User:ArrowHead294

Hi! I'm primarily a music theorist and singer nowadays, though most of my musical training is in classical piano and cello.

My musical experience

Piano and keyboard: 2004–2017 (K–12), 2022–present

Cello: 2009–2017 (Grades 5–12)

Voice: 2020–present

Voice type: Baritone / bass-baritone

Chest voice: E♭2 to E4 (77–340 Hz)

Can go down to D2 (72–74 Hz) if needed

Can belt up to ~G4 (390–400 Hz), A♭4 (415–425 Hz) on occasion

Mixed voice: C4–C5 (260–540 Hz)

Falsetto and head voice: D4 to E♭5 (290–630 Hz)

Can reach E5 (655–665 Hz) and F5 (695–705 Hz)

I've also been told I have "perfect pitch" since I acquired the ability to recognise notes (in A = 440 Hz and 12edo) from a young age, though I have grown increasingly disdainful towards the terms "perfect pitch" and "absolute pitch" since late 2022 (the start of my last term of college) since it locked me into 12edo with A = 440 Hz and anything else sounded "wrong" to me. This is even more true nowadays since I now prefer other tunings over 12edo in a lot of cases.

Favourite tunings within Western music

Most Western musicians only know 12edo, and my musical background is mainly classical, so my main interests have been in Pythagorean and meantone. I'm quite active in church despite being non-religious, and most of the alternative tunings I introduce to others are flatter-than-12 meantones as they're relatively easy to get into.

I've known about quarter tones (24edo) since I was very young. I've even dabbled around with it before 2022, and used its absolute frequencies with A = 440 Hz as a way to compare just intonation and equal temperament, though for most of my life that was the only microtonal tuning I knew about. Since late 2022, I've also gotten into sixth tones (36edo) for exploring septimal harmonies.

31edo is the first alternative tuning I learned about which helped me break out of 12-TET's walled garden, and Sevish's song Better Left Unanswered is the first microtonal work I've ever heard that wasn't in standard quarter tones. I learned about it mainly after exploring quarter-comma meantone in classical music, and I think it's the most practical alternate tuning for most Western musicians to get into. It has excellent 7-limit and 11-limit harmonies as well (even better than 36edo), so it could also be useful for blues and jazz.

This was followed by 19edo, after hearing Sunsrise by Supahstar Saga. 19 has its unique quirks that make it a good tuning for a lot of Western music, though I think its sound is best suited to songs with largely pentatonic melodies since the diatonic scale sounds quite loose to me. Augmented and diminished chords sound very weird, though, even more jarring than 31.

However, 43edo has since won me over as my favourite all-around tuning for most modern Western music (at least that which doesn't require 12edo's enharmonic equivalences). The way major and minor thirds sound in 43 is much more sonorous than in 12, and extended harmonies such as augmented and diminished chords sound much more balanced than in 19 and 31. Additionally, most of the just intervals involving the 7th, and 11th, and 13th harmonics have consistent approximations in 43 equal.

Beyond traditional Western music

For xenharmony and music beyond meantone, I've been mainly interested in 27edo as a Superpyth system. I prefer it to 22edo mainly because 22's 5-limit major and minor thirds sound jarring to me, and will likely sound jarring to most others as well. It also supports Tetracot, which is another non-traditional temperament that I've gotten into recently.