Your Gateway into Microtonality

A video to get you excited about stepping outside the 12 tone equal temperament & six other audio links...

I made it! My first time sharing a bunch of links, I hope you’ll enjoy them. Here are some things new & old that I think you should see:

• Your Gateway into Microtonality: If you grew up in the West you’ve probably had little exposure to microtonal music, making any note outside the twelve that we use sound out of tune. Luckily it seems these days that music written outside the 12 tone equal temperament is getting more and more recognition, with what feels to me as a surge in pitch-related experimentation. French musician Grégoire Blanc has made a beautiful and entrancing contribution to the movement. In the piece it’s as if with every passing second, your mind and ears slowly assimilate to the use of unfamiliar pitches and intervals. Blanc uses microtonality in such a understated way that you only vaguely recognize what’s happening, while the effects can definitely be felt viscerally. A pretty good place to start your microtonal journey, I would say.¹

• Gamelan orchestra meets fourth-world jazz producer: One of my favorite musicians right now is John Carroll Kirby. He recently released his album ‘Blowout’², where he once again demonstrates his ability to write tracks that sound like a 1970’s jazz band jamming on a space cruise heading to Jupiter. Besides from producing music for himself and others³, he has an irregular series on the Stones Throw YouTube-channel where he interviews artists from different musical cultures and jams with them. In the latest episode of Kirby’s Gold he meets Indonesian artist Putu Septa, who leads a gamelan orchestra. Besides from it being a good watch purely for the vibes, the session at the end with the orchestra + Kirby on synth is an amalgamation I would like to hear more of.

• The birth of minimalism: this two-part documentary⁴ by BBC Four from 2018 shows how and why minimalist music (think Philip Glass & Steve Reich) came into existence and how it influenced all music that came after it. It’s an interesting look on what musical concepts and developments in technology underlie the movement.

• Meta releases an AI for music: Am I fucked? Meta has released SoundCraft, an AI that can create pretty legit music and soundscapes. For now the music sounds a bit like it would be played on a radio in The Sims 2, probably because the AI was trained on stock music. But I’m sure before long it can make some seriously impressive stuff.

• Intimate tape recordings of 1980s Ryuichi Sakamoto: since the passing of Ryuichi Sakamoto, I’ve found solace in listening to a collection of tape recordings of Sakamoto playing his compositions on the piano in the 1980s⁵.

• Crowd-sourced deejaying: We already knew Young Marco is great at collecting lesser known music and introducing them to new audiences⁶. So I was delighted but not surprised when he debuted on BBC Radio 1’s Essentials Mix and played exclusively crowd-sourced tracks, creating a mix consisting exclusively of music sent to him by smaller artists. You wouldn’t be able to tell, because it’s bangers all the way through. “This one is FOR THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE!” he wrote. You a real one for that.

• A synthesizer demo for the soul: I already wanted one, but now I want it even more. In this demo of the Sequential Prophet-6 Japanese composer Osamu Fukuzawa switches between patches with hypnotizing ease while jamming out some neo-soul compositions, resulting in a strangely relaxing watching & listening experience.

That’s it for now! Do check out the footnotes below, you’ll find extra content related to the topics shared above.

Okay, a small bonus.

1. Here’s some more microtonal stuff that’s interesting: music by Altin Gün, this album by King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, David Hilowitz sampling a microtonal instrument, microtonal lo-fi by Adam Neely

2. ‘Blowout’ by John Carroll Kirby, it’s a great listen

3. Eddie Chacon’s comeback albums, or this lovely wonky pop track

4. Part two can be watched on YouTube, the video quality is a bit compressed though

5. ‘Neo Geo’, — one of Sakamoto’s earlier albums, was recently added to streaming platforms

6. I love his compilation of early 90’s Italian dream house, or when he ‘discovered’ & released this hidden gem