Jon Catler

Last updated
Jon Catler
Genres blues, jazz rock, contemporary music, microtonal music
Occupation(s)Composer, Guitarist
InstrumentGuitar
Years active1993–present
LabelsFreeNote Records
Website www.freenotemusic.com

Jon Catler is an American composer and guitarist specially known for playing microtonal guitars like 31-tone equal tempered guitar, a 62-tone just intonation guitar, and a fretless neck. [1] He is the member of Catler Bros and Willie McBlind bands.

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Catler is the founder of microtonal music label, FreeNote Records [2] and has appeared in Montreal Jazz Festival.

Jon Catler has been an advocate of microtonal music since the early '80s. Unlike his main influences Harry Partch and LaMonte Young, he applied the principles of the Just Intonation system to rock and jazz music, becoming a rare example of a microtonal axe player. Apart from performing and recording, he also cofounded the American Festival of Microtonal Music and the World Out of Tune Festival, established a microtonal music record label (FreeNote Music), and designed microtonal frets for electric guitars and basses.

Jon Catler first learned to play guitar the conventional way. He grew up listening to Albert King, Jeff Beck, and Jimi Hendrix (but also ear-opening jazz saxophonists John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman), mastering the instrument's basics and playing in various groups with his brother Brad Catler, a bassist and percussionist. In 1978, Catler's curiosity about microtonal music was ignited when he read an article about Ivor Darreg. He contacted him and the guitarist located for him a 31-tone guitar available for sale. From this point onward, Catler never went back to the 12-tone equal tempered system.

Catler worked his way gradually through increasingly higher divisions of the octave and now alternates between a 31-tone equal tempered guitar, a 62-tone Just Intonation guitar, and a fretless neck. As he learned to master his custom-made instruments, he applied the new sounds in his jazz-rock outfits the Microtones and Just Intonation. All the while he established a lasting musical relationship with seminal minimalist music figure LaMonte Young, playing on LaMonte Young and the Forever Bad Blues Band and touring Europe and the U.S. with the group.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Catler's activities have been divided between jazz-rock and contemporary music. He has appeared in many jazz festivals, including the Montreal Jazz Festival. His power trio Catler Bros. released Crash Landing in 1996 on his own record label established for the occasion, attracting some attention from the rock guitar press. Swallow, a rock band, began its activities in 2001.

On the other hand, he has performed the music of Charles Ives and Harry Partch, has recorded a set of art songs with soprano Meredith Borden (Birdhouse), has helped found and organize the American Festival of Microtonal Music since the mid-1980s and, with Young's cosponsorship premiered in 2001 the World Out of Tune Festival in New York City. His ambitious work Evolution for Electric Guitar and Orchestra, also released on FreeNote, headlined the event. His book The Nature of Music, a direct reference to Partch's landmark Genesis of a Music, summarizes his approach to what he calls "Nature's harmonic tuning system."

Discography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Just intonation</span> Musical tuning based on pure intervals

In music, just intonation or pure intonation is the tuning of musical intervals as whole number ratios of frequencies. An interval tuned in this way is said to be pure, and is called a just interval. Just intervals consist of tones from a single harmonic series of an implied fundamental. For example, in the diagram, if the notes G3 and C4 are tuned as members of the harmonic series of the lowest C, their frequencies will be 3 and 4 times the fundamental frequency. The interval ratio between C4 and G3 is therefore 4:3, a just fourth.

Microtonality is the use in music of microtones — intervals smaller than a semitone, also called "microintervals". It may also be extended to include any music using intervals not found in the customary Western tuning of twelve equal intervals per octave. In other words, a microtone may be thought of as a note that falls "between the keys" of a piano tuned in equal temperament.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harry Partch</span> American composer (1901–1974)

Harry Partch was an American composer, music theorist, and creator of unique musical instruments. He composed using scales of unequal intervals in just intonation, and was one of the first 20th-century composers in the West to work systematically with microtonal scales, alongside Lou Harrison. He built his own instruments in these tunings on which to play his compositions, and described the method behind his theory and practice in his book Genesis of a Music (1947).

In jazz and blues, a blue note is a note that—for expressive purposes—is sung or played at a slightly different pitch from standard. Typically the alteration is between a quartertone and a semitone, but this varies depending on the musical context.

Benjamin Burwell Johnston Jr. was an American contemporary music composer, known for his use of just intonation. He was called "one of the foremost composers of microtonal music" by Philip Bush and "one of the best non-famous composers this country has to offer" by John Rockwell.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xenharmonic music</span> Music that uses a tuning system outside of 12-TET

Xenharmonic music is music that uses a tuning system that is unlike the 12-tone equal temperament scale. It was named by Ivor Darreg, from the Greek Xenos meaning both foreign and hospitable. He stated that it was "intended to include just intonation and such temperaments as the 5-, 7-, and 11-tone, along with the higher-numbered really-microtonal systems as far as one wishes to go."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kyle Gann</span> Musical artist

Kyle Eugene Gann is an American composer, professor of music, critic, analyst, and musicologist who has worked primarily in the New York City area. As a music critic for The Village Voice and other publications, he has supported progressive music, including such "downtown" movements as postminimalism and totalism.

A schismatic temperament is a musical tuning system that results from tempering the schisma of 32805:32768 to a unison. It is also called the schismic temperament, Helmholtz temperament, or quasi-Pythagorean temperament.

Ivor Darreg was an American composer and leading proponent of microtonal or "xenharmonic" music. He also created a series of experimental musical instruments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quarter tone</span> Musical interval

A quarter tone is a pitch halfway between the usual notes of a chromatic scale or an interval about half as wide as a semitone, which itself is half a whole tone. Quarter tones divide the octave by 50 cents each, and have 24 different pitches.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fretless guitar</span> Type of guitar

A fretless guitar is a guitar with a fingerboard without frets, typically a standard instrument that has had the frets removed, though some custom-built and commercial fretless guitars are occasionally made. The classic fretless guitar was first pioneered in 1976 by Turkish musician Erkan Oğur. Fretless bass guitars are readily available, with most major guitar manufacturers producing fretless models.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jazz bass</span> Use of the double bass or electric bass guitar as a jazz instrument

Jazz bass is the use of the double bass or electric bass guitar to improvise accompaniment ("comping") basslines and solos in a jazz or jazz fusion style. Players began using the double bass in jazz in the 1890s to supply the low-pitched walking basslines that outlined the chord progressions of the songs. From the 1920s and 1930s Swing and big band era, through 1940s Bebop and 1950s Hard Bop, to the 1960s-era "free jazz" movement, the resonant, woody sound of the double bass anchored everything from small jazz combos to large jazz big bands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Schneider (guitarist)</span> American classical guitarist

John Schneider is a Grammy® Award winning and 4-time Grammy® nominated American classical guitarist. He performs in just intonation and various well-temperaments, including Pythagorean tuning, including works by Lou Harrison, LaMonte Young, John Cage, and Harry Partch. He often arranges pieces for guitar and other instruments such as harp or percussion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">31 equal temperament</span> In music, a microtonal tuning system

In music, 31 equal temperament, 31 ET, which can also be abbreviated 31 TET or 31 EDO, also known as tricesimoprimal, is the tempered scale derived by dividing the octave into 31 equally-proportioned steps. Each step represents a frequency ratio of 31√2 , or 38.71 cents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">19 equal temperament</span>

In music, 19 equal temperament, called 19 TET, 19 EDO, 19-ED2 or 19 ET, is the tempered scale derived by dividing the octave into 19 equal steps. Each step represents a frequency ratio of 19√2, or 63.16 cents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Experimental musical instrument</span> Musical instrument that modifies an existing class of instruments

An experimental musical instrument is a musical instrument that modifies or extends an existing instrument or class of instruments, or defines or creates a new class of instrument. Some are created through simple modifications, such as cracked cymbals or metal objects inserted between piano strings in a prepared piano. Some experimental instruments are created from household items like a homemade mute for brass instruments such as bathtub plugs. Other experimental instruments are created from electronic spare parts, or by mixing acoustic instruments with electric components.

<i>Genesis of a Music</i> Book by Harry Partch

Genesis of a Music is a book first published in 1949 by microtonal composer Harry Partch (1901–1974).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Instruments by Harry Partch</span>

The American composer Harry Partch (1901-1974) composed using scales of unequal intervals in just intonation, derived from the natural Harmonic series; these scales allowed for more tones of smaller intervals than in the standard Western tuning, which uses twelve equal intervals. The tonal system Partch used has 43 tones to the octave. To play this music he invented and built many new instruments, with names such as the Chromelodeon, the Quadrangularis Reversum, and the Zymo-Xyl.

References

  1. ↑ François Couture, allmusic, Jon Catler, retrieved: 12/27/2012
  2. ↑ FreeNote website, Jon Catler Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine , retrieved: 12/27/2012
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