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What I Learned Writing an Album in Just Intonation

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Re: What I Learned Writing an Album in Just Intonation

#21

Post by smrq »

sonorous_sub wrote: post #16
pierrec wrote: post #3

I'd love to get some feedback on this, because I'm not sure I've hit the original goal of this article. For a long time, the topics of just intonation, harmonic lattices, and of their relationship with temperaments were difficult for me to understand, despite reading the theory on them. It's not until I applied the concepts that could say I understood them. I tried writing the "missing article" that would have given…

I think you could make the piece more interesting to the casual reader by grounding the subject in its history. It's been suggested by the book below that the dominance of equal temperament in western music is a relatively recent innovation, something like 120 years old, and is perhaps a consequence of the industrial revolution and the demand for mass manufacture of musical instruments having uniform qualities it pro…

I haven't read this book, but that takeaway doesn't sound right. In ET, all keys are equally out of tune--that's a natural consequence of it being equal. In contrast, it's just intonation in which chords become progressively further out of tune the further they get from the center.

It's true that ET is a compromise in some ways, but it actually opens up the possibility for radical modulations into more distant keys without having to adjust intonation on the fly. In that sense, just intonation is also a compromise.

Re: What I Learned Writing an Album in Just Intonation

#22

Post by the_other »

thomasahle wrote: post #11

This reminds me of when I stumpled into a music theory flame war by proposing the "scale": 1, 15/14, 15/13, ..., 15/8, 2. https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/66620/what-is-a-te... This set of 8 nodes (can be transposed to whichever base frequency) has the lowest common denominator between any pair of nodes among all 8-node scales. I thought that might make it a good choice for a just intonation scale (which can…

Why is it a sensitive subject?

Re: What I Learned Writing an Album in Just Intonation

#23

Post by lewispollard »

wonger_ wrote: post #7
pierrec wrote: post #3

I'd love to get some feedback on this, because I'm not sure I've hit the original goal of this article. For a long time, the topics of just intonation, harmonic lattices, and of their relationship with temperaments were difficult for me to understand, despite reading the theory on them. It's not until I applied the concepts that could say I understood them. I tried writing the "missing article" that would have given…

I am very unfamiliar with the topic. Here's my takeaways from the article: - almost all music I've heard uses 12TET - JI is microtonal / an alternative tuning to 12TET - you're the author of the lovely ambient.garden, which uses JI - the audio widgets and visualizations were very helpful - JI has perfect harmonies, and 12TET approximates those enough to still sound good - JI opens up cool chord options - but there's…

> still not sure what consonant, continuous, or misleading chords are. I only know what dissonance sounds like

Consonance is the opposite of dissonance; so while a dissonant chord sounds jarring and unpleasant with beating, a consonant chord sounds harmonious, pleasant, smooth.

I'm not sure about the other two either, I don't think they're commonly used terms.

Maybe continuous refers to "continuo" in Baroque music, where the bassline and chords are separate but work together harmonically - in some tunings, perhaps this is harder.

I think misleading refers to chords where their function harmonically is ambiguous until they resolve "home" at a later time - for example, not using the root note of a chord, instead using an inversion or modulation that feels like the chords could lead in several directions, creating a kind of uncertainty and tension in the piece that feels satisfying to resolve when the later chord indicates which of the paths through the harmony were the "correct" one.

Re: What I Learned Writing an Album in Just Intonation

#24

Post by lewispollard »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #8
pierrec wrote: post #3

I'd love to get some feedback on this, because I'm not sure I've hit the original goal of this article. For a long time, the topics of just intonation, harmonic lattices, and of their relationship with temperaments were difficult for me to understand, despite reading the theory on them. It's not until I applied the concepts that could say I understood them. I tried writing the "missing article" that would have given…

I would say that this is way too technical for me, however, I also only have the slightest hint of music theory knowledge to begin with. It seems to me like that isn't a problem though, because this is a very technical topic by nature. Unrelated to the writing, but I was kind of disappointed that when listening to the examples, I cannot for the life of me hear a difference between just intonation and equal temperamen…

I'm familiar with music theory and microtonal music and the first examples are just too close to really discern easily. The examples of "chord 1/2" in the section "The Far-Out Solution: Freestyle JI" are probably the first example that makes the difference clear, if you play the 12TET and the JI overlapping slightly. That's because subtle differences in tuning are much more perceptible in harmony (chords) than in melody (single notes), since notes playing together are perceived with noticeable effects introduced by our brains such as harmonic beating and feeling tone.

Re: What I Learned Writing an Album in Just Intonation

#25

Post by andybak »

vunderba wrote: post #2

When I compose, I usually begin by sitting quietly and humming or singing out loud until I have a melody that I like. Because I was born and raised in the west, acoustically I'm naturally accustomed to a 12 tone equal temperament. Atonal music is more difficult for me to grok, and I kind of imagine that for you to be fluent and compose in these sort of microtonal scales you would need to be introduced to it at a youn…

I'm no expert but your use of "atonal" and "microtonal" interchangeably here seems way off the mark.

"Atonal" usually refers to music composed without a fixed sense of key - and was originally used to describe music written using standard western 12TET.

It's a property of the music's relationship to key signatures - not it's tuning system.

Re: What I Learned Writing an Album in Just Intonation

#27

Post by Sharlin »

Should be noted that any ensemble that consists only of continuous-pitch instruments (eg. strings, trombone, human voice, fretless guitar) is free from the shackles of 12TET and its harmonies naturally tune to as close to "pure" intervals as the performers’ skills allow.

Re: What I Learned Writing an Album in Just Intonation

#29

Post by iainmerrick »

pierrec wrote: post #3

I'd love to get some feedback on this, because I'm not sure I've hit the original goal of this article. For a long time, the topics of just intonation, harmonic lattices, and of their relationship with temperaments were difficult for me to understand, despite reading the theory on them. It's not until I applied the concepts that could say I understood them. I tried writing the "missing article" that would have given…

Right now I suspect that I failed in the same way as my early readings did: this article might be hard to understand unless you're already familiar with the topic

I really enjoyed this article (although I already knew the core concepts, so I may be confirming your suspicion, sorry!)

The visualizations are terrific, especially the ones with the The Lord of the Rings chord progression. Despite knowing the concepts, I hadn't fully appreciated how TET forms a tiling; visualized that way, the "wrap around" the circle of fifths really hits home.

Excellent work, thank you.

Re: What I Learned Writing an Album in Just Intonation

#30

Post by kaapipo »

Sharlin wrote: post #27

Should be noted that any ensemble that consists only of continuous-pitch instruments (eg. strings, trombone, human voice, fretless guitar) is free from the shackles of 12TET and its harmonies naturally tune to as close to "pure" intervals as the performers’ skills allow.

The guitar doesn't event need to be fretless; there is a lot of leeway (even towards flat) even with frets if you know the technique!
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