Quarter tone ear training

I'm working on a piece for contrabassoon, soprano, and
glockenspiel. It is 12TET based but with lots of pitches bent up
or down approximately a quarter tone.

The singer has an excellent ear, but seems to have a mental
block against quarter tones. Does anyone have any suggestions
for how to work with her? Excercises for developing quarter-tone
awareness?

Thanks,

Stan

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Stan Hoffman <stanhoffman@m...>"
<stanhoffman@m...> wrote:

/tuning/topicId_42667.html#42667

> I'm working on a piece for contrabassoon, soprano, and
> glockenspiel. It is 12TET based but with lots of pitches bent up
> or down approximately a quarter tone.
>
> The singer has an excellent ear, but seems to have a mental
> block against quarter tones. Does anyone have any suggestions
> for how to work with her? Excercises for developing quarter-tone
> awareness?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Stan

***Hi Stan,

After directing you over here, I was hoping that Johnny Reinhard or
Paul Erlich would have some ideas on this based on personal
experience.

Frankly, I think one way might be to give her a "training CD" with
the pitches done in MIDI that she can sing along to.

That's the method I use for virtually *all* my alternately-tuned
pieces. It's a kind of "ear training preparation" before one gets
started learning the piece...

best,

Joe Pehrson

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Joseph Pehrson" <jpehrson@r...> wrote:
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Stan Hoffman <stanhoffman@m...>"
> <stanhoffman@m...> wrote:
>
> /tuning/topicId_42667.html#42667
>
>
> > I'm working on a piece for contrabassoon, soprano, and
> > glockenspiel. It is 12TET based but with lots of pitches bent up
> > or down approximately a quarter tone.
> >
> > The singer has an excellent ear, but seems to have a mental
> > block against quarter tones. Does anyone have any suggestions
> > for how to work with her? Excercises for developing quarter-tone
> > awareness?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Stan
>
>
> ***Hi Stan,
>
> After directing you over here, I was hoping that Johnny Reinhard or
> Paul Erlich would have some ideas on this based on personal
> experience.

i don't have personal experience in 24-equal, but rather in 22-equal.
what worked for me to break through the semitonal barrier and be able
to sing quartertones (actually 55-cent intervals) in the shower was
to create a convincing, easily memorized harmonic progression that
harmonizes the micro-chromatic scale. it's far easier to do this in
22-equal than in 24-equal, since a whole host of simple, important
compositional "commas" such as 25:24, 28:27, 49:48, 80:81, and
256:243 come out to a "quartertone" in 22-equal, but none of them do
so in 24-equal. you have to go up to prime 11 to invoke the 24-equal
quartertone, typically through the 33:32 and 55:54 intervals.

so, to try to be helpful rather than merely theoretical, an example
of the latter would be to start with a simple 12-equal chromatic
scale where each note is the root of a major triad that harmonizes
it. now, before each triad, insert its dominant, with the 11th
harmonic of that dominant in the melody. the result will be a mind-
numbingly boring, but patently *audible*, harmonization of the 24-
tone scale. this, and more interesting exercises like it, should be
very helpful to get a singer to grasp all these pitches as
melodically *and* harmonically distinct entities . . . and sing them!