Hacker News Reader

Comment by joshlemer | Hacker News Reader

For those who haven't ever gotten into microtonal and other non-standard tuned music before, it's a really interesting space. I would highly recommend checking out Kyle Gann's album Hyperchromatica (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbT9oRbu3h8&list=PL1IsImnKxK...), which has a pretty wide variety of pieces/genres, showing the potential of nonstandard tuning. It takes a bit to get used to it but there are brand new colours and emotions that open up here IMO. Definitely worth checking out!

View on HN

Technically Bach was writing for microtonal music - his well tempered clavier was written to show how songs need to be played in the correct keys to sound right. He was against the systems of the day where some keys could not be used, but his preferred system had each key usable but sounding different. Playing them on a modern equal tempered instrument fails to capture what he was trying to show.

Highly recommend King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard for microtonal music too!

For example: https://kinggizzard.bandcamp.com/album/flying-microtonal-ban...

Zheanna Erose’s channel is a goldmine of microtonal music and discussion thereof.

https://youtube.com/@zheannaerose

Since this is HN, I'll point out that algorithmic music and microtonality go especially well together. In fact, shameless plug: I wrote an entire album this way, and it's open source:

https://github.com/pac-dev/AmbientGardenAlbum

While it's technically completely microtonal, I'll admit that most of the tones closely resemble conventional 12-tone equal temperament. Maybe that makes it more approachable, but I fully intend to go harder in that regard for the next album.

To add yet another example for those looking to try out microtonal music, Sevish's track Gleam[1] is upbeat/poppy and surprisingly palatable. It explores the crunchy textures of microtonal while resolving to familiar pop cadences and helped bridge the gap for me to start enjoying the spectrum of microtonal harmony.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9wINwlgxRU

Reply on news.ycombinator.com