what with all the hype behind Jangler's Osctet, it's got me thinking about seriously experimenting with different types of tunings. however, it is quite an imposing topic, with the countless amount of scales, approaches, traditions, synthetic tunings, and so on covered by this umbrella of a term.

seeing as i doubt i'm the only one that feels this way, and i can't find a thread on the topic here, i figured it might be nice to have one devoted to resources/advice on the matter, whether it be websites, great examples of microntonality, or just pointers/perspective from those familiar with making this type of music.

i myself stumbled upon a Xenharmonic wiki

that appears to have a lot of good info (although i haven't really sifted through it yet), and i found the great Wendy Carlos' Beauty in the Beast

a great showcasing of various xenharmonic scales (i'd link the actual music but it's hard to find online). but yeah, once again, considering how...vast the concept is, any pointers ya'll might have in approaching this stuff would be greatly appreciated.

it's a real deep rabbit hole!

the xenharmonic wiki has a lot of good information but much of it is written in what i would consider an unnecessarily inaccessible way, mostly due to 1) the very mathy regular-temperament-theory approach that dominates the content and 2) the peculiar vocabulary that i think originates from gene ward smith (edit: also there's a fair amount of content from folks who pursue temperament theory as a sort of math game in itself, regardless of musical relevance)

if you want nice-sounding alternative tunings with lots of harmonic resources, one good place to start is smallish diatonic edos like 17, 19, 22, 27, and 31. or use a 12-note just intonation scale like FELT or bicycle or whatever. if you want to go deeper in this direction then learn about just intonation and how various temperaments approximate it

if you just want something weird and unfamiliar then you could try gnarly edos like 8/9/11/13/16/18/23 or, even better, non-octave temperaments like bohlen-pierce (13ed3). these give you almost nothing approximating traditional harmony but are still navigable due to reasonable size and simple equal-step structure

but there's really truly no right or wrong way to use microtones - and if you're not interested in them at all, rest assured that 12-ET is the standard for good reason

i also love to see beauty in the beast mentioned - it was the album that introduced me to alternative tunings <3

different people approach the subject differently depending on what their interests are... as a branch of theory there's different approaches

what works for me is thinking about scales still; or building your own scale/key out of just a subset of the available pitches. think about ordinary 12tet: in most styles of music, we're only using ~7-8 of those at once, and we can alter which subset we're using on a whim. we can bend and break that rule, including complete chromaticism, but there is order to the chaos - you just happen to already know all those scales and their permutations are natural because of this. you're trying to do the same thing but with, you know, 17tet, 19tet, 31tet, 56tet. and it's way less overwhelming once you start saying, okay, i'll only use a few of these and preserve that across each octave... like a C major scale but widened spatially.

what ultimately does it for me, usually, is touching on "familiar but off sounding/detuned" type harmonies, and hunting those down within the tuning of choice and playing with them the most. the goal for me a lot of the time is to take something that sounds relatively conventional and recolor it and to play with the amount of color - you get some interesting push and pull with closer harmonies (i.e. way more steps of granularity per octave) that's not unlike regular inflections of chromaticism, just crunchier.

that's just my approach. there are plenty of other people who approach this from a way more mathematical stand point and learn the peculiarities of specific tunings and their ratios and proximity to one another. i think the xenharmonic wiki appeals more to this sensibility. it's easy to see how there could be a lot to explore if you have a deep interest in math.

Here's a few microtonal demos you can try out in your browser:
https://github.com/SAKryukov/microtonal-fabric

As dami says there are a lot of ways to approach it. Personally I've always been partial (heh) to just intonation, as whole number ratios correspond to the phenomenon of sound in physical reality. The harmonics you hear when plucking a string, or blowing wind through a pipe.

I also like lattice diagrams

because they match my mental model of how ratios "feel." That is, 3 ratios feel close, in the same plane of existence. 5 ratios are a bit farther away, on a separate plane. 7 and 11 ratios are even father, in a different dimension. The farther away you go on the diagram from the fundamental, the more alien it feels.

Some random xenharmonic music:
LΛMPLIGHT - Caftaphata

(Both just intonation and 41-EDO, complete with a video that visualizes how it works!)

Daniel Schmidt - And the Darkest Hour is Just Before Dawn

(Gamelan tuned with just intonation)

Syzygys - Lotus Rain

(J-pop in 43-tone Partch Just Intonation)

There's also traditional music from other cultures, such as Turkey, Persia/Iran, eastern Europe, India, China, Indonesia, Thailand, etc. which use just intonation or 5-TET, 7-TET, etc. I like listening to this kind of music to help expand my 12TET-pilled-brain a bit...unfortunately I don't have any examples readily available at the moment.

some stuff:

sevish scale workshop

(tool for making microtonal scales and exporting them in various formats)

sevish tuning starter pack

(a bunch of scale files which also comes with a pdf explaining them all briefly)

gleam by sevish

(one of my favourite sevish tunes)

Microtonal Gymnopédie in Mode 12 for retuned solo piano by Nick Vuci

(another microtonal tune i like)

<3

more suggested listening:

easley blackwood - 12 microtonal etudes

(chamber synth in edos 13-24; there are now also melodyne'd acoustic performances out there)
ben johnston - string quartet 8

(JI chamber)
the mercury tree - spidermilk

(17edo metal)
acreil - aleatoric aubades

(idm in various tunings)
zhea erose - wxtchcraft

(near-equal JI)
dolores catherino's youtube channel

(keyboard performances in large edos)
taylor brook - virtutes occultae

(JI piano)
horse lords - comradely objects

(JI instrumental rock)

also norokusi, sononym, brendan byrnes, tongue depressor, euwbah

some botb community adjacent xenharmonic releases for a very accessible whirlwind tour of tuning systems! (so much awesome music from friends, certainly not a plug I swear!)

STAFFcirc vol. 7 - Terra Octava

STAFFcirc vol. 7b - Luna Octava

Micro Tones Server Secret Santa

I'm most comfortable with microtonal elements in the form of transitions and embellishments supporting a more traditional tonality. Microtonal melody works for me better than harmony. Microtonality tends to sound good in pitched percussion, woodwinds, plucked strings and vocals. It usually sounds off in synths, with the exception of that FM thing where you play with the frequency multiplier.

Two jewels of microtonal pop:


Elaine Walker - Love Song

is special for breaking many of the rules mentioned above and still sounding beautiful and not gimmicky at all.


Conan Osíris - Telemóveis

is worth a mention for bringing microtonality and polyrhythms to the frickin' Eurovision.

I was once at a microtonal music conference- as a student who was required to be there; I didn't go out of my way, mind you. It had maybe 50 attendees but it actually included a number of the people mentioned above, so this is kind of making me smile. It's neither here nor there, but what a shit show that week was. If you've ever spent much time on a niche-interest online forum that's been bled down to maybe 30 active users with 5 who dominate every discussion (*cough cough* chipmusic.org like 8 years ago *cough*) you can go ahead and imagine that, but in real life, every day. Lecture, raised, hand, opinion, snarky remark, barely subtextual flame war. Same 5 guys every time

There was some great music, but the whole thing really turned me off microtones. There was a never-fully-contained intellectual superiority posture that most of the participants shared; a faux-amazed disbelief that any musician would ever want to "limit" themselves to writing in one, or even a few, "tuning systems." It was like a scaled-up, highly intellectualized version of the simplistic skill comparisons teenagers make when they're learning to play guitar ("bro! you can't even play 7th chords?!") I dunno. I'm eager to hear what people do with this stuff, just blog posting, not trying to be a hater. That conference just scarred me.

I definitely see this and as an outsider to the "xen establishment" it's why I try my best to (and i think existing/aspiring xenheads should) just make cool music that sounds good and have fun with new tools rather than going far too deep into the jargon and math weeds...

it's why I think micro tone fans here on botb and its vicinity are great; there is very little of this purity spiraling around teh Numbers and Glyphs and the intellectual circlejerking around the aesthetics of the study and not the object of study; the focus remains on the music, the people (all inclusive), and making cool noises, on as many systems and programs and formats and styles as possible!

i think it's no coincidence that this has also led to some of the most accessible, enjoyable microtonal music anywhere online, in my opinion. The kind of music that doesn't need to loudly announce "Look I'm So Pure and Math and Fractals, The 12EDO Commonfolk Could Never Comprehend!", just sweet and exciting tunes anyone can enjoy

I for one thought all of the demo songs for osctet were badass.