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Comment by netizen-936824 | Hacker News Reader

Personally I quite enjoy when my expectations are broken by interesting patterns in music. I enjoy a lot of 'experimental' stuff. Again this is just my personal preference, but most of the popular music in the US I find boring because it all seems to be rehashes of the same patterns, just getting louder.

I wish more people were exposed to a wider variety of types and patterns in music, there's a lot of great sounding music out there which breaks the usual mold played on radio stations

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I'd guess personal preference of the musicians themselves is part of the reason microtones aren't more common in "western" music. Most of the musicians that I personally know at least seem to prefer creating/performing music that sounds good to them. And compared to non-musicians, most of them are also more aware of and bothered by notes that are "out of tune", especially ones with "classical" training.

> I wish more people were exposed to a wider variety of types and patterns in music, there's a lot of great sounding music out there which breaks the usual mold played on radio stations

The 12 tone standard didn't just come out of nowhere, it is dominant for a reason. It developed throughout the entire existence of humanity. Think about it, currently the scientific consensus is that singing actually came before speaking. It's those 12 tones that create the best sounding melodies and harmonies. The greatest composers of all time used them. Maybe you're a guy who likes impro jazz (which coincidentally uses micro tones), but most people don't.

But again, isn't this primarily a "western" phenomenon? That makes me think it isn't quite so clear cut

Side note: yes, I love love jazz in all its forms ^^

We know it goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks, don't know its prior origins or if it developed in parallel in other places.

The use of microtones, or rather lack thereof, is what I'm referring to (from a comment by pythko):

>I believe the GGP meant to refer to “microtones,” which are frequencies that don’t fall into the Twelve Tone Equal Temperament tuning system. These are commonly used in non-western music (Indian music is a typical example), and occasionally in some western music styles (blues, some jazz, some sub-genres of rock, maybe), but you’re not going to find microtones in most western music.

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