back to list

RE: Films with non-12 soundtracks

🔗"Loffink, John" <John.Loffink@...>

4/7/1998 7:29:36 AM
> From: Paul Hahn
> Subject: Re: Films with non-12 soundtracks
>
> For that matter, once or twice I've Christopher Franke use a somewhat
> xenharmonic sound when scoring _Babylon Five_: it sounds like he's
> feeding a basic drone through a filter that's set just below ringing,
> then sweeping the filter up slowly so that it "brings out" successive
> partials one after another. The partials are of course in small integer
> ratios to one another, so one could think of this as very rudimentary
> JI.
>
[Loffink, John] I would not call this microtonal. It is just the
common filter sweep used by all "space music" artists. The partials are
harmonic, but the chords that underly them never are. Robert Rich and
Michael Stearns are the only ones doing space music with real microtonal
intervals. All the others are most definitely confined within normal 12TET
composition, even though just intonation would be most appropriate for this
music, in my opinion.