Last updated Suite for Microtonal Piano microtonal tuning arranged in a chromatic scale. Harmonics indicated by notation or above the staff, just perfect fifths marked with slurs. Play
"The piano is tuned to a selection of overtones from the fifth octave of the harmonic spectrum of C. All octaves are tuned in the same scale....The lowest C (33 Hz.) can be used to tune the scale by ear. In succession, touch the nodes producing the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 11th, 13th, 17th, [and] 19th partials. Then G, D; D, A; E, B; [and] B-flat, F; are just (beatless) fifths."[2]
Movements
Alarum
Blues
Etude
Song
Toccata
Alarum is a Shakespeare era stage direction indicating "a grand entrance" and an archaic word for a call to arms, so "Alarum" is a fanfare.
"Etude" is a study in serial technique and six-against-five polyrhythms in which Johnston indicates "blur with pedal". This, "clues us in that the linear intricacies are only part of the story here: the amazing swirl of overtones resulting from an atonal application of this tuning are of equal importance."[2]
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.
In music, there are two common meanings for tuning:
Microtonal music or 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.
In music, sharp, dièse, or diesis
In music theory, the syntonic comma, also known as the chromatic diesis, the Didymean comma, the Ptolemaic comma, or the diatonic comma is a small comma type interval between two musical notes, equal to the frequency ratio 81:80 (= 1.0125). Two notes that differ by this interval would sound different from each other even to untrained ears, but would be close enough that they would be more likely interpreted as out-of-tune versions of the same note than as different notes. The comma is also referred to as a Didymean comma because it is the amount by which Didymus corrected the Pythagorean major third to a just major third.
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.
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."
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.
Sonata for Microtonal Piano is a sonata for specifically microtonally tuned piano by Ben Johnston written in 1964. When the movements are played in an alternate order the piece is titled Grindlemusic.
Twelve Microtonal Etudes for Electronic Music Media, Op. 28, is a set of pieces in various microtonal equal temperaments composed and released on LP in 1980 by American composer Easley Blackwood Jr.
Phillip Ramey is an American composer, pianist, and writer on music.
Mayer Joel Mandelbaum is an American music composer and teacher, best known for his use of microtonal tuning. He wrote the first Ph.D. dissertation on microtonality in 1961. He is married to stained glass artist Ellen Mandelbaum, and is the nephew of Abraham Edel.
Five-limit tuning, 5-limit tuning, or 5-prime-limit tuning (not to be confused with 5-odd-limit tuning), is any system for tuning a musical instrument that obtains the frequency of each note by multiplying the frequency of a given reference note (the base note) by products of integer powers of 2, 3, or 5 (prime numbers limited to 5 or lower), such as 2−3·31·51 = 15/8.
In musical tuning, a lattice "is a way of modeling the tuning relationships of a just intonation system. It is an array of points in a periodic multidimensional pattern. Each point on the lattice corresponds to a ratio. The lattice can be two-, three-, or n-dimensional, with each dimension corresponding to a different prime-number partial [pitch class]." When listed in a spreadsheet a lattice may be referred to as a tuning table.
Ptolemy's intense diatonic scale, also known as the Ptolemaic sequence, justly tuned major scale, Ptolemy's tense diatonic scale, or the syntonousdiatonic scale, is a tuning for the diatonic scale proposed by Ptolemy, and corresponding with modern 5-limit just intonation. While Ptolemy is famous for this version of just intonation, its important to realize this was only one of several genera of just, diatonic intonations he describes. He also describes 7-limit "soft" diatonics and an 11-limit "even" diatonic.
Among alternative tunings for the guitar, an overtones tuning selects its open-string notes from the overtone sequence of a fundamental note. An example is the open tuning constituted by the first six overtones of the fundamental note C, namely C2-C3-G3-C4-E4-G4.
John Fonville is a flutist and composer. Fonville specializes in extended techniques on the flute, especially microtonality, and performs on instruments including a complete set of quarter tone flutes. He has premiered works by composers including Ben Johnston, Salvatore Martirano, Joji Yuasa, Roger Reynolds, Hiroyuki Itoh, and Paul Koonce.
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