Misconceptions about xenharmony
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=Igliashon's "Four Misconceptions About Xenharmony"= This page expresses the views of [[IgliashonJones|Igliashon Jones]], and may not be representative of the xenharmonic community in general. In fact many well-known microtonalists disagree, and that's kind of the point of this page. ==Misconception 1: "More is More"== When you begin in microtonality, usually the first thing that happens is you discover there's a huge variety of potential new consonant intervals, which are not represented in 12-TET. It's only natural to want to try out all these new intervals, but it's a mistake to begin with a humongous tuning system that approximates as many of these new intervals as possible. If you're accustomed to (and proficient in) 12-TET, you are going to have a mental melt-down if you go straight for something like 31-EDO or 41-EDO or triple-BP or something. The sheer variety of new possibilities will short-circuit your brain. The truth is that nothing you have learned in 12-TET has prepared you to juggle such a plethora of new harmonic possibilities, and you will probably try to do a million things at once--and this will sound terrible, and you will be disappointed, and you will probably lay your shiny new microtonal instrument aside and go back to what's familiar. It is better to begin small--absolutely no more than 24 notes if an equal temperament, and definitely no more than 12 if JI (since JI is so drastically different than equal temperament). You can always expand later, and you will find the novel sounds of smaller systems more accessible and more rewarding. I speak from experience, as someone who did begin immediately in 31-EDO, and have been retreating to smaller and smaller EDOs ever since, lamenting the loss of thousands of dollars and countless hours to tuning systems that looked good on paper but were disappointing and confusing to work with. If I could do it all over again, I would start at 13-EDO or 14-EDO and not read a word of theory until thoroughly accustomed to a single new system, and I've seen too many others make the same mistakes I have. Nobody who has begun with 31-EDO has been satisfied enough with it to stop their exploration right there; they either move on to JI, or down to the smaller EDOs, or up to the more accurate temperaments (41, 53, 72, etc.)...or they give up on microtonality all together. ==Misconception 2: "Consonance is Rare and Therefore Important"== Consonance is //not// rare at all. In fact it is almost inescapable. 5-limit consonance is somewhat rare, and tunings that offer good approximations of the full 13-limit are very rare, but neither the 5-limit nor the full 13-limit are necessary for consonance. Almost every EDO approximates some consonant subgroup of Just Intonation with the same or greater level of accuracy as 12-TET in the 5-limit, and with a little care, all of these EDOs can be made to sound as nice as 12. Yes, even 10, 11, 13, and 14-EDO. In fact, even 8-EDO does a fairly passable approximation of harmonics 10:11:12:13:14 as 0-150-300-450-600 cents; it's not //great//, but it's //awesome// for such a tiny EDO--no interval is off by more than 18 cents, which is more or less as good as 12-TET. No, consonance is ubiquitous, practically inescapable unless you insist on using ridiculous scales like 0-10-20-30-40-50-1200 cents. The strength and quality of consonance may vary from tuning to tuning, but there is //always// enough to serve effectively as contrast to the equally-ubiquitous dissonance, if only you take the time to understand what the contrast is and how to deal with it appropriately. Sometimes the most consonant harmonies look nothing like major and minor chords in 12-TET, so they take some searching sometimes. But they are //always// there to be found if you know how to look. ==Misconception 3: "Tunings Related to the Familiar are Easier to Learn"== Tunings related to the familiar, like 17, 19, 22, 26, 27, 29, and 31-EDO, are easy to learn--if what you want to learn is how to make familiar-sounding music! These tuning all support many of the same patterns and relationships that work in 12-TET, so at first blush it is dead-simple to apply those same patterns and make nice-sounding music. The problem is that this music will not sound a whole lot different than what you're used to. If you want to make music that doesn't just sound like a mild retuning of the same old diatonic cliches, these systems are all a greater challenge than less-familiar ones, because the strong pull of the familiar is difficult to escape from. If you are a guitarist, you will probably tune the open strings of a 19-tone guitar to something nearly identical to 12-TET standard, i.e. EADGBE. This means that all your old habits translate perfectly, and you can comfortably stay in the same muscle-memory ruts you've been digging into for years. Power chords, the minor pentatonic, the major scale, I-IV-V progressions...all of these work just the same. On the other hand, if you want to explore the less-familiar scales and temperaments supported by 19, you will find that none of them fits on the instrument as simply and intuitively as the familiar diatonic stuff. In fact, many of them are a headache to learn and will make you feel like you're 12 years old again picking up the guitar for the first time. And to be honest, they won't sound as good when you play them, because you won't be very good at playing them, and because (let's face it) those familiar chords are sweeter in sound than the new ones. So you will probably go back to writing familiar-sounding stuff, because it's more fun and sounds better--in other words, the instrument will reward you for staying in your rut and punish you for trying to break it. Compare this to picking up a 13-tone guitar. Everything is upside down and backwards from the word "go"; your B string is now tuned almost a tritone above the G, rather than a major 3rd. Familiar chord-shapes and scale-patterns don't work at all, so you can't and won't use them. You also have lots of new dissonances showing up where there used to be consonances, and vice-versa, and because of this you will get excellent and immediate "feedback" from the instrument as you try out new patterns. When you find a new consonant pattern, that sets off a "reward" response in your brain, as all of a sudden this dissonant and foreign new tuning favors you with a bit of sweetness. Your old habits will wither and die very quickly, and new patterns will all but force themselves upon you--even if you have no "theoretical" idea of what you're supposed to be trying to do!--and this is the precise definition of "easy to learn". ==Misconception 4: "Tunings Related to the Familiar are More Appealing to the 'Average' Listener"== You know what tuning is the //most// related to the familiar? 12-TET! I don't care what the psychoacousticians say, the vast majority of people accustomed to 12-TET will prefer the sound of 12-TET to tunings which approximate the same harmonies but in "better" tune. They will think the Just major third sounds flat and dull, they will think the semitones are too wide or the minor third is too sharp or the dominant 7th isn't tense enough to create an effective resolution. You don't need to take my word for it, go forth and test this! Play people two versions of a familiar piece of music (preferably NOT rendered using your PC's built-in general MIDI sound set), but don't tell them which is which, and ask them to rate which one they like best. I've done it, and I know what the answers are. The truth is, anyone not actively seeking out microtonal music will either not be able to hear the difference, or if they can hear it, they won't like it (unless it's "ethnically correct" microtonal music, like Indian or Arabic music). The only people looking for music in some variety of meantone or 12-tone well-temperaments are looking for the words "historically informed performance", aka the "authentic" or "early" music crowd. Those who //are// actively seeking out music that is called "microtonal" couldn't care //less// about smoother and more in-tune harmonies following the same familiar patterns. As Brian McLaren once said, "they are not shrinking violets". They want stuff that will make their brain do happy back-flips, stuff that will turn their ears inside-out. There are many ways to accomplish this, and they do not all involve chucking 5-limit harmony out the window (in fact, some of the best ways are completely //centered// on 5-limit harmony in some way or another), but the point is that if you pussy-foot around microtonality mumbling quietly about how it's "just like 12-TET, but more in tune", absolutely NO ONE will take you seriously. Not average listeners, not microtonal enthusiasts, not your fellow microtonal musicians, and most //certainly// not the average Guitar Center customer or university music student. The only way to make it as a microtonalist in this world is to go for broke, whether that means 13-EDO, 13-limit JI, 900 notes of Hemiennealimmal temperament, or somewhere in between. Pull that "familiar = good" stick out of your anus and do something //new//. Smack the world in the face with something they've never heard before, and at the very least you'll attract a handful of people who will enthusiastically beg for more. If you're good at it, you might even make an international name for yourself among the underground microtonal scene, and if you're REALLY good at it (and/or really LUCKY) you might actually break out of the sub-culture and find your way into the public-at-large.
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<html><head><title>misconceptions about xenharmony</title></head><body><!-- ws:start:WikiTextHeadingRule:0:<h1> --><h1 id="toc0"><a name="Igliashon's "Four Misconceptions About Xenharmony""></a><!-- ws:end:WikiTextHeadingRule:0 -->Igliashon's "Four Misconceptions About Xenharmony"</h1> <br /> This page expresses the views of <a class="wiki_link" href="/IgliashonJones">Igliashon Jones</a>, and may not be representative of the xenharmonic community in general. In fact many well-known microtonalists disagree, and that's kind of the point of this page.<br /> <br /> <!-- ws:start:WikiTextHeadingRule:2:<h2> --><h2 id="toc1"><a name="Igliashon's "Four Misconceptions About Xenharmony"-Misconception 1: "More is More""></a><!-- ws:end:WikiTextHeadingRule:2 -->Misconception 1: "More is More"</h2> <br /> When you begin in microtonality, usually the first thing that happens is you discover there's a huge variety of potential new consonant intervals, which are not represented in 12-TET. It's only natural to want to try out all these new intervals, but it's a mistake to begin with a humongous tuning system that approximates as many of these new intervals as possible. If you're accustomed to (and proficient in) 12-TET, you are going to have a mental melt-down if you go straight for something like 31-EDO or 41-EDO or triple-BP or something. The sheer variety of new possibilities will short-circuit your brain. The truth is that nothing you have learned in 12-TET has prepared you to juggle such a plethora of new harmonic possibilities, and you will probably try to do a million things at once--and this will sound terrible, and you will be disappointed, and you will probably lay your shiny new microtonal instrument aside and go back to what's familiar. It is better to begin small--absolutely no more than 24 notes if an equal temperament, and definitely no more than 12 if JI (since JI is so drastically different than equal temperament). You can always expand later, and you will find the novel sounds of smaller systems more accessible and more rewarding. I speak from experience, as someone who did begin immediately in 31-EDO, and have been retreating to smaller and smaller EDOs ever since, lamenting the loss of thousands of dollars and countless hours to tuning systems that looked good on paper but were disappointing and confusing to work with. If I could do it all over again, I would start at 13-EDO or 14-EDO and not read a word of theory until thoroughly accustomed to a single new system, and I've seen too many others make the same mistakes I have. Nobody who has begun with 31-EDO has been satisfied enough with it to stop their exploration right there; they either move on to JI, or down to the smaller EDOs, or up to the more accurate temperaments (41, 53, 72, etc.)...or they give up on microtonality all together.<br /> <br /> <!-- ws:start:WikiTextHeadingRule:4:<h2> --><h2 id="toc2"><a name="Igliashon's "Four Misconceptions About Xenharmony"-Misconception 2: "Consonance is Rare and Therefore Important""></a><!-- ws:end:WikiTextHeadingRule:4 -->Misconception 2: "Consonance is Rare and Therefore Important"</h2> <br /> Consonance is <em>not</em> rare at all. In fact it is almost inescapable. 5-limit consonance is somewhat rare, and tunings that offer good approximations of the full 13-limit are very rare, but neither the 5-limit nor the full 13-limit are necessary for consonance. Almost every EDO approximates some consonant subgroup of Just Intonation with the same or greater level of accuracy as 12-TET in the 5-limit, and with a little care, all of these EDOs can be made to sound as nice as 12. Yes, even 10, 11, 13, and 14-EDO. In fact, even 8-EDO does a fairly passable approximation of harmonics 10:11:12:13:14 as 0-150-300-450-600 cents; it's not <em>great</em>, but it's <em>awesome</em> for such a tiny EDO--no interval is off by more than 18 cents, which is more or less as good as 12-TET.<br /> <br /> No, consonance is ubiquitous, practically inescapable unless you insist on using ridiculous scales like 0-10-20-30-40-50-1200 cents. The strength and quality of consonance may vary from tuning to tuning, but there is <em>always</em> enough to serve effectively as contrast to the equally-ubiquitous dissonance, if only you take the time to understand what the contrast is and how to deal with it appropriately. Sometimes the most consonant harmonies look nothing like major and minor chords in 12-TET, so they take some searching sometimes. But they are <em>always</em> there to be found if you know how to look.<br /> <br /> <!-- ws:start:WikiTextHeadingRule:6:<h2> --><h2 id="toc3"><a name="Igliashon's "Four Misconceptions About Xenharmony"-Misconception 3: "Tunings Related to the Familiar are Easier to Learn""></a><!-- ws:end:WikiTextHeadingRule:6 -->Misconception 3: "Tunings Related to the Familiar are Easier to Learn"</h2> <br /> Tunings related to the familiar, like 17, 19, 22, 26, 27, 29, and 31-EDO, are easy to learn--if what you want to learn is how to make familiar-sounding music! These tuning all support many of the same patterns and relationships that work in 12-TET, so at first blush it is dead-simple to apply those same patterns and make nice-sounding music. The problem is that this music will not sound a whole lot different than what you're used to. If you want to make music that doesn't just sound like a mild retuning of the same old diatonic cliches, these systems are all a greater challenge than less-familiar ones, because the strong pull of the familiar is difficult to escape from. If you are a guitarist, you will probably tune the open strings of a 19-tone guitar to something nearly identical to 12-TET standard, i.e. EADGBE. This means that all your old habits translate perfectly, and you can comfortably stay in the same muscle-memory ruts you've been digging into for years. Power chords, the minor pentatonic, the major scale, I-IV-V progressions...all of these work just the same. On the other hand, if you want to explore the less-familiar scales and temperaments supported by 19, you will find that none of them fits on the instrument as simply and intuitively as the familiar diatonic stuff. In fact, many of them are a headache to learn and will make you feel like you're 12 years old again picking up the guitar for the first time. And to be honest, they won't sound as good when you play them, because you won't be very good at playing them, and because (let's face it) those familiar chords are sweeter in sound than the new ones. So you will probably go back to writing familiar-sounding stuff, because it's more fun and sounds better--in other words, the instrument will reward you for staying in your rut and punish you for trying to break it.<br /> <br /> Compare this to picking up a 13-tone guitar. Everything is upside down and backwards from the word "go"; your B string is now tuned almost a tritone above the G, rather than a major 3rd. Familiar chord-shapes and scale-patterns don't work at all, so you can't and won't use them. You also have lots of new dissonances showing up where there used to be consonances, and vice-versa, and because of this you will get excellent and immediate "feedback" from the instrument as you try out new patterns. When you find a new consonant pattern, that sets off a "reward" response in your brain, as all of a sudden this dissonant and foreign new tuning favors you with a bit of sweetness. Your old habits will wither and die very quickly, and new patterns will all but force themselves upon you--even if you have no "theoretical" idea of what you're supposed to be trying to do!--and this is the precise definition of "easy to learn".<br /> <br /> <!-- ws:start:WikiTextHeadingRule:8:<h2> --><h2 id="toc4"><a name="Igliashon's "Four Misconceptions About Xenharmony"-Misconception 4: "Tunings Related to the Familiar are More Appealing to the 'Average' Listener""></a><!-- ws:end:WikiTextHeadingRule:8 -->Misconception 4: "Tunings Related to the Familiar are More Appealing to the 'Average' Listener"</h2> <br /> You know what tuning is the <em>most</em> related to the familiar? 12-TET! I don't care what the psychoacousticians say, the vast majority of people accustomed to 12-TET will prefer the sound of 12-TET to tunings which approximate the same harmonies but in "better" tune. They will think the Just major third sounds flat and dull, they will think the semitones are too wide or the minor third is too sharp or the dominant 7th isn't tense enough to create an effective resolution. You don't need to take my word for it, go forth and test this! Play people two versions of a familiar piece of music (preferably NOT rendered using your PC's built-in general MIDI sound set), but don't tell them which is which, and ask them to rate which one they like best. I've done it, and I know what the answers are.<br /> <br /> The truth is, anyone not actively seeking out microtonal music will either not be able to hear the difference, or if they can hear it, they won't like it (unless it's "ethnically correct" microtonal music, like Indian or Arabic music). The only people looking for music in some variety of meantone or 12-tone well-temperaments are looking for the words "historically informed performance", aka the "authentic" or "early" music crowd. Those who <em>are</em> actively seeking out music that is called "microtonal" couldn't care <em>less</em> about smoother and more in-tune harmonies following the same familiar patterns. As Brian McLaren once said, "they are not shrinking violets". They want stuff that will make their brain do happy back-flips, stuff that will turn their ears inside-out. There are many ways to accomplish this, and they do not all involve chucking 5-limit harmony out the window (in fact, some of the best ways are completely <em>centered</em> on 5-limit harmony in some way or another), but the point is that if you pussy-foot around microtonality mumbling quietly about how it's "just like 12-TET, but more in tune", absolutely NO ONE will take you seriously. Not average listeners, not microtonal enthusiasts, not your fellow microtonal musicians, and most <em>certainly</em> not the average Guitar Center customer or university music student. The only way to make it as a microtonalist in this world is to go for broke, whether that means 13-EDO, 13-limit JI, 900 notes of Hemiennealimmal temperament, or somewhere in between. Pull that "familiar = good" stick out of your anus and do something <em>new</em>. Smack the world in the face with something they've never heard before, and at the very least you'll attract a handful of people who will enthusiastically beg for more. If you're good at it, you might even make an international name for yourself among the underground microtonal scene, and if you're REALLY good at it (and/or really LUCKY) you might actually break out of the sub-culture and find your way into the public-at-large.</body></html>