User:Tristanbay

I'm Tristan Bay, an electronic musician in Portland, Oregon. I've been writing music for well over a decade now (since I was a kid), but I only started getting into microtonality seriously in 2021. I'm not really an expert in anything musical, but often know more or less what I'm doing.

Listen to my music here:
On YouTube
On Newgrounds

While I find interest in just intonation, I especially like the idea of using EDOs in practice. In my opinion, equally dividing the octave by the simplest ratio greater than a unison strikes a nice balance between simplicity and versatility in practice. Here are my favorite EDOs above 12 and why I like them in particular.

31edo kalimba made by me

My classical Kite guitar (Cordoba C5)

My soprano Harmony ukulele with a 3D printed 17edo fretboard

In summer 2023, I made a 31edo kalimba. Around the same time, Kite Giedraitis and I made an even larger 41edo kalimba with a Kite guitar inspired key layout. Speaking of Kite guitar, I also have one of those. I actually have pretty much no formal guitar training and hadn't gotten into guitar seriously (still kind of haven't since I'm in school and I don't know of anyone teaching Kite guitar professionally) but I do play it and practice sometimes.

My prototype TS41 MIDI keyboard with open source firmware

I've been working on a couple of MIDI keyboard designs: the TS41 (which I have a fully working prototype of and uses 1 tactile switch per key) and a design with force-sensitive keys.

I'm also interested in making microtonal software and other microtonal hardware (I'm majoring in computer science at school so hopefully I'll get good at writing code and building programs sometime in the not-too-distant future).

It's still a work-in-progress, but my website is tristanbay.com. There are links to my other pages/social media at the top of the home page.

Stuff I've named

Musical Intervals

• 41067/40960, the cheensma
• 540000/539539, the sweswetisma
• 4459/4455, the tristanisma
• [86 -44 -7⟩, the heptacot comma
• 4004001/4004000, the odyssey comma
• 448630/447051, the junebug comma
• 140625/140608, the catasma
• [-169 96 6⟩, the gariatom
• 13640319/13631488, the neguschisma
• 160083/160000, the seascape comma
• 2460375/2458624, the breeze comma (a.k.a. the sesquiquartisma)
• 5120/5103, the aberschisma (a.k.a. the hemifamity comma or 5/7-kleisma)
• 784/783, the spoogalactic comma (a.k.a. the biminorisma)
• 1\78005, the normal atom

Temperaments

• Hilarity, in the full 5-, 7-, 11-, and 13-limits
• Obscenity, in the 2.3.7 subgroup
• Profanity, in the 2.3.11 subgroup
• Poe, in the full 7-limit
• Permafrost, a 13-limit extension of Pentafrost
• Pentafrost, in the full 11- and 13-limit
• Heptacot, in the full 5-limit, tempering out the heptacot comma
• Purpleheart, in the 2.3.7 subgroup, tempering out 2187/2048

Scales I've found

• Aberrismic Neopersian (17-tone 2.3.7.13 subgroup JI)
• Zolugothic (17-tone 2.3.7.11 subgroup JI)
• Zothogothic (17-tone 2.3.7.13 subgroup JI)
• Walkie (17-tone 2.3.5.13 subgroup JI)
• Compdye (5L7m12s ternary aberrismic scale pattern)
• Cuttlefish (24-tone 13-limit JI)
• Boston (72-tone 11-limit JI with minimal step variety)
• Platonic (2L8m7s ternary aberrismic scale pattern)
• Blackdyasem (19-tone 7-limit JI)
• Monorail (29-tone 7-limit JI)
• Beach cruiser (17-tone 13-limit superset of Bicycle)
• A 7-limit well temperament I came up with
• A 41-note scale inspired by the classic 22 shrutis in Hindi music theory
• The just intonation scale I used in my track Junp

Concepts I've thought of

• Odd Prime Sum Limits (OPSLs)

Other stuff of mine

• A note name system that uses 12 nominals (letters) instead of 7
• Myritone, a tuning file format designed to be a successor to the Scala format
• Some short microtonal-related scripts written in C