stray thoughts

Just some stray thoughts: is a "microtone" an interval at all? Isn't it
mainly thought of as a pitch of a frequency that is snug up against a more
tradionally ensconsed scaffold member, one of the 12 steps to heaven?

If I played Mary Had A Little Lamb a quartertone sharp from convention's
A=440, then each and every tone I advanced would be a microtone. By
virtue of the tortured fingerings in sometimes embarrassing postures,
these lambs were microtones. Why is it no one listening to my
Mary... rendition on the bassoon would notice and remain
convinced that there were absolutely no "microtones" at play (the
rare perfect pitchers aside).

A tone can be an interval of major and minor size, of numerous variations,
actually. It is also the blend of harmonicities and inharmonicities
of a plethora of amplitudes which all make up the klangfarben of vivid
color in musical tone.

Could a microtone be an interval that bridges to another microtone, or
not? Must its pedigree be the remainder of real time arithmetical
calculations (let's see, this note is only so far from the closest
standard so since its smaller than a semitone in this case, as in any
other similarly, I'll say it's a "microtone" interval in the sense that
it's practically beneath notice melodically. Bela Bartok rapped the
microtone interval in one of his published Harvard lectures saying that
the semitone was an awful enough dissonance that it wasn't necessary to
push it down further to a quartertone interval which always wants to rise
back up.

Now, a quartertone is a microtone interval. Which is more maleable, I
wonder. Depends I guess...

"Microtonal" is the personal sensibility one achieves when making the
acquaintence of a progressive number of powerful sound
angles...skipping stones on the sound continuum one moment,
placing stones to cross a river in the next, knocking on
familiar doors all along the way.

"Microtonality" is the realm which houses the encylopedia of
"microtonalisms" and "microtuning" in general. "Micro" expands the way a
microphone expands the voice, the way the microscope expands the
molecular, the way the microcomputer expands our minds.

Johnny Reinhard
Director
American Festival of Microtonal Music
318 East 70th Street, Suite 5FW
New York, New York 10021 USA
(212)517-3550/fax (212) 517-5495
reinhard@idt.net
http://www.echonyc.com/~jhhl/AFMM


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From: "Andrew L. Kaye"
Subject: Music Notation Software & Synth query
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>>>>> "Andrew" == Andrew L Kaye writes:

Andrew> Can anyone out there recommend

Andrew> 2) a synth module and/or synth keyboard that is microtonally-friendly
Andrew> (eg., can make 31-TET or 59-TET scales...)

Personally I would rather use a software synthesis system than fight a
hardware module. I use csound, which has opcodes to allow for any ET
scale, octave based or otherwise, as well as scales of ones own
invention. The JI people seem to find that easy as well.

But then I am a computer-based person.

==John ff


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