflicting ideologies that are constantly vying for attention. Neophytes like I once was are easily taken in. This is a shame, because people--including myself--can be taken in before they have a chance to figure anything out for themselves, and can end up wasting &lt;em&gt;years&lt;/em&gt; learning about things that are completely irrelevant to their approach to music-making. Much discussion is devoted to making various tuning theories more accessible, but little discussion is devoted to figuring out when theories are and are not relevant in the process of making actual music, or what kinds of music for which they might be relevant at all. &lt;br /&gt;

My mistake was being taken in by a lot of theoretical ideas that proved not to be relevant or useful, simply because I made little to no attempt in the beginning to critically assess whether these ideas were useful enough to me to be worth learning. I entered the tuning world as a &lt;em&gt;tabula rasa,&lt;/em&gt; when what I should have done was figured out first and foremost what it was in 12-TET that I was and was not satisfied with, and what I hoped to get out of alternative tunings in the first place. Perhaps this was an impossible mistake to avoid at the time; this wiki did not exist, and the community was much smaller and much less diverse (with considerably fewer practicing musicians in it, and particularly fewer rock guitarists like myself), so who could even tell me what possibilities were engendered by alternative tunings? Nevertheless, if I had had clearer goals in mind and the ability to critically asses the relevance of various theories to my personal musical goals, I could have narrowed the field of potential tunings by a good bit, and saved myself a lot of fruitless floundering.&lt;br /&gt;

The problem was a sort of &amp;quot;grass is always greener&amp;quot; mindset: I could never stick with one tuning for very long, because there was always another shiny new tuning around the corner whispering promises of theoretical superiority in some new aspect. Because I always chose tunings based on theoretical considerations alone, inevitably those theoretical considerations came to dominate my compositional focus. And if I &lt;em&gt;didn't&lt;/em&gt; make the theory come through clear enough in the composition--if it was too artistically &amp;quot;free&amp;quot;, for example--I considered it a failure, rather than a success. &lt;br /&gt;

Thus, my microtonal corpus consists almost entirely of brief forays into a plethora of different tunings, each one focused on some particular scale or form of harmony or some other abstract theoretical principle. Which is precisely why I've felt the need to disown my microtonal corpus, or at least distance myself from it. Regardless of what anyone may think of it, to me it is not art. It is not an expression of my self. &lt;br /&gt;

12-TET-bashing used to be a lot more common in the community than it seems to be these days, which is an encouraging sign, but for a long time I was as vehement an anti-12 crusader as anyone. I used to decry 12-TET as being hackneyed, cliched, boring, stifling, washed-up, limiting, and superficial. That was stupid. 12-TET is an excellent tuning, and all the microtonal theory more or less agrees. For some people it may not be the &lt;em&gt;best&lt;/em&gt;, and there are probably arguments to be made that it should share some space with a few other good tunings. But for me, it really is the holy grail. It's easy to navigate because it divides into more equal parts than any other ET less than double its size--12 has factors of 2, 3, 4, and 6. The fact that it also has very acceptable 5-limit harmony and can at least imply 7- and 9-limit harmony (to say nothing of its good representations of ratios of 15, 17, and 19, which add to its harmonic versatility) is extremely remarkable, bordering on miraculous. It also supports more of the best 5-limit temperaments than its nearest competitors of 15, 19, and 22: meantone, schismatic, srutal, injera, diminished, augmented, ripple, and passion. It's incredible, truly incredible, that such a simple equal temperament could be so good. &lt;br /&gt;