I absolutely love your emotional interpretation of the triads. Emotion is music is often pre-conditioned, there is nothing happy about major chords and nothing sad about minor chords, except we have given them that meaning through context. 31edo meets us in a clean slate, therefore hearing people's perceived emotions to its colors is a rare and wonderful thing.
As an early music enthusiast I love 1/4 comma meantone, and for me meantone is a gateway to microtonal music. 31 TET is practically the same as extended 1/4 comma meantone, so even on my 12 note keyboard tuned in 1/4 comma MT I get to play around with subminor and supermajor thirds and harmonic sevenths, but only in a few keys. I love F minor in 1/4 comma MT because the tonic and subdominant chords are actually subminor.
How do you tune your keyboard to quarter comma meantone? I've never been able to find a tuning file in the right format, and I'm a bit too much of a noob to make one myself
Awesome work, Amelia! Great sound examples and creative, relatable metaphors, this is a fantastic resource! We're looking forward to more of this series
Harmonically speaking, I find that neutral thirds are especially interesting in stacks - 4, 5, or more stacked atop each other. Melodically speaking, N3s are intriguing in that our ears are strongly conditioned to hear thirds as either minor or minor: If a melody uses a N3, it will sound major in one context and minor in another. In fact, somebody can listen to the exact same melody with a N3, twice in a row, and the first time it will sound major and the next time minor!
I've been into microtonal music theory (and the music itself) since 2015 or so, and 31-EDO has long been my favorite tuning system. As a TVL fan, seeing you make this video totally made my day.
Wow, excellent video. I mess around a lot with 24edo and this video made it clear to me that most of the sounds I like in 24 are also available in 31, plus some pretty-much just stuff.
correction: the gx should be a g= (accidental can't be typed). I missed that. I'm still getting used to "standard" 31edo notation after using my own up and down notation. the sharp # is worth 2 steps up in 31 and the double sharp x is worth 4 -- rather than 3 as pictured here.
Caught this super early. Really excited for this series and how the knowledge of an established musician like you will be able to make microtonal music more approachable / understandable / interesting to the masses. :)
Randomly researching this and surprised to quickly recognise your voice 💖 I didn’t realise how DEEPLY you were passionate and knowledgeable about sound until I found this channel !
i am absolutely crazy about those short hands now. Esin7 Asaj7 if everyone in 20 years calls subminor chords sin chords, my work on this planet will be done. lol
the way you described the sound was amazing ! Especially the neutral one with the bells. And now I start to understand a little more about the name you gave to the chord in other video.
Is there anything more joyful than the exercise of trying to convey the feel of a microtonal interval? I think with 12-EDO we've all been sort of "programmed" by the ideas of what intervals and changes feel like, which one is happy, which one is tense, foreign, etc. But with this weirder stuff? Man I am engaging my most non-verbal monke brain and thinking about my body and my ears and how I literally feel. It's a closeness and naivete with music that is just incredible, rejuvenating. Yes, I am high, thank you for asking.
couldn’t agree more. there is so much to be heard. entire universes of new tonalities and sensory experiences. 31 is cool but ultimately the harmonic series is the most transcendent of all tunings. ♥️
It depends on your allowed margin of error. I don't think the 31-edo supermajor third really sounds that much like 9/7 so I don't identify it as such. Traditionally, microtonal theorists have allowed a larger margin of error in describing ji approximates from edos because of the beauty of regular temperament theory. The supermajor third here certainly can function as a 9/7 approx but it's a different identity to my ears. :)
Thank you very much for this excellent resource! It's great to have a video like this that shows all the different notations for the triads along with their sounds; makes it a lot easier to learn. As much as I enjoy reading through articles on the Xen Wiki, they tend to get rather complicated and are full of obscure terminology, whereas this is delightfully easy to understand. Will definitely be coming back again and again!
I love to see more xen pedagogy, and well done at that! I sometimes feel like other xen video tutorials are made by people who are still relatively new to the field, or just aren't as well versed into pedagogy, but this looks promising. I'm really looking forward to this new series!
Thanks so much for posting this! I grew up listening to traditional Persian music and really miss hearing non 12-TET intervals. 31 EDO is really quickly becoming my favourite tuning - the neutral and sub minor triads are so beautiful 😭
Holy cow. Thank you so much for making this video❤ I have been wondering how people play microtonal music for so long... I never dreamed it was something *learnable*! I thought some people were just geniuses who thought in microtones and the rest of us were stuck with 12 tones. I'm so, so excited to find out that there is a method to it that might be accessible to someone like me! Your teaching style is absolutely lovely too. Thank you for making this wonderful lesson for us ❤
I've never had any musical talent to speak of. You have such an amazing talent for sound that you've been developing and I'd be interested in seeing what you do with this in the future.
7/6 subminor is often sung by skilled acappella groups so that's not weird at all, unlike the supermajor, which resembles me of a slightly off tune brass instrument.
Zhea You responded to my comment about my first ever baby hearing your song as his first ever hearing experience next to his mom’s voice. Although I am universes away from understanding this video, as well as my already mentioned baby boy, I believe this knowledge will influence his cognitive development and higher brain function that he will recall when he is older. I wish I could show you him, to track his progress as a baby that simply loves his entire experience. Thank you so much. The first person after mom to calm Archer down. The Avila family loves and appreciates your work.
It's fantastic that you keep the math on the screen during this video. It does get a little confusing when using terms like "third" or "fifth" because those generally describe 12-edo modal intervals, but describing things as "EDO steps" helps that a lot.
Excellent! I especially like your word descriptions of the various intervals. Some of them I personally hear a little differently, but that just makes it all-the-more interesting to hear your descriptions. I’ve been into Microtonality since 1977, but until I got my Lumatone (obviously much more recently!), I haven’t had a really practical way of exploring 31TET. So, it’s great to hear how you’re approaching it! Just a subminor (😂) nitpick: I don’t think sus chords technically qualify as “triads,” since triads are defined as constructed in thirds. (That’s not super-important, but this video is partly about Theory, so…)
that compliment actually delighted me. thank you lol. only when doing music! i care a lot about the beauty of how music looks on a page or thoughts about music look when codified
Excellent explanation. I'd definitely like to explore the 31 EDO in more depth. Quick question: what software or hardware do you use to generate the 31 EDO sounds and where do I get one?
The dissonance of the neutral chord resembles playing major and minor triads at the same time, a trick that was sometimes used to imitate the bell sound. The problem with this tuning is that its fifths are 5 cents "flat" compared to the just interval of 3:2 (which is ~702 cents, not 697, leading to audible difference). Even 12-EDO approximates fifths better. If you're looking for precise intonation with an equal temperament, go for 53-EDO.
Your music really took me into JI but when it's about EDO... I just don't know how to use it. This video hepls a lot to undertand better the EDO and how to use it!
yay!! :D yea I love JI and prefer to write in it. But equal tunings are useful for many reasons and serve as great environments to learn inside of! :D 31 is cool cause it has a lot of close approximation to certain ji ratios.
@@ZheannaErose nice primer, thanks! I just moved a piece from 31-edo to 31-ji and there is a certain hard to put your finger on 'zing' to the ji, but it did make me wonder at what point in octave division that the difference ceases to make a difference?!
you can access microtonality through a few ways, i’d encourage you explore different tuning systems through “scale workshop” other than that, you can use these chords to enhance the atmosphere and feeling of songs, for instance subminor chords have a very relaxed feel, while something like a supermajor chord almost sounds angry/frustrated you can enhance dissonance and make the song more heart-wrenching (like in “frippe’s nocturne” - Hear between the lines) where the neutral chords are used to enhance the feeling of grief in 24edo in some tuning systems, such as 17 edo, neutral thirds invoke a very soft and natural feeling. It sounds soothing and not as agressive as in 24, for instance. You can listen to benyamind for examples. Go for it and explore, because microtonality can really add to songs!
@@EpreTroll You could use a 12 note subset. The pitches will be tuned slightly(or majorly if you want) differently but you can still use a regular keyboard without octaves not being octaves.
You mention that two neutral thirds equals a perfect fifth, and that it’s important. What’s the reason for it’s importance? Thanks for the vid btw. Tremendous.
Not really related to the content, but I enjoy the video format choice to make the sections of the video where you describe and explain the major/minor chords in light and dark themes respectively. Sets the mood in an interesting way
This is a fantastic organisation of a seldom used temperament. Great work! I'm just wondering why are we writing in E while playing in C? Knowing piano isn't transposing and hearing something that's transposed from what's written confuses my ears.
Zheanna, I have a few comments and questions: First, a comment regarding the neutral third: I can hear why it conjures bells in that the overtone series, as well as the divergent strike and hum tones of many bells are non-harmonic. While all tempered intervals (including neutrals) approximate harmonic intervals, surely the pure neutral thirds that are lowest in a harmonic series are still higher and thus less ostensibly harmonic than the pure major and minor thirds. Second, a question regarding timbre: To effect good resonance, an orchestrator can form sonorities by voicing chords among instruments such that the partials of the various instruments mutually reinforce each other. As those partials are mostly very close to harmonic (especially for sustained notes) for most acoustic instruments, I am suspicious that intervals such as the neutral third can be effectively orchestrated except as fleeting chromatic passing tones. Please tell me: Do you have solutions to this? Do you use electronically synthetic timbres based upon non-harmonic partials that are especially 31-EDO-friendly? The piano/bell-ish timbre in this video does not seem very un-harmonic, but it does seem to have a sort of dullness, as if some harmonic partials are suppressed. I would like to know what, if any, insights you can give into this. Third, a question regarding composing for reality: I love love love polyphony (canons, fugue, etc.) and might like to compose polyphonic music for EDO systems other than 12-EDO, but... I really do not want to have to focus on the technical difficulties of shoe-horning such music into 12-EDO-based software. Have you any recommendations for decent software for the notation and performance of such music? I mean something as easy and straightforward as the common 12-EDO software like Sibelius, Finale, etc. By the way, I have zero intention of performing anything, myself. I compose for other musicians and/or computers only. Any thoughts are welcome.
Have you explored the “all interval tetrachords” of 31edo? Or whatever the equivalent is for it. Since there are only 6 unique pitch classes in 12tet does this mean there’s 15 for 31edo because you start getting closer to the octave between the 15th and 16th chromatic step? Also in 12tet the combinatorial math proves there’s only 4 unique flavors of AIT when you subtract transpositions (and really it’s like there’s 2 sets of 2 shapes that are mirrored to each other), so I’m curious how many unique pitch sets there are that contain every interval in this tuning? I’m completely new to xenharmonic music, so thanks for putting these beautiful materials out there for us.
Ever since I got into microtonality I've found modern music education's failure to mention any tuning other than 12-EDO as a major annoyance. I also sing, but I got into it via contemporary worship music even though I'm classically trained on piano. Now that I've heard plenty of microtonal songs, I personally feel like 31-EDO would be a much better tuning for most contemporary worship songs than 12. In fact, I've had many of my friends listen to the chords of Mosaic MSC's "Tremble" (look up the lyrics "Jesus You make the darkness tremble") in 12 and 19 EDO, and so far all of them say that it sounds better in 19-EDO. This is after I heard what the chords sound like in 19 and 31, and I can already see Tremble sounding much better in 19 and 31 than 12. 12 has a very bright sound to it, which makes it suitable for many types of music and a lot of worship songs, while major keys in 31 sound noticeably darker to me so I think that it would be much more suitable than 12 for slower, more "serious", or more "passionate" (if you get what I mean) songs. I'm seeing a lot of potential for the use of alternative tunings as a means of expression, even for strictly diatonic music.
Gorgeous! What about the corresponding keyboard? "Fokker designed the Fokker organ, a 31-tone equal-tempered organ, which was installed in Teyler's Museum in Haarlem in 1951 and moved to Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ in 2010 where it has been frequently used in concerts since it moved. " (Wikipedia). Did you get a chance to play it?
2 to the power 18/31 is very close to 3/2, and 2 to the power 10/31 is very close to 5/4. So you get a cleaner, less "buzzy" major chord than you do when you have only 12 notes per octave.
Hey Zheanna, can you do one of these tutorials for 24tet (sorry new to this, so idk if it is 24tet or 24edo, but 24 notes per octave essentially😂😂😂)??? Love your work!!! Thank you!!!
That begining sus chord is in the opening riff to "New Kid in Town" by the Eagles. Similar timbre, pretty much same key. Oh yeah and 31-EDO is pretty cool too I guess :)
Hmm, great! I hear, classical diatonic is "embedded" in the 31 EDOs... is this a direct link to the JI? I'm also interested in the reasons for the tension of steps in musical scales. Do you think the reason is just harmony? I've been working on arguments to dispute this for some time now, explaining the tension as a consequence of the order, the distribution of the notes of the major chords. I'm sure both factors have an effect, but which one is stronger? That is the question.
I think the subminor triad is the easiest for me because it's not actually a new sound; it often shows up in baroque music played on period instruments, depending on the key of course.
i'm on the fence about this 31 EDO. i lose the Diminished and Augmented chords, compared to 12 EDO. not sure if that's worth the trade, but i will admit the Subminor chord is beautiful.
Nice. How do you find the chords in a tuning? I know about this in Scala (a septimal major third is off maxdiff by 9.3 cents): equal 31 set attribute notation set notation e31 set maxdiff 7.0 chords/match/constrained
Cents are brute force musical device which convert the octave into 1200 equal cents. One standard 12-edo semitone is 100 cents. So when I say something is "551 cents" that translates to directly between Perfect 4th and Tritone from 12edo. Cents have been used for about 140 years and are a very very blunt tool to make easier moving between Linear and Log domains.
The cent was only defined in the _late_ 19th century, _well after 12EDO took off as the default tuning for Western music._ So naturally the absolute cent was defined in terms of it.
@@ZheannaErose Then if we're using the natural sign in the minor triad, neutral should be one sharp, major should be a double sharp, and supermajor should be a triple sharp.
@Discrimination_is_not_a_right That’s not correct. A sharp is worth 2 displacements, not 1. It’s not triple sharp you want then, it’s sesqui sharp. Triple sharp would be 6 displacements. If E to G is natural and minor, then E to Gt is neutral, E to G# is major, E to G#t is supermajor, E to Gx is ultramajor or subfourth. Triple sharp would be E to G#x which is E to At enharmonically. We dont use triple sharps in 31, not really a point. We have: -4 double flat -3 sesquiflat -2 flat -1 semiflat 0 natural 1 semisharp 2 sharp 3 sesquisharp 4 double sharp thus as you see, triple sharp would be +6 displacements, not 3. Eb to Gdb is subminor Eb to Gb is minor third Eb to Gd js neutral third Eb to G is major third Eb to Gt is supermajor third Eb to G# is ultramajor third
@@manuelvenegas4737 nope. the pieces that say 31-edo in the title are made in 31. i mostly compose in just intonation and play lumatone in 31. also this isnt a scale - its a tuning. :)
No. Even placing sus chords and augmented chords in the same category is a failure of traditional music education and past pedagogy. The sus triad is the 3-note pyth/meantone collection or in base form the Sus2 which blossoms out to form 3, 5, 7, 12, 17, 29 note pyth chains or 3, 5, 7, 12, 19, 31 note meantone chains. It's the central spine to 5/7 modes and lydian / locrian which it is not are both alterations in opposite directions to the spine representing the top and bottom of the 5L2s in 12edo. Augmented chords emerge in 12edo as MODMOS alterations. Augmented chords in 31edo have several variations in themselves. They are not just "subordinate" to the meantone spine, there are multiple meanings of augmented and two different entire augmented tonalities. They no longer divide the octave symmetrically. These are naturally more advanced triads in 31edo because there are 3 basic augmented triads and they sound quite similar but behavior differently and connect to different things.
