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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Professor Wagstaff)
Newsgroups: net.music.classical,net.music.synth
Subject: Re: Microtonal music questions
Message-ID: <662@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 11-Mar-85 21:26:18 EST
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.662
Posted: Mon Mar 11 21:26:18 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 12-Mar-85 22:47:16 EST
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> Over the last couple of months I've been hearing more and more "microtonal"
> music.  (Microtonal music under anyone's definition is well-tempered to *n*
> parts to an octave, where for some  n>12  and for others simply n!=12.)
> Does anyone know of albums of microtonal music in existance?  Specific
> artists to look out for? Which microtonal scales won't offend my western
> ears? Which will?  Which are vaguely "major"? "Minor"?  Are there other
> interesting questions I should be asking about microtonal music?
> 		Doug Lewan (...!ihnp4!)ahuta!sam

A good chunk of Charles Ives' music uses quarter-tones, utilizing the notes
between the twelve notes (24 notes per octave).  Apparently he and his
family were taught this scaling in singing lessons from his father.  (Ives
was the first yuppie composer, being a successful accountant by day and a
composer only in his spare time.)

Other attempts at microtonal music involved scales of much more bizarre
temperaments.  A professor of mine (Joel Mandelbaum at Queens College) wrote
his thesis on 19-note temperament and did further work into 31-note
temperament.  You may ask:  why such bizarre numbers?  First, twelve is a
nearly perfect number considering its size:  2, 3, 4, and 6 go into it
evenly, and thus the octave can be equally divided in any number of ways.
One notices that the equal divisions of the octave seem to have come into
vogue only in most recent memory (late 19th century) in a major way, because
they evolved around a base of tonality:  it is those equal divisions (tritone,
augmented triad, diminished seventh, and whole tone scale as obtained by
dividing by 2, 3, 4, and 6) that are the LEAST tonal, the least associated
with a given key, and thus most used by experimenters in ambiguous tonal
coloration like Debussy.  The normal "tonalities" (or "keys") are based on
UNequal divisions of the octave based on different points of origin (root of
major scale and major triad).  Using a PRIME number as the dividing factor
might be thought to enable newer and richer types of tonalities, utilizing
newer and more interesting divisions of the octave, with the possibility of
still remaining close to a sense of "western" tonality in sound.  Note that
given a prime number, there is NO way to evenly divide the octave (except the
unison and the octave itself).

The other reason had to with a problem associated with tempered scales:
a tempered interval does not accurately represent a natural interval.  For
instance a perfect fifth, in which the two notes have a frequency ratio of
3:2, is tuned slightly differently to this ratio in a tempered scale, much
to the offense of some people's ears.  The 19- and 31- note temperaments,
while still a compromise, offer a fifth (and other intervals) much closer
to the natural interval.

Motorola made an instrument called the Scalatron which used a bizarre
keyboard with an unusual layout to provide for 31-tone temperament.  The color
scheme was enough to put you in knots.  Does anyone else remember it?