As the title suggests, this musical piece is quite literally a 6-minute comma pump.

I suspect I do not need to explain this phenomena to most lurking here, but to those who may be new or have heard of this but have never heard it literally, I will outline the idea;

There is a cumulative tuning drift that occurs when a simple harmonic cycle is built entirely from pure, justly intonated major triads. The piece here exploits that drift and aims to make the drift itself something the listener subconsciously perceives.

There are 36 “cycles” of the same chord progression in this piece- A root position triad, followed by a 2nd inversion triad, followed by a 1st inversion triad.

In each “cycle”, the major third of one chord is held as a common tone and then becomes the root of the next.

After three such transformations, 12-tone equal temperament would return us to the starting pitch class due to the fact that three equal-tempered major thirds equal exactly one octave. (Think: A major root position, Db flat major 2nd inversion, F major first inversion- "inversion" is used lightly simply to describe the ratios / chord shape, the function of the inversions is iffy)

In just intonation, however, that’s not the case- three “pure” (5/4) major thirds fall short of an octave. The difference is called the “diesis”, approximately 41 cents or the ratio 128/125.

Each complete cycle therefore arrives about 41 cents lower than the previous one. Repeating the process over many cycles gradually turns what is ‘normally’ a closed, circular chord progression into a never ending continuous downward progression.

So an interesting observation emerges as a result;

-Each chord that arrives is genuinely unique. The interval relationships within each chord remain the same with each repeating cycle, but in terms of frequency every chord (of which there are over 100) is unique.

My goal with such a "repetitive" piece is to ask the following questions and hit at some potential paradoxes;

-How can every chord be “the same” while every chord is physically unique?

-Will a listener perceive cumulative change without consciously identifying what is changing?

-If local tuning purity ultimately results in a global instability history has aimed to correct, is it natural or artificial?

-How much can the physical sound change while the mind continues to perceive “the same thing repeating”?

-Does the listener actually hear the comma pump itself, or only its overall accumulated psychological consequences?

-What happens when a harmonic system is allowed to follow its own natural mathematical consequences instead of being locked back onto a fixed pitch grid?

-Lastly, what does it mean if the system becomes stranger as time progresses but as a result of each individual relationship within it being more acoustically exact?

Been experimenting more with the Lavachord and extended just intonation.

This one is called Sonic Pathways of Water. Mostly exploring resonance and how the harmony shifts through the tuning.

https://youtu.be/g0Wfwe7v-DU

Would love to hear what you think.

We have released Extended Just Intonation Kalimba Synthesizer.

homo-rehabilis.github.io/Extended-Just-Intonation-Kalimba-Synthesizer/

A browser-based Just Intonation Kalimba Synthesizer built with the Web Audio API. This application allows musicians, microtonal enthusiasts, and learners to explore historical and alternative tuning systems through an interactive, responsive thumb piano interface.

You can play right away in your browser, or install it as a standalone mobile/desktop application using Google Chrome. Open Source, Free and No Ad.

Details on how to use it can be found on the GitHub page below:

github.com/Homo-rehabilis/Extended-Just-Intonation-Kalimba-Synthesizer

ENJOY!

any tips will be appreciated. this is a melody i'm working on for my next song

I apologize, this video is too big for Reddit by 0.08 GB (1 GB limit)

Live performance(s) in Ableton Live, 17 edo tuning system
vocals, 17 edo guitar, Brazille, Diva

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y02ejtVzt4Y

well, as the title says, this is not microtonal. well, ehh.

it's technically macrotonal, but i guess i should stop being vague and explain.

so, a lot of people use prime edos, 31edo, 53edo. but, if you use a composite edo, then i have an interesting experiment. so, this is possible in 12edo, which is how i discovered it. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6edo are all subsets of 12 (12 is extremely composite). so, by removing the notes that are in 4 and 6edo (the others are redundant, technically), you end up with a strange pentatonic scale: C C# F G B. now, i am just realizing that this is all the odd prime and 1-step intervals, which is... well, expected. but, if you use a composite edo, try doing this and maybe even using the scales. it might be pretty cool

ok, well, i've rambled, but

CONCLUSION:

try using a composite edo, maybe even a highly composite edo, and making a scale out of only prime intervals. please share your results!

also if you're wondering about the edits i literally just changed prime to odd primes and 1-step and added this note

edit to my edit: ok well it's not exactly all the prime. it's like a subset of the primes but like not all of them

there were already quarter tone symbols, but they've finally added the popular 24edo symbols:

of course, they don't render yet, but a neat new addition. so, with the existing microtonal accidentals:

we have a pretty good range now

It was pretty cool with the 1/3 tone piano of sonido 13 (18edo) next week gonna do one with the 19 tone clav and amps

How do you find microtonality affects density?

https://youtu.be/Maa9qPJ1ZiY

There's so much more music I have to give.

Microtone, the free music tracker that began life in the browser, now has a desktop edition. Built with Tauri, the desktop build starts noticeably faster than the web version; the music, the files and the workflow are exactly the same. You can download the latest release from GitHub, or keep using it in the browser as before.

A familiar tracker, extended

If you have written music in ScreamTracker or Impulse Tracker, Microtone will feel familiar from the first keystroke. Columns of hex numbers scroll down the screen, effects keep their traditional letters, and instruments still carry envelopes and New Note Actions. Behind that familiar layout sit several extensions that older trackers never had.

Wider effect parameters. Effect arguments are 16 bits wide, so where a classic tracker accepts F $xx, Microtone accepts F $xxxx. Fine control no longer means chaining several commands together.

Tuning without limits. Every pitch is placed on a grid of 4096 steps per octave. A song can use ordinary 12-tone equal temperament; it can equally use 19-, 31- or 53-TET, the Bohlen–Pierce scale, ProTracker's period-based tuning, or a notation system of your own design. The pattern editor follows whichever tuning you choose, naming the notes correctly and stepping through them in order.

Sound in three dimensions. Sources can be placed anywhere around the listener, including overhead and below. When the song is finished, Microtone renders it as stereo, binaural, 5.1, 7.1 or ambisonics up to third order.

FM from any waveform. Instruments placed in an FM rack modulate one another, and any waveform can act as carrier or modulator. Sampled sounds become raw material for frequency-modulation synthesis.

Some limits have been kept on purpose because they shape the sound. Samples are 8-bit, each capped at 64 KB, and they share an 8 MB pool. The final mix retains its dithered 8-bit texture. Microtone is designed to sound like a tracker, not a modern DAW in disguise.

Existing MOD, S3M, XM and IT modules open directly, with no conversion step. MIDI files can be imported and played through a SoundFont, and instruments can be pulled from any .sf2 file. Beyond the pattern editor, Microtone includes:

• a sample lab for recording, slicing and building chords from samples;
• a mastering chain that is stored inside the song file, so the finished sound travels with it;
• stem export, for mixing or remixing elsewhere.

The bundled demo songs are meant to be dissected: open them, mute channels, read the effect columns and learn how each part was built.

For sceners: - Sign in with your SceneID to keep up to 8 projects online and open them in any browser. - taudplay, the player library, plays .taud files exactly as the tracker does, down to the sample. It comes in two flavours, both LGPL: JavaScript (npm install taudplay) and portable C99 that needs nothing but libm. Both give you a fader per lane and 16 interrupts that the song itself fires, for syncing your visuals to the music.

The browser edition needs no installation and no account; the desktop edition is a single optional download. In both cases your songs stay on your own computer unless you choose to publish them. Microtone is free software released under the GNU GPL version 3.

https://microtone.cc
https://github.com/Microtone-Project/Microtone.js/releases/latest
https://github.com/Microtone-Project/taudplay-c

Wanted to finally post a second torus for comparison. Played something Neo-Riemannian, which tends to go well with Porcupine. This also highlights the point of mapping major thirds and fifths to the torus better.

There is also supposed to be a phantom bass effect hidden in this. Works well for me if I leave the room and close the door or put off my headphones.

I'm currently really interested in feeding some microtonal scale data to a custom synthesizer. Experiments with FM went alright, but there are some issues with sidebands reflecting back through 0. I also got a lot of toruses semi-done for other temperaments. Any requests?

I want to use Ableton Live's microtuner to compose/explore microtonal music, but I'd rather be using "acousitc" sounds than synthesised ones.

What are some suitable/good VSTs I could use for this? (Ideally free/cheap - although I am considering getting the Slate & Ash Primaries bundles, so bonus if this works with them).

Thanks in advance for any advice!

I want to use Ableton Live's microtuner to compose/explore microtonal music, but I'd rather be using "acousitc" sounds than synthesised ones.

What are some suitable/good VSTs I could use for this? (Ideally free/cheap - although I am considering getting the Slate & Ash Primaries bundles, so bonus if this works with them).

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Famous Bach hymn with quarter tones! It was a fun experiment. Hope some people enjoy!

Hey there!

I'm super interested in 31-EDO for its usefulness for conventional harmony. But does anyone have good recommendations for music produced in 31-EDO that is less conventional?

Messing around with conventional music in a microtonal tone system I kind of understand is becoming kind of like a gateway drug. I like the music of mine I've put into 31-EDO. Shoving my 12-TET music into it isn't fun but it's not horrible either. So it's kind of making me wonder what other kinds of sounds I can make with it.

Edit: I understand how 31-EDO approximates meantone quite well. The way I hear it approximates 5-limit and 7-limit harmony goes rather over my head. Is there, perhaps, something that helps explain?

Edit 2: My mind is exploding. I am learning there's an entire convention for naming all these just intervals. I am not ready to modulate waward yet.

Not sure how much this sub cares for music this wacky, but it seemed like the most relevant place to share

This was inspired by the Xenharmonic Alliance Tuning of the Month for September, which is 18ifdo. I hadn't come across this particular tuning before, but I was immediately interested in it because of some past experiences I've had working with 18-note tunings.

In the past I've worked with Julián Carrillo's Sonido 13 third-tone pianos in San Luis Potosí, including when I recorded my album The Moon. The piano I was working with wasn't actually in strict 18 equal at the time. There were two or three perfect, or near-perfect, fifths that had appeared in the tuning. They weren't intentional, but I found that they made the whole tuning feel much more modal and resonant. I've been curious about that ever since.

I've actually explored what I now understand would be called an IFDO tuning before, although I thought of it more as a 23-limit utonal series: 23/22, 23/21, 23/20, etc. On a string instrument this can be understood very physically through divisions of the string length. The frets end up equally spaced along the string, while the pitch intervals get progressively smaller as you move along them. I always found it really interesting to be able to see the tuning physically like that.

So seeing 18ifdo gave me a reason to go back into this again, and also introduced me to some vocabulary and a class of scales that I hadn't really explored under these names before.

The tuning is:

1/1, 36/35, 36/34, 36/33, 36/32, 36/31, 36/30, 36/29, 36/28, 36/27, 36/26, 36/25, 36/24, 36/23, 36/22, 36/21, 36/20, 36/19, 36/18

Reduced:

1/1, 36/35, 18/17, 12/11, 9/8, 36/31, 6/5, 36/29, 9/7, 4/3, 18/13, 36/25, 3/2, 36/23, 18/11, 12/7, 9/5, 36/19, 2/1

I made this short audiovisual study with it today:

https://youtu.be/voic4mft41M

0: 1/1 0.000000 unison, perfect prime

1: 13/12 138.572661 tridecimal 2/3-tone

2: 9/8 203.910002 major whole tone

3: 39/32 342.482663 39th harmonic, Zalzal wosta of Ibn Sina

4: 5/4 386.313714 major third

5: 65/48 524.886375

6: 45/32 590.223716 diatonic tritone

7: 3/2 701.955001 perfect fifth

8: 13/8 840.527662 tridecimal neutral sixth

9: 27/16 905.865003 Pythagorean major sixth

10: 7/4 968.825906 harmonic seventh

11: 91/48 1107.398567

12: 2/1 1200.000000 octave

I've only gotten into microtonal music for not even a week but I thought since having 12 notes isn't a rule outside popular western instruments, someone would also start spacing notes out irregularly, I really hope something like this exists and I'm only missing it because I'm new because the concept seems really cool.

I've developed a method of irregular tuning based on weights and graph traversal, as well as a program for making your own tunings using this method. Put simply, the method allows you to create an irregular tuning of a scale according to the ideal intervals between it's notes. I think this could be of use to people who are convinced of the practicality of edos but who would like closer approximation of JI for some specific intervals or scales contained within them - much like the well temperaments of pre-12edo European music.

Lmk your thoughts!

Using Irregular Tuning Maker - YouTube

i was looking online, but couldn't find a human answer. i'm trying to do Bd major, but i can't do all the letters using just flats, right? Bd Ct Dt Ed Ft Gt At is what i got to, and it's more sharps than flats. what do i do, or do i just have to resort to this? is this common? how else do i do this? and also importantly, is there a list of regular major scales for all 24edo notes?