I actually love the slightly out of tune 9th chord in 31 TET, it almost has a watery, flowing quality to it. That would be a great chord to include in relaxing nature themed music.
It's very clear you guys are evolving in terms of presentation/video/material and everything that goes into this. I hope you guys will be doing this for a long long time!
Love it! Favorite part? Your cute little wooden blocks. Playful, accessible, illuminating, and organic. If that modulation at the end doesn't blow peoples minds, what will? Who the heck wouldn't want to have astounding modulations like that in their jazz harmony? Keep it up. You guys are getting good at this! Oh, and one other thing.... Freddi with shoes and Rami barfuss? Is this not the perfect opportunity for Freddi at least to show off some of his first class sock collection.... if he is feeling sheepish about putting his bare foot skin on display to the masses?
I find your accidental names -“flarp,” “heart,” etc. - amusing, and perhaps practical: Others and I have historically called them “1/4 sharp, 3/4 flat” and similar. There are two main problems with that, though: First, what I’ve historically called “quarter sharp” means roughly a quartertone sharp, but it’s actually a *half* sharp, since a regular sharp raises pitch a semitone (accent on “semi”). Second, a “quarter sharp” could imply exactly 1/24 octave up, whereas, in 31TET its essentially a diesis - roughy 1/5 tone rather than 1/4. In that sense, have a new, more-general term, like your “flarp,” could be useful.
Might be nice to recall that a certain Mr. Nicola Vicentino was daring to venture into those fields in Renaissance music already. Well, not that jazzy 😉, but hauntingly beautiful.
Absolutely, we checked out Vicentino a while back and still can't get over the fact, that *so* long ago, people knew this stuff (some, granted, but still...) and that up to this day microtonal music isn't more mainstream knowledge.
my theory teacher talked about how the 7th harmonic is the reason why the dominant 7th is far more stable than the major 7th. i always felt like the major 7th felt so shaky, unsure of itself
Well, it's definitely higher up in the harmonic series, that's for sure. Although if you look at it though the lens of primodality, the 15th overtone is more "consonant" than the 7th. Depends on your ear and expectations, I guess :)
I’m new into microtonal music, and am curious; I’ve noticed that 31 TET seems to be considered one of the best, and seems to be getting a bit of use, but 34 TET seems to approximate intervals a bit better and doesn’t seem to have the same following. What would be the strengths/trade-offs of 31TET over 34TET?
19, 22, 31 and 34d are different for chords, they have their own unique sounds. 19 and 31 have more benefits for jazz than 22 or 34d. 19 and 31 are syntonic comma tempered but 22 and 34d are syntonic comma distinguished, make more complex notations.
Western music theory from the early 16th century until the present day is based on meantone, since it assumes no distinction between 9/8 and 10/9. 31-TET maps 9/8 and 10/9 to the same interval while 34-TET distinguishes between the two, making notation more unwieldy.
tht outro song sounds very cool, it has some kind of humoristic feeling. as if the option of moving with microtonal steps gives you a new way of modulating key centers. inception of jazz chords......does that make sense?
Simple diatonic structures still work the same as in 12tet, but many more scales are possible, and many of the useful ones are still in a very manageable number of tones. There are scales that are essentially diatonic but may replace major or minor tones with supermajor or subminor tones to change colors, or scales such as Orwell[9], Mohajira[7], and Squares[8] that include entirely new chords and harmonic systems.
Yeah Alex is exactly right. :) In 12-TET we could play 10-note or 11-note scales, but we don't do that very often. The pitch space in 31-TET (the octave) is still the same as 12-TET, so "rules" for how close tones can be to each other still basically apply. In 12-TET, we make scales out of minor seconds, major seconds, and augmented seconds (most of the time), but in 31-TET, we can make scales out of chromatic semitones, diatonic semitones, neutral seconds, major seconds, supermajor seconds, and augmented seconds (and even more, of course, but these are probably the most common). Obviously that means we have more scales to work with, but it also means that the amount of notes in these scales will be relatively similar to the amounts of notes in 12-TET scales.
I feel like most microtonal music isn't that chord aware. It's more about the exotic notes, probably the near quartertones. What is the background music?
I'm frightened and confused. Lauren bateman and marty music was my last stop before I ended up here. Somebody please help me I just want to play along the bass guitar to Pink Floyd Atom Heart Mother, and Toto Rosanna.... I need a hug...
Hi guys, I suggest using some slow attack sound like strings, vocals to demonstrate those microtonal chord ,it might sounds better? i Think it's very easy to feel the piano is just out of tune.
Good point, we were debating that.. Strings just have to be completely free of vibrato and thus also sound a little weird sometimes. But an electric piano or just some more synth-like sounds might do the trick. We thought it's easiest to hear the differences with an acoustic piano, because everybody's so used to hearing it in (almost precise) 12-TET...
@@HearBetweenTheLines Agreed with piano sound for demoing chords.... somehow never quite works for me. Especially since we are so used to how it sounds in 12TET.
@@FASTFASTmusic Sine waves obviously don’t have harmonics, so if you’re trying to show how in tune 31edo intervals are, using them wouldn’t make much sense. Using a piano makes sense, or a guitar, because it has an overtone peak at the 5th harmonic, so it should be good for 31edo.
Thanks for pointing that out, @caimansaurus5564 :) We really didn't want to appear rude or inappropriate in any way! But we take the feedback seriously, especially because it was put in such a differentiated way by you, @axolotl8694!
Now I need to choose between 31tet and 41tet...ugh. Everyone always comes up with such convincing arguments why one is so good...I guess they're all better than 12tet for closer approximations of intervals as you can take smaller steps.
Hahaha, don't we know that feeling... 31 is the best compromise if you wanna have good approximations of 12 TET and quite a lot of overtones, but 41 TET's fifth beats 31 TET's (at least figuratively ;) get it?! )
@@HearBetweenTheLines And 53-TET gets you within a hairsbreadth of Just Intonation (1/315 comma meantone). But the more tones you have, the harder it gets to build keyboard instruments (especially pipe organs), which is probably why only 12-TET caught on in European music.
31 EDO being a meantone scale is quite easy for beginner microtonalist. 41 and 53 EDOs are not meantone, they make difference between greater tone (9/8) and lesser tone (10/9), so you have to deal with commas all the time you're composing or playing.
I just don’t see how you’re going to build your ear to hear 31 notes an octave. That’s a lot of computing power. If I asked you to sing these intervals I doubt you could.
If you can hear the difference between the notes, you can train the ear to get used to it. It's only because 12-TET is so intensely pervasive everywhere that it makes it seem like an impossible task.
@@HearBetweenTheLines Sure. Major Chord After the second one, the E feels flat and like it wants to create a binaural effect with the true E in my mind. This fools me in to think its a slightly flat F demodulating to an E, which throws me off more. Minor Chord The E flat sounds a little bit sharp, throws me off a bunch. Augmented Chord The E and the G sharp sound like they are 1 quarter tone flat. Crazy in my mind. Diminished Chord The G flat sounds a little bit sharp and messes with the tritone I would usually hear, making a binaural effect again in my head. Drives me a little bit crazy. So yeah. Perfect pitch doesn't like that.
@@gallium-gonzollium Thanks for sharing! It's so interesting how different people with perfect pitch perceive non-12TET notes, Mike Battaglia or Stephen Weigel for example are into microtonality precisely because of the way it feels for their ears.
