The great thing about 19-TET is that one can easily build a "major scale" on top of it, like 3-3-2-3-3-3-2 instead of 2-2-1-2-2-2-1, and it sounds familiar and alien at the same time. Nice piece of music, enjoyed listening.
That's what we call a 5L2s (5 Large steps / 2 small steps) or basic diatonic scale You can do it with 17edo too, 3 3 1 3 3 3 1 (But I'm more a fan of 3 1 3 3 3 1 3 '^-^) Then there tuninga like 13edo in which you can arrange 5L3s instead of 2s
A fair amount of microtonal compositions seem to use mt simply for the sake of doing so, but this builds around a well construced mt core melody. And the other mt elements (e.g. quick mt note/progression before chords) really adds to this piece (imo). Very nicely done. Like this a lot.
If you're thinking of microtonal music from the mid-to-late 20th Century, that might be because a lot of the non-pop music from that time period was as you say (except instead of for the sake of being microtonal, for the sake of being atonal, or 12-tone/serialist, or something like that). Fortunately, things have gotten better since then, and I have found a decent amount of microtonal stuff as well as non-microtonal stuff of recent vintage.
@@erickborling1302 I do love tapping into stuff not available or at least less satisfying or interesting in 12EDO, but I don't need a specific reason to pick another. A lot of stuff just sounds cooler and more colorful to me even if the same intervals could be approximated by 12EDO, and it's not like that's objectively the default option that's best when you don't have specific plans anyway. Play any given piece you like across different tunings that can do it, and you're likely to prefer one over the other, if it happens to be microtonal, it's not microtonal for the sake of being microtonal. All that said, I can pretty much never resist to give those strange intervals a big role anyway, it's definitely what's most exciting and awesome about it all to me, just a whole new world, and it usually just happens as I write by ear anyway. 22 is my personal favorite btw., also highly recommend that one!
This is probably one of my favorite xenharmonic pieces of all time, it's able to say so much with so few notes, and a lot of the intervals and emotions here are just impossible to say in 12edo
I'm new to microtonal music, and I think my ears are still adjusting, but I still thought that this was simply beautiful. Thank you so much for making this and sharing!
I was in the same boat lol. This was the song that got me into microtones in music actually. I used to play in my school band so hearing this sort of stuff really threw me for a loop, yet here I am coming back for more years later! Edit: I made a UA-cam playlist of just microtonal songs, and although I haven’t updated it in a while, and a little bit of it is made up of stuff I don’t necessarily like, I find that it’s a fun way to introduce people to new styles of music. If you like I can throw you the link.
This was pretty much the song that got me into microtonal music. Until I heard this I simply didn’t realize the potential of microtonality, I thought it was always gonna sound yucky to my “band kid” ears. Thank you so much for showing me that this kind of music can shine so bright!
@@Whatismusic123 I understand that viewpoint I suppose. Though I was commenting more about microtonality as a whole and the much expanded possibilities for expression afforded by it. Sorry if I didn’t make that as clear
@notisac3149 No, I get it completely. You make music diatonically and then add an out of tune note and then call it "microtonal". 🤣 because if you actually tried to make an entire piece with a bunch of microtones, it always falls apart and sounds trash, which is also why none exists that anyone cares about...
Been listening to this a few times now for a few months. Previously, I've had the impression that microtonal music are dissonant for the sake of being dissonant, which is a terrible stereotype towards microtonal music in general. I like this track, because it proves that microtonal music CAN sound beautiful, too, and are capable of producing very normal-sounding melodies, especially for someone with perfect pitch like myself.
This track is beautiful calming but yet eerie and it fits together somehow in a stunning but weird way. Thats what i find extremly beautiful about your music it is able to invoke such complex feelings which only few tracks can achieve.
Great job. I'm working hard at translating what i know of functional harmony into a few different EDO candidates 17, 19, 22, 24, 31 EDO all have different merits. Of course one can go straight to 53 EDO and you get very close to pure ratios plus lots of other stuff. The other thought I'm having is manually entering ratios when I make a .tun or scala file for a softsynth; really interested septimal ratios lately. I think 19 EDO has a lot going for it. 24 of course has immediacy but it's kind of harsh, perhaps I can manually temperate that out a bit. Everyone thinks microtonal = dissonance or so it seems but really there are new sororities to be explored and it can all be very funtional. The technology is there now to take advantage of.
Thanks! True, 24 is easy because you can translate the whole of 12tet harmony to it 1:1, but (aside from the fact that this kind of misses the point of xen,) the rest is sadly quite harsh. I’ve been on and off working on a 24tet vocal piece, essentially 12tet with quarter-tones mostly being used for passing-chords/melodies - it’s awesome for that, but I haven’t found much other uses for it. Fast-fast has an awesome 24tet track though, Sunshine. And yea, 17, 19, 22, and 31 all have a quite unique sound, but I have to say with respect to usability/practicality, 19tet has taken the cake for me personally
Finally a microtonal song that doesn't sound "weird" or too alien to chromatic music, at least for me the composition gives off a particular melancholy feel to it that is wonderful to hear :-)
Interesting sound. I was under the impression, years ago, that 19-TET was primarily used to remove dissonances caused by even temper, rather than add new ones. But microtonal music is cool.
I hear it in A major, but at one place it seems to alternate between A and A-flat, which is way out of the A major key signature, which uses a G-sharp, which is a step below A-flat. That makes the piece sound alien.
Beautiful. I like the midi visuals, but I wondered if the piano roll was still the traditional 12-TET one (the grid tells me "yes"). Having custom piano rolls (did I read somewhere that Reaper has that? Or another DAW?) for these specific kinds of visuals would be a neat way of seeing the intervals in play, a way of confirming the intervals that the ear detects (because the sound is most important at the end of the day, yadda yadda).
Thank you! Ya, this is a 12TET piano roll. I use Logic Pro - purely out of habit. It’s kind of a pain in the ass for microtonal because it doesn’t properly support microtonal tunings. It natively supports +-100 cent detuning for each of the 12 notes but (unless you use a =
Thank you! Honestly, I can’t tell you much about the theory behind this specific piece. The process was very much just trial and error, figuring out along the way what sounds good and what doesn’t. I will say though most of the the piece is diatonic in it’s nature, with a bunch of voice leading and melody using microtonal (/chromatic) steps. If you want to I can give a bit more of an extensive write-up of the musical opportunities I think microtonal tuning systems offer
There is another track playing a wind sound effect no (1:30) or is it just the echo? With all the chords and arpeggiated maj 9 with quarter notes, this reminds me of Minecraft music. A really nice piece.
This looks like Logic Pro X, if it is, how did you get microtones? I know there are preset 12 tone tuning methods you can use already, and a user one, but they only go up to 12. How did you get 19tet? This sounds awesome
Thanks! Yep, this is logic. The trick, essentially, is to not tell logic. The plugin I used supports a feature called full microtonal retuning. Basically, you give the plugin a scale and one note to anchor itself to and then the plugin will map any incoming midi data onto that new scale. There's multiple ways of how exactly you go about doing this depending on what plugin you're using but a lot of plugins use .kbm and .scl files. The .kbm (keyboard mapping) will contain a midi note (say 69 which is A4 on a standard 12TET keyboard map) and a frequency (for example 440Hz like pretty much all Western music is tuned to) - acting as the anchor. The .scl file will contain the cent or fraction values of the specific scale you're using. So the whole retuning process happens inside the plugin. There's a bunch of problems though that arise when you compose microtonal music in a program made for 12TET. The piano roll doesn't match the notes you're hearing, keyboard shortcuts for octave transposition don't work anymore, the piano roll suddenly seems sparse, plugins that use different methods of retuning have to be matched in pitch, and so on. And these problems only increase the more notes per octave you use. It's obviously not ideal but I really like logic and the limitations pose somewhat of a challenge which, weirdly enough, inspires me.
@@KadeSound I didn't noticed though, I was listening without earphones and in a sunny day :P Yeah, it sounds like a m7 with octaved 3rd voicing skipping the 5th
The great thing about 19-TET is that one can easily build a "major scale" on top of it, like 3-3-2-3-3-3-2 instead of 2-2-1-2-2-2-1, and it sounds familiar and alien at the same time.
Nice piece of music, enjoyed listening.
I suppose the same goes for a minor scale then?
@@johnny14980 pretty much yea and any of the modes. some work better than others though.
That's what we call a 5L2s (5 Large steps / 2 small steps) or basic diatonic scale
You can do it with 17edo too, 3 3 1 3 3 3 1 (But I'm more a fan of 3 1 3 3 3 1 3 '^-^)
Then there tuninga like 13edo in which you can arrange 5L3s instead of 2s
3-3-2-3-3-3-2, as intervals between 13-months years in the metonic cycle :)
I like how it sounds so normal, but then there's this alien sound when certain notes are played. And I absolutely love it. Bravo!
A fair amount of microtonal compositions seem to use mt simply for the sake of doing so, but this builds around a well construced mt core melody. And the other mt elements (e.g. quick mt note/progression before chords) really adds to this piece (imo). Very nicely done. Like this a lot.
If you're thinking of microtonal music from the mid-to-late 20th Century, that might be because a lot of the non-pop music from that time period was as you say (except instead of for the sake of being microtonal, for the sake of being atonal, or 12-tone/serialist, or something like that). Fortunately, things have gotten better since then, and I have found a decent amount of microtonal stuff as well as non-microtonal stuff of recent vintage.
I don't agree with your first sentence. 19 tet is a great choice. So is 31.
@@erickborling1302 I do love tapping into stuff not available or at least less satisfying or interesting in 12EDO, but I don't need a specific reason to pick another. A lot of stuff just sounds cooler and more colorful to me even if the same intervals could be approximated by 12EDO, and it's not like that's objectively the default option that's best when you don't have specific plans anyway. Play any given piece you like across different tunings that can do it, and you're likely to prefer one over the other, if it happens to be microtonal, it's not microtonal for the sake of being microtonal.
All that said, I can pretty much never resist to give those strange intervals a big role anyway, it's definitely what's most exciting and awesome about it all to me, just a whole new world, and it usually just happens as I write by ear anyway. 22 is my personal favorite btw., also highly recommend that one!
This is probably one of my favorite xenharmonic pieces of all time, it's able to say so much with so few notes, and a lot of the intervals and emotions here are just impossible to say in 12edo
Im totally using 19TET in a game soundtrack
@@FluffyBunniesOnFire How can you get in trouble listening to microtonal music,, like, the cops get to your door when you listen to it?
@@cactusowo1835 the western music theory cops that is
Same here, but I will be utilizing 19 TET, 31 TET, 24 TET, 12 TET, 41 TET, and 53 TET for my ost.
I'm new to microtonal music, and I think my ears are still adjusting, but I still thought that this was simply beautiful. Thank you so much for making this and sharing!
I was in the same boat lol. This was the song that got me into microtones in music actually. I used to play in my school band so hearing this sort of stuff really threw me for a loop, yet here I am coming back for more years later!
Edit: I made a UA-cam playlist of just microtonal songs, and although I haven’t updated it in a while, and a little bit of it is made up of stuff I don’t necessarily like, I find that it’s a fun way to introduce people to new styles of music. If you like I can throw you the link.
@@notisac3149 That sounds great! And I’d definitely appreciate the link; thank you.
@@PunmasterSTP Here you go, hopefully you enjoy at least a couple of these:
ua-cam.com/play/PLLq_lc1cAimzXjFjSFgZUDF1QlxqVsTcg.html
@@notisac3149 Thanks so much! I already started listening to it.
This was pretty much the song that got me into microtonal music. Until I heard this I simply didn’t realize the potential of microtonality, I thought it was always gonna sound yucky to my “band kid” ears.
Thank you so much for showing me that this kind of music can shine so bright!
it has potential for difference, but improvement? no. 19 tet has too many flaws to replace 12 tet
@@Whatismusic123 I understand that viewpoint I suppose. Though I was commenting more about microtonality as a whole and the much expanded possibilities for expression afforded by it. Sorry if I didn’t make that as clear
This has like 2 legit microtones in the whole thing...
@@dickrichard626 Odd how I'm getting the feeling that you don't understand how this stuff works, isn't it?
@notisac3149 No, I get it completely. You make music diatonically and then add an out of tune note and then call it "microtonal". 🤣 because if you actually tried to make an entire piece with a bunch of microtones, it always falls apart and sounds trash, which is also why none exists that anyone cares about...
Love the track! Awesome to see a new microtonal artist! Been geeking out on all the popular ones for about 1.5 years now.
1:29 the last note before (and then) the chord, so perfect. Thanks for sharing.
That note is literally better than drugs
Major feels. The melody at about 1:20 hit me super hard. I will definitely be revisiting this one.
0:27 to 0:40 sounds really good!
This is one of the best treatments of 19 tet/edo music that I've heard. Beautiful melody, exquisite harmonies, wonderful tonality and emotion.
love the vibe of 19tet. So beautiful and awe-inspiring.
Been listening to this a few times now for a few months. Previously, I've had the impression that microtonal music are dissonant for the sake of being dissonant, which is a terrible stereotype towards microtonal music in general. I like this track, because it proves that microtonal music CAN sound beautiful, too, and are capable of producing very normal-sounding melodies, especially for someone with perfect pitch like myself.
You should listen to some stuff by sevish. easily the best microtonal producer out there.
@@1qxd I've already listened to some of Sevish's tracks. Thanks, anyway. XD
This track is beautiful calming but yet eerie and it fits together somehow in a stunning but weird way. Thats what i find extremly beautiful about your music it is able to invoke such complex feelings which only few tracks can achieve.
I enjoyed that a lot!
This music is inventing new emotions god damn...
Great job. I'm working hard at translating what i know of functional harmony into a few different EDO candidates 17, 19, 22, 24, 31 EDO all have different merits. Of course one can go straight to 53 EDO and you get very close to pure ratios plus lots of other stuff. The other thought I'm having is manually entering ratios when I make a .tun or scala file for a softsynth; really interested septimal ratios lately. I think 19 EDO has a lot going for it. 24 of course has immediacy but it's kind of harsh, perhaps I can manually temperate that out a bit. Everyone thinks microtonal = dissonance or so it seems but really there are new sororities to be explored and it can all be very funtional. The technology is there now to take advantage of.
Thanks! True, 24 is easy because you can translate the whole of 12tet harmony to it 1:1, but (aside from the fact that this kind of misses the point of xen,) the rest is sadly quite harsh. I’ve been on and off working on a 24tet vocal piece, essentially 12tet with quarter-tones mostly being used for passing-chords/melodies - it’s awesome for that, but I haven’t found much other uses for it. Fast-fast has an awesome 24tet track though, Sunshine. And yea, 17, 19, 22, and 31 all have a quite unique sound, but I have to say with respect to usability/practicality, 19tet has taken the cake for me personally
This was surprisingly good! I've looked into lots of different tuning systems besides 12, this is the best one. Great Work!
It's so subtle, so... soft. Thank you very much!
This is really good
ikr omg
this is so absurdly cool. i'm glad i discovered microtonal music.
Dude, this is so amazing
This is so nice
ok
ok
Finally a microtonal song that doesn't sound "weird" or too alien to chromatic music, at least for me the composition gives off a particular melancholy feel to it that is wonderful to hear :-)
Interesting sound. I was under the impression, years ago, that 19-TET was primarily used to remove dissonances caused by even temper, rather than add new ones. But microtonal music is cool.
Clean, clear and a super demonstration of 19-tet!
This is incredibly well done! I hope I can finish a project in 19tet sometime
This is so beautiful, I saw you haven't uploaded in a while. I hope you're ok and we get to see a comeback!
I am so happy I am discovering this!
Really like this vibe, super relaxing
this sounds heavenly
Nice.
19 TET sounds so good that when someone wants to start doing xen music I recommend 19. And 5 TET. Plus 2 TET (tritones all the way down!).
I hear it in A major, but at one place it seems to alternate between A and A-flat, which is way out of the A major key signature, which uses a G-sharp, which is a step below A-flat. That makes the piece sound alien.
Seriously though its unlike anything I've heard before this is awesome
Ngl, I'm pretty sure 50 of these views came from just me... I just can't get enough of this!
Great Stuff!
This would fit well in 4D miner.
Beautiful!
Beautiful.
I like the midi visuals, but I wondered if the piano roll was still the traditional 12-TET one (the grid tells me "yes").
Having custom piano rolls (did I read somewhere that Reaper has that? Or another DAW?) for these specific kinds of visuals would be a neat way of seeing the intervals in play, a way of confirming the intervals that the ear detects (because the sound is most important at the end of the day, yadda yadda).
Thank you! Ya, this is a 12TET piano roll. I use Logic Pro - purely out of habit. It’s kind of a pain in the ass for microtonal because it doesn’t properly support microtonal tunings. It natively supports +-100 cent detuning for each of the 12 notes but (unless you use a =
Very very good!
very cool
very nice
Major scale (or any diatonic 7-note) in 19edo corresponds to the way leap years in lunar 19-year cycle are arranged (such as in the Hebrew calendar).
Yes, and the white keys in ordinary (12 TET) keyboard corresponds to the 31 days months in the usual gregorian calendar :)
Yes yes yes this is it
Nice chords at the end
Broseph,this is Richard D James-level, and I don't say that lightly
could you explain the theory that you used for this. Like what key is it in and what scale and chords did you use etc. Thanks, it sounds great!
Thank you! Honestly, I can’t tell you much about the theory behind this specific piece. The process was very much just trial and error, figuring out along the way what sounds good and what doesn’t. I will say though most of the the piece is diatonic in it’s nature, with a bunch of voice leading and melody using microtonal (/chromatic) steps. If you want to I can give a bit more of an extensive write-up of the musical opportunities I think microtonal tuning systems offer
@@seasonsof-microtonalmusic5589 That'd be great thank you. My email is nihaljsingh@hotmail.com
There is another track playing a wind sound effect no (1:30) or is it just the echo? With all the chords and arpeggiated maj 9 with quarter notes, this reminds me of Minecraft music. A really nice piece.
Thank you! The sound at 1:30 is just the late reflection of the reverb
This looks like Logic Pro X, if it is, how did you get microtones? I know there are preset 12 tone tuning methods you can use already, and a user one, but they only go up to 12. How did you get 19tet? This sounds awesome
Thanks! Yep, this is logic. The trick, essentially, is to not tell logic. The plugin I used supports a feature called full microtonal retuning. Basically, you give the plugin a scale and one note to anchor itself to and then the plugin will map any incoming midi data onto that new scale. There's multiple ways of how exactly you go about doing this depending on what plugin you're using but a lot of plugins use .kbm and .scl files. The .kbm (keyboard mapping) will contain a midi note (say 69 which is A4 on a standard 12TET keyboard map) and a frequency (for example 440Hz like pretty much all Western music is tuned to) - acting as the anchor. The .scl file will contain the cent or fraction values of the specific scale you're using.
So the whole retuning process happens inside the plugin. There's a bunch of problems though that arise when you compose microtonal music in a program made for 12TET. The piano roll doesn't match the notes you're hearing, keyboard shortcuts for octave transposition don't work anymore, the piano roll suddenly seems sparse, plugins that use different methods of retuning have to be matched in pitch, and so on. And these problems only increase the more notes per octave you use. It's obviously not ideal but I really like logic and the limitations pose somewhat of a challenge which, weirdly enough, inspires me.
I'll definitely have to try this out then!
2:18 This is a fourth but it sounds like a m7 chord 🤔
There’s a bass note below it that is the root of that m7 chord spelling (root, m7, m3)
@@KadeSound I didn't noticed though, I was listening without earphones and in a sunny day :P
Yeah, it sounds like a m7 with octaved 3rd voicing skipping the 5th
Very impressive. So is this composed with a 19 tone scale?
Thank you. Yep, it’s an e piano VST that’s retuned to have 19 tones per octave instead of 12
0:53 I can’t not
What is the scale?
Are you on Spotify?
Not yet but I’m looking to sign up for Distrokid soon
@@seasonsof-microtonalmusic5589 Can't wait!
would love to know what this vst you're using is. It's so good.
Thanks, it’s a plugin called EP-MK1 (basically default preset) drowned in reverb!
@@seasonsof-microtonalmusic5589 Hi, are you interested in 19-TET semiquartal harmony? ua-cam.com/video/L8zkQp4egp0/v-deo.html
way too much reverb for my taste