Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning Microtonal keyboards and keyboard design...?

Hey everyone,

I'm new to the tuning list. My name is Mike Battaglia, and I'm a 20
year old junior University of Miami Music Engineering student,
studying Jazz Piano. Microtonality and tuning, to be honest,
fascinates the hell out of me -- I wonder what 7-limit music would
sound like if the average person could just sit down and play it,
rather than have to do all of this research to even realize that it
exists. Specifically, I'd like to hear what it would sound like in
jazz, or rock, or other "common" styles to introduce new higher-limit
chords and feelings that don't even exist right now. And so I want to
learn more about microtonal keyboard design.

Does anyone have any good resources on this stuff? I've done some
research on google, and I keep finding pages like this:
http://infohost.nmt.edu/~jstarret/instrmnt.html

All of the links are broken. I've seen some layouts for Bosanquet and
Fokker keyboards and such, and both designs are intriguing to say the
least - has anyone come up with any other designs that are popular?
Or, more importantly, any midi controllers that work with said
designs? I've seen microtonal controllers that are basically buttons
laid out on a board that repeat every 250 buttons or so -- but this
seems like it might be impractical.

Thanks, and so far I'm enjoying it here -- I've been lurking in the
shadows for a bit and such.

-Mike

🔗Torsten Anders <torstenanders@...>

Dear Mike,

existing keyboards for microtonal music have been discussed recently on this list. You may check out the thread in the archive. Here is one of its messages

/tuning/topicId_76152.html#76164

Best
Torsten

On May 24, 2008, at 7:57 AM, battaglia01 wrote:

> Hey everyone,
>
> I'm new to the tuning list. My name is Mike Battaglia, and I'm a 20
> year old junior University of Miami Music Engineering student,
> studying Jazz Piano. Microtonality and tuning, to be honest,
> fascinates the hell out of me -- I wonder what 7-limit music would
> sound like if the average person could just sit down and play it,
> rather than have to do all of this research to even realize that it
> exists. Specifically, I'd like to hear what it would sound like in
> jazz, or rock, or other "common" styles to introduce new higher-limit
> chords and feelings that don't even exist right now. And so I want to
> learn more about microtonal keyboard design.
>
> Does anyone have any good resources on this stuff? I've done some
> research on google, and I keep finding pages like this:
> http://infohost.nmt.edu/~jstarret/instrmnt.html
>
> All of the links are broken. I've seen some layouts for Bosanquet and
> Fokker keyboards and such, and both designs are intriguing to say the
> least - has anyone come up with any other designs that are popular?
> Or, more importantly, any midi controllers that work with said
> designs? I've seen microtonal controllers that are basically buttons
> laid out on a board that repeat every 250 buttons or so -- but this
> seems like it might be impractical.
>
> Thanks, and so far I'm enjoying it here -- I've been lurking in the
> shadows for a bit and such.
>
> -Mike
>
>
>
--
Torsten Anders
Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research
University of Plymouth
Office: +44-1752-586227
Private: +44-1752-558917
http://strasheela.sourceforge.net
http://www.torsten-anders.de

🔗threesixesinarow <CACCOLA@...>

🔗M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@...>

🔗Carl Lumma <carl@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...> wrote:
>
> battaglia01 wrote:
> > Microtonality and tuning, to be honest,
> > fascinates the hell out of me -- I wonder what 7-limit music would
> > sound like if the average person could just sit down and play
> > it, rather than have to do all of this research to even realize
> > that it exists. Specifically, I'd like to hear what it would
> > sound like in jazz, or rock, or other "common" styles to
> > introduce new higher-limit chords and feelings that don't even
> > exist right now.
>
> 1. To the "average person", it would sound "weird".

Not true. If you harmonize the diatonic scale with higher-limit
chords it sounds perfectly natural. People hear 7-limit harmony
in barbershop all the time and they don't even notice.

> To many well-trained
> musicians, it would sound "horribly incorrect" or "out of tune".

Nah.

> 2. Some on the list may disagree with me, but outside of the
> piano, I think jazz has "always" been microtonal and probably
> always will be. I'm not sure about rock, though -- rock seems
> to me to be about rhythm and loudness more than about intonation
> or lyrics.

Trolling are we? Like all forms of music, the best rock is
the equal of the best any-other-kind-of-music. That goes for
lyrics and intonation.

By the very odd definition of microtonal, anything that isn't
played on a MIDI keyboard or piano could be called microtonal.
But usually the deviations are not as accurate as microtonal
musicians would like. But sometimes they are (any good
chamber music, blues singer, or electric guitarist is going
to have solid control of intonation).

-Carl

🔗Aaron Wolf <backfromthesilo@...>

Dear Mike,

I'm happy to join in on the discussion after being exactly in your
place about 6 years ago. I was a music student in college and after
finding barbershop harmony I was shocked to hear things like "no, that
one is a larger half step, listen again to get that chord to ring".

I found online resources and this list, and I delved in for a long
time trying to understand it all. I read the majority of all the
common literature on tuning. I played around with my computer and
retuned my guitar. In the end, I was pretty frustrated with the
inability to just PLAY the musical ideas that were in my mind.

Here's some direction I'll suggest:

First, although somewhat technical, Bill Sethares' Book "Tuning Timbre
Spectrum Scale" is unique. It is among the only ones that doesn't
just assume the traditional just intonation ideas are correct. He
shows what really matters: that timbre is a major factor in harmony.
Piano strings are not totally harmonic due to high tension and
thickness and other factors. Therefore, theoretical just intonation
does not totally apply. But voices are very harmonic, so there it
does, but the chance of a human voice being absolutely steady is
totally unlikely, so what's really going on?
Bill's book includes some recorded examples, and they are decent when
they are programmed, but Bill has a horrible sense of rhythm on some
of the tracks where he recorded his live keyboard playing. But it is
more than worth it. His book rises above the crowd as especially
important to really understanding things.

If your school library doesn't have it, you can have it sent to you
from another library through the interlibrary loan system (ask a
librarian if you haven't done this before, it's marvelous). Here's a
link showing all the libraries that have it and the info about the
book. Be sure to get the second edition:
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/55502420

Second, to really understand how people experience real music, you
need to get away from all these mathematical focuses that you may see
discussed here. Will people think 7-limit music is weird? Not if
they expect it and get what they expect. The psychology of music, how
we learn to expect things one way or another is really the way to
approach this. I am only now getting into this, but the original
seminal book, which I am just now finishing and certainly feel was
very worthwhile is Emotion And Meaning In Music by Leonard Meyer:
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/476460

To summarize my view, if people here a pitch often enough, then they
start to expect it. If 7-limit music then puts a prominent pitch in a
place where people would expect one but then here a slightly different
one then they feel it as weird. If it is consistent and expected over
and over, then it is not weird. And if it is hidden in a background
part and helps create a nice blend but they don't focus on it, then it
is fine. In barbershop harmony, it is not only common, it is expected
and celebrated, so any listener gets used to it quite quickly. In
blues and jazz, and pop music (Beatles were actually pretty good at
this) it is not uncommon to sing a nice 7th over a major chord
background - hence the "blue note" that piano players lament having no
access to.

At any rate, the only ways to truly explore pitch and not be stuck
with planning and programming are to have pitch flexible instruments
that are reasonably controllable. If you're a great singer, that's
something. Fretless instruments are useful. I, for one, just got a
Tonal Plexus from H-Pi: www.h-pi.com
And I think this is the very best option. It is flexible in many
ways, and can be totally retuned however you like. They also have
accepted for a future goal my suggestion to create a subtle adaptive
algorithm just to eliminate the subtle error from JI that 205ET can
have! Amazing support. And this instrument can be played with lots
of theory understanding, or just play it and listen and find sounds
you like! I wish I had this when I was just starting to explore these
things.

As for real music that exists so far, among my favorites is the Catler
Brother's "Crash Landing" CD, which sounds weird to trained musicians
at the first listen. After about 4 listens, it no longer sounded
weird to me, and in fact almost just sounded mundanely accessible.
Untrained musicians that I've played it for almost all enjoy it but
basically say they don't see what's so special, just that it's good music.
See microtones.com

Also, I've used Melodyne to retune barbershop harmony and create
totally accurate performances. I've been working on getting them to
be more natural over time as well. Not sure what links are still
active, but search past postings here for my name and barbershop and
Melodyne or recordings - you'll come across my postings and hopefully
some links. I hope to organize this all and get a clear website
together eventually.

Best wishes on the studies. Let me know if you have any other
questions or want my thoughts on anything specific. Judging by your
question, I will be so bold as to say that I think I really came from
the same perspective and mindset. And I really benefited from help
from those who came before me, so I hope to pass on the favor.

Sincerely,
Aaron Wolf

Microtonal keyboards and keyboard design...?

🔗battaglia01 <battaglia01@...>

🔗Torsten Anders <torstenanders@...>

🔗threesixesinarow <CACCOLA@...>

🔗M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@...>

🔗Carl Lumma <carl@...>

🔗Aaron Wolf <backfromthesilo@...>