As the title says. New to microtonal stuff. I know Bohlen Pierce has the tritave as equave and avoids the octaves as part of it. But what if the octave is the generator? This effectively reverses the scale building procedure we normally use in music, which have the octave as equave and the fifth (i.e. the octave-reduced twelfth/tritave) as the generator. What kind of MOS scales can we get? Would it be interesting?

I found a cool mixolydian mode with an Eastern vibe, using Just Intonation ratios. Initially, I found a version in 24edo — it’s a mixolydian mode where the second degree is lowered by a quarter tone, and the fourth and sixth degrees are raised. The genre is inspired by Tigran Hamsyan.

I am replacing the original guitar vocal video with one that has bass, drums, and enhanced guitar / overall mastering

Still in Japanese.

Variations on the "Gquiet Sailboat" theme. Each track is a variation, hence the title.

Music for synthesizers, involving the piano each time, interweaving with unfolding synthesizers.

From the album ''Different perspectives on similar cycles''

Electronic Modules, piano and synthesizers together for a dreamy and relaxing album of ambient and experimental electronic music:)

A double quartet for organ, the Amati viola and synthesizers who accompany the beautiful voice of ancient Celtic chant with synthesizers and percussion.

I am a guitar beginner, and a math nerd. Someday I hope to have a guitar made to my own tuning concept. What is the best way to tell a luthier where I want the frets?

If I literally specify the distances from the bridge in millimetres, do I correct somehow for the tension inflicted by a finger?

Or can I say “80.08 cents, 114.42 cents, 194.50 cents, 228.84 cents” and so on?

How much precision is possible and appropriate?

I want to get my friend a microtonal guitar, so I’m getting a cheap weird electric, and I’m going to pay a luthier to modify it.

I made a Reddit post asking if I should go for the Angine de Potrine style fretboard with all the frets, or the king gizz style with only a few frets added.

But on that post, someone recommended removing the frets entirely instead.

I know he’d enjoy a fretless guitar because he likes sliding around the fretboard, but for the purpose of microtonality, is fretless a good idea? Or is it very hard to hit those notes on a fretless guitar? He’s got a good ear if that helps, he’s a great guitarist.

If you think fretless isn’t a great option, feel free to weigh in on my previous question too.

https://heji-calculator.netlify.app/

I built a small browser tool for working with Helmholtz-Ellis (HEJI) just intonation notation and wanted to share it here! I'm open to all suggestions :D

using Chase Bliss Mood version 1 for microlooping

I love this recording. And it's played by Erkan Oğur, a master of the fretless guitar.

Thanks.

I've been working on a constructed language and culture for a while now. So I wondered what musical tradition they could have, one that is unique but still sounds pleasant and makes sense. From there I went to the idea of having musical scales that consist of sub-scales. Sucht that one would only play one sub-scale at each time, shifting between them. But overall forming a common shape. Think of 12-EDO and different keys, but more intentional and structured.

Now I have to say that I'm not a musician, just dabbling into this for fun. But with the help of software (written by AI) we can do evolutionary search to find good ji scales (good according to whatever metric one puts into it). Anyway, tinkering with it, I found some things that seem like they could work as intended.

Here is the Just Intonation Scale Finder. It takes some practice to use, but the evolutionary algorithm is good enough to find the best results for whatever constraints one sets, at least for a small numbers of notes (~ up to 12).

The simplest example is taking the shape of an octahedron. The 6 vertices become 6 notes, the 8 faces become chords, each one with three neighbors of which it shares two notes each. One then play in one chord at a time and can transition between them. What is not played are the three axis of opposing notes. They are never played simultaneously.

! octahedron
! Don't play the pairs 16/15 & 6/5, 4/3 & 8/5, 16/9 & 2/1
16/15
6/5
4/3
8/5
16/9
2/1

Another interesting structure is the Fano plane. 7 notes in 7 chords such that any two notes only occur in one chord. This means, picking two notes already implies the third.

! fano plane
! valid chords:
! 1/1, 4/3, 8/5
! 6/5, 3/2, 8/5
! 4/3, 3/2, 16/9
! 16/15, 8/5, 16/9
! 1/1, 16/15, 3/2
! 16/15, 6/5, 4/3
! 1/1, 6/5, 16/9
16/15
6/5
4/3
3/2
8/5
16/9
2/1

It just happens that the results I found for these two share several notes.

Using a cube gives 8 notes and 6 faces with 4 notes each. But we can also go one dimension up and look at the 4D version of the octahedron, which is called the 16-cell. It works the same as the octahedron, except with 8 notes and 4 pairs removed. And somehow I got the same result for both cube and 16-cell, which also includes the previous examples:

! 16-cell including octahedron
! also includes fano plane
! For 16-cell mode don't play the pairs 16/15 & 6/5, 4/3 & 64/45, 3/2 & 8/5, 16/9 & 2/1
! For cube mode don't play the pairs 3/2 & 16/5, 6/5 & 4/3, 16/9 & 8/5, 64/45 & 2/1
16/15
6/5
4/3
64/45
3/2
8/5
16/9
2/1

This means with this scale, one can play in different "modes", i.e. geometric shapes, ignoring certain combinations of notes depending on which mode one uses. I played around enough with some melodies and chord progressions to realize that it can work in this way. I'm just don't have the skills to write songs so I'll leave it at that.

The tool includes some more pre-defined configurations, like the icosahedron, dodecahedron and 24-cell, but it is also possible to write your own. For example to find a 12 note scale that includes 8 sub scales overlapping with 4 notes each, the definition is just one number for each note, one line for each sub-scale:

0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7
4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11
8  9 10 11  0  1  2  3

Someone with more experience probably could come up with more interesting use cases. For example, when you realize that for a song in 12 EDO you only use a limited number of chords, then you can define them in a file and find a ji scale optimized for this particular arrangement.

Anyway, for my use case "finding a scale for the fictitious culture", the result is sufficient and I probably won't do much more with it (except tuning my kalimba to the above scale).

white airships by me. it is microtonal and it contains mathcorey rhythms. i'm open to feedback and i very much appreciate it; enjoy (::

Check out this video I just made! I took 41:37 and doubled its size recursively 50 times and reduced the excess octaves to fold the resulting tones into one octave. Then I took each run and detuned my guitar to produce a sort of chord. I played through all 50 tones, cluster by cluster in a meditative/expressive manner. I used a formula I created to output the total offset from the tonic in cents, then used the tuning on my Casio keyboard to produce the tone for my guitar to be tuned to.

Please listed and give me your feedback. How did the journey feel? What did it make you think of?