How acessible is microtonal music?

Hello all. Up front, I just want to say that I know we would all still compose microtonal music even if we were the only ones who enjoyed it.

That being said, we all still want to be heard right? We all want everyone to experience the same things we do when we listen to microtonal music. It would be greedy to keep all those septimal minor thirds and what not to ourselves, right? :P

So, here is the question; Among the average joes and lay people, how many of them (if any) actually enjoy your music? Do trained musicains (non-microtonal musicains) like microtonal music more, or less than the average joe? Odiously some microtonal music is accessible than others, so this question is more of a general thing.

I personally have found that younger people (E.A, 25 and younger) are more open to microtonal music, and less hasty to dismiss it as "Out of tune" or "ugly". Have any of you had similar experiences?

I actually have had less experience with how "standard" musicains react to microtonal music itself. I have had a few; "What? There is no such thing as subminor thirds!" "Shows what you know..." and "You mean G# and F# aren't always the exact same pitch?" conversations though.

    Note: I'm using meantone and 12TET fairly interchange-ably: realizing they are not the same but often SOUND virtually the same to untrained listeners.

>"So, here is the question; Among the average joes and lay people, how
many of them (if any) actually enjoy your music? Do trained musicains
(non-microtonal musicains) like microtonal music more, or less than the
average joe?"

    So far, what I've wrote in 19TET (using purposefully non-diatonic scales) has done much worse far as response from "average joe" non-musicians...than things I have written in 12TET.  Meanwhile things in my own microtonal scales (namely "Infinity" and "Dimension") have done virtually as well as songs I've written in 12TET...granted the above scales are not far from "something between Mohajira and Meantone" in how they work.  Same goes with response to "Average Joe" to musicians like Marcus Satellite, who use scale with at least a fair deal in common with meantone.

  Just about the only musician I've ever heard who makes pieces on odd TET's that go across to "Average Joe" listeners as well as 12TET...is Igs.
  Far as trained musicians' responses go, I've found trained musicians tend to hate my stuff because I break rules liberally IE use the "wrong" chords as points of resolve and don't stay in obvious keys and allowing neutral intervals to sometimes substitute for 5-limit ones...but respond well to Sethares' songs and Chris's (on this list and the MMM list).

>"I personally have found that younger people (E.A, 25 and younger) are
more open to microtonal music, and less hasty to dismiss it as "Out of
tune" or "ugly". Have any of you had similar experiences?"

   I think it has more to do with knowledge than age...even if older people tend to have more "knowledge".  The people who know more tend to view music as a fixed mathematical equation and count anything that doesn't match patterns they know as wrong.  Thus, ironically, more "trained" listeners often seem less open-minded...unless they already know an alternative paradigm (IE Mohajira) that they can use as a reference point.  Untrained listeners just seem to care if the song has a good average balance of tension and a consistent mood/point.

>"I actually have had less experience with how "standard" musicains react
to microtonal music itself. I have had a few; "What? There is no such
thing as subminor thirds!" "Shows what you know..." and "You mean G# and
F# aren't always the exact same pitch?" conversations though. "

   I assume you mean Gb and F#?  In that case...I'd actually consider that an effect of being a "trained musician".  People who are casual to "mildly experience" try to view everything relative to meantone and allow some room for difference...trained musicians often go a step further and try to view everything via enharmonic equivalents and consider anything that doesn't match perfectly wrong.  Show either one of those groups something like a 22/15 diminished fifth...and they'll likely get very confused and frustrated (or even hateful) about it. :-D 
   What I really like on this and the MMM list...is when people show a song WITHOUT mentioning the tuning used and don't use a lot of obvious meantone-style chords.  This often forces people to rate music and music...rather than by similarity to what they already know (esp. meantone).
  

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Michael <djtrancendance@...> wrote:
>

>
>     So far, what I've wrote in 19TET (using purposefully non-diatonic scales) has done much worse far as response from "average joe" non-musicians...than things I have written in 12TET.  Meanwhile things in my own microtonal scales (namely "Infinity" and "Dimension") have done virtually as well as songs I've written in 12TET...granted the above scales are not far from "something between Mohajira and Meantone" in how they work.  Same goes with response to "Average Joe" to musicians like Marcus Satellite, who use scale with at least a fair deal in common with meantone.

I've played one of my "average joe" friends some Sevish, and he liked that. It was in a variety of different tunings.

>   Far as trained musicians' responses go, I've found trained musicians tend to hate my stuff because I break rules liberally IE use the "wrong" chords as points of resolve and don't stay in obvious keys and allowing neutral intervals to sometimes substitute for 5-limit ones...but respond well to Sethares' songs and Chris's (on this list and the MMM list).
>
> >"I personally have found that younger people (E.A, 25 and younger) are
> more open to microtonal music, and less hasty to dismiss it as "Out of
> tune" or "ugly". Have any of you had similar experiences?"
>
>    I think it has more to do with knowledge than age...even if older people tend to have more "knowledge".  The people who know more tend to view music as a fixed mathematical equation and count anything that doesn't match patterns they know as wrong.  Thus, ironically, more "trained" listeners often seem less open-minded...unless they already know an alternative paradigm (IE Mohajira) that they can use as a reference point.  Untrained listeners just seem to care if the song has a good average balance of tension and a consistent mood/point.

It's funny, I played one piece in 9-tet to my musician friend (no knowledge of microtonal music) and he just said it was modally interesting. Anyway, the reason I ask about the younger vs older people thing is that my dad is very into music, and hates most of my microtonal stuff, but younger people I've played it to that are also very into music love it. By knowledge do you mean listening experience and conditioning, or an actual academic knowledge of music? Because although my dad loves music, he doesn't have any theoretical knowledge about music, and he doesn't play an instrument.

Hi Gotta
 I've been wondering many of the same things myself, but then I came to my senses when I heard "She blinded me with Science" on the radio...I began to think they may have slipped some microtones in there in places...also I'm hearing more microtonality in music for film these days, and really, we may have all been hearing it for years in classical presentations
Tim
 
--- On Thu, 6/30/11, Gotta Love Septimal Minor Thirds <microtonal76@...> wrote:

From: Gotta Love Septimal Minor Thirds <microtonal76@yahoo.com>
Subject: [tuning] How acessible is microtonal music?
To: tuning@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thursday, June 30, 2011, 8:54 PM

Hello all. Up front, I just want to say that I know we would all still compose microtonal music even if we were the only ones who enjoyed it.

That being said, we all still want to be heard right? We all want everyone to experience the same things we do when we listen to microtonal music. It would be greedy to keep all those septimal minor thirds and what not to ourselves, right? :P

So, here is the question; Among the average joes and lay people, how many of them (if any) actually enjoy your music? Do trained musicains (non-microtonal musicains) like microtonal music more, or less than the average joe? Odiously some microtonal music is accessible than others, so this question is more of a general thing.

I personally have found that younger people (E.A, 25 and younger) are more open to microtonal music, and less hasty to dismiss it as "Out of tune" or "ugly". Have any of you had similar experiences?

I actually have had less experience with how "standard" musicains react to microtonal music itself. I have had a few; "What? There is no such thing as subminor thirds!" "Shows what you know..." and "You mean G# and F# aren't always the exact same pitch?" conversations though.

------------------------------------

You can configure your subscription by sending an empty email to one
of these addresses (from the address at which you receive the list):
  tuning-subscribe@yahoogroups.com - join the tuning group.
  tuning-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com - leave the group.
  tuning-nomail@yahoogroups.com - turn off mail from the group.
  tuning-digest@yahoogroups.com - set group to send daily digests.
  tuning-normal@yahoogroups.com - set group to send individual emails.
  tuning-help@yahoogroups.com - receive general help information.
Yahoo! Groups Links