i·me·michael

Inspired by a comment of a dear friend I thought I would present you with some links regarding music theory and expanded music theory. Dealing with temperament, tonality and micro-tonality. Some of you may find it interesting, others may be bored out of their minds.

A couple of the links come from Terry Blackburn’s WebSpace, so that’s a good place to start.

Next is a History of Tuning and Temperament. It explains the relationships and formulas of tonality and why things are the way they are.

Alternate Temperaments: Theory and Philosophy is Terry’s study of alternate tonal relationships, or alternate temperaments. Really interesting stuff if you’re into music theory.

Expanding this beyond theory to instruments is a study in 19 tone equal tempered guitar chords.

Temperaments and 41-Tone Music for your computer.

To really tie it all to guitars [ed.—The instrument of champions!] in the physical realm, I give you Microtonal Guitars and the Microtonal Guitar Gallery. People do actually play those instruments.

For an overview of microtonal instruments there’s this page listing some.

A question of atonal and microtonal music at the Pat Metheny Group Listener Network. The albums mentioned in the forum are Pat Metheny’s I Can See Your House from Here, which I haven’t heard, and zero tolerance for silence, which I own, but as one commentor put it, is difficult to listen too. In fact I can’t listen to it. If anyone wants to hear some samples from that one, just email me and I’ll be happy to share the experience.

I hope this little journey has been fun and informative. Now forget it all, and go make some music.