What is Polychromatic Music? - An introduction with comparison of modern microtonal instruments.
Vložit
- čas přidán 6. 09. 2024
- A description of Polychromatic Music as a new genre and musical language by Dolores Catherino.
An introductory comparison of 21st century electronic instruments (multidimensional polyphonic controllers) including the Tonal Plexus, Roli Seaboard, Continuum Fingerboard, and Microzone U-648, from a microtonal perspective.
The Tonal Plexus and Microzone are multidimensional, polyphonically, at the level of the musical pitch language itself, expanding the chromatic language, exponentially, into a greater pitch-resolution (alphabet) dimension of polychromatic languages. Pitches can be played polyphonically in both the left/right chromatic dimension and the front/back polychromatic (color) dimension. The Microzone has polyphonic touch sensitivity and the Tonal Plexus does not, yet the Tonal Plexus layout allows a pitch programming of up to 211 pitches per octave while the Microzone U648 enables up to 72 pitches per octave.
The Seaboard and Continuum (and LinnStrument, Eigenharp Alpha) are multidimensional, polyphonically, at the level of tactile expression - touch sensitivity in up/down, left/right, and, except the Seaboard, front/back dimensions.
The LinnStrument is an amazing first-generation hybrid. Each pad-switch has multidimensional expressivity, and the instrument can be programmed polychromatically. However, one limitation of the design, from a polychromatic perspective, is that the pad-switch layout is isomorphic (same fingering ‘shape’/pattern for every key scale/chord type). While this design feature makes the instrument easier to learn, it becomes limiting with advancing levels of proficiency and pitch resolution. Other leading edge features of the LinnStrument include a rudimentary lighting display and the use of open-source software/firmware!
Hopefully, future musical instruments will be able to bring together these polyphonic pitch-resolution and expressive tactile-resolution dimensions, as well as visual 'feedback' (light/color) dimensions into integrated designs. And, an option for multiple pitch regions per key-switch (i.e. hexagonal key option of 1; 3 - center, top, bottom; or 5 - center, top, bottom, right, left pitch regions). This would allow for more complex pitch layouts with fewer physical key-switches.
Although conventional research estimates our hearing range to be within 20 Hz to 20 KHz, higher resolution audio recording formats/encoders and mic, amplifier, speaker technology, extending upper harmonics content beyond 20 KHz, may enable the perception of new interactive and integrated sonic complexities within our auditory range. These new qualities may be perceived as gestalt (sum greater than the parts), and dynamic (evolving, 'organic' color/shape changes over space and time) qualities of multidimensional sound.
These intuitions are the result of musically exploring the implications and interactions of harmonics within complex sounds - 'observation' in an auditory sense. Our current understanding of hearing is fundamentally based on the research of auditory characteristics associated with the perception of sine wave ‘tones’; the sonic rendering of an ideal, smooth and periodic mathematical curve function without harmonics.
We also have an interesting ambiguity in terminology with regard to the measurement of Hertz. In the field of digital audio, a 96 KHz sampling rate indicates 'samples per second' rather than the conventional meaning of 'vibrations per second'. There is an association in that more samples per second can potentially render better approximations of higher harmonic frequencies. But only if they have been recorded, encoded and transduced at high-resolution (above 20 KHz harmonics) from beginning to end of the signal path.
This seems to be why hearing tests between digital audio conversion at 48 KHz and 96 KHz sampling rates has been inconclusive - in effect, the only difference is the presentation of twice as many samples per second of the same low-resolution (below 20 KHz harmonics) recording.
And even if you were now able to achieve full frequency-bandwidth to 20 KHz throughout the sound recording, editing, encoding and playback process, this would only capture up to the 2nd harmonic (1st overtone) of a complex 10KHz sound; or the 4th harmonic of a 5 KHz sound, or the 8th harmonic of a 2.5 KHz sound, etc.
One example of the audible implications of harmonic interactions occurs with the perception of simple combination tones. Yet, it also seems that combination tones are only surface-level examples of a more comprehensive process and phenomena.
Another bottleneck in the full implementation of a polychromatic music system is our MIDI standard (a foundational communications protocol and digital interface for electronic instruments). MIDI remains a 'gold-standard' and, since its emergence in 1983, remains locked-in to 80's era technology limitations (i.e. 16 channels, 128 note numbers).
More info at: newmusicusa.or...
Coming from India, microtones have been the bedrock for color and tonality for centuries. The 1st and 5th known as SaPa are pivots which allow the musician to journey through the auditory space between them. In fact, due to these liberties, some of the improvising end up becoming newly conceived synthetic scales known as Ragas. Due to the limited vocabulary of notation, they're known by the color they represent such as morning glory and at dusk(transliterated from Hindi).
Much thanks to your videos, they second my favorite microtonal composer Harry Partsch.
Indeed the definition "microtonal" is very eurocentric and century specific. 12 ET is a relatively modern creation, nevertheless it is ubiquitos and destroing intonatinal diversity all around the glibe and trinking people into believing it is the unique rational, intune, rightfull, legal way of creating music. While it is just a conveniet tool for key modulation and transposition. Lets take the portable Harmonium typcal of India. They where imported by christian missionaries. Now they are very common and tehir tuning is totally wrong to play Indian music. Ragas played in 12 ET sounds like pale, dulle imitation of the original. To play Indian music decently you would need at least an harmonium tuned to the 22 shrutis. In Europe, we had in te renaissance Organs tuned to 31 notes to the octave and qncient music was aquaninted with so called microtonal intonation. Then we traded beauty and expressiveness for the sake of easeness of learning, transposition, and standadization. I dont like the term microtonal, lets catt it precise, expressive, caring, meticolouse
That passion in her voice when she's talking about possibilities is heartwarming.
Piraja *his
@@cobalt._.27 what?
@@cobalt._.27 *her
I totally agree and you can see the mind at work thinking about all the possibilities
My singing could be considered polychromatic.
🤣❤️
😂👌
Most singing, without vocal training or guidance (like singing lyrics) is microtonal in the sense that it isn’t tuned.
technically fretless string instruments (viols, slide guitar) and sliding stop wind instruments (trombone, slide whistle) have been high-res microtonal for as long as they've existed.
maybe it's only now that the chromatic scale is so deeply ingrained in conventional music that the pitches in between can be thought of as readily perceivable by the average listener.
good video.
viola da gamba e braccio, fretless guitars, trombones, slide whistles, voice
yes
it's that and it's also because of how the harmonic series works (you get a pentatonic scale from the first nine harmonics (except the 6th is sharp), and it is across virtually all cultures.
While most instruments are micro tonal, could tune a piano live if you had enough tuners, the players are not use to hearing or adjusting to such tones, also very little ‘approachable’ music written at the moment. Good Micro tonal music that is about music rather than the ‘micro’ technical is more rare. Great video! Love to team up for a project!
@@FiscalWoofer Well, it depends what you mean by "the players are not use to hearing or adjusting to such tones." High-level players of fretless stringed instruments routinely correct equal temperament to match just tuning in certain situations where it sounds better. But this, to be sure, isn't the same as having a whole range of other notes.
you can study shrutis in Indian classical music if you want to dwell further into micro-tones.
Technically speaking, a slide trombone is already a microtonal instrument from the "mechanical era."
so is a slide on a diddley bow string, from the prehistoric era
this woman is cray... smoking the kool aid fo sho
Same thing with any fretless stringed instrument.
You can't play microtones with precision though.
You mean back from the offline age?
"These go to eleven."
"Yeah, well mine goes to 211. That's two hundred better, innit?"
311 is even better.
And a violin
Or any string instrument
@Multorum Unum what's your emergency
@Multorum Unum dude wtf makes u think u can go that loud?
This video is an absolute treat.
It's exciting to listen to someone who is operating from another paradigm.. You're quite the pioneer.
Or maybe you're just an alien trying to make do with what's currently possible on earth. 😜
Either way, it's a treat. Looking forward to more videos!
aliens are fun yo!
those evolving chords are the most beautiful and enthralling sound i have heard since i care to remember
It’s not because of the microtones, it because of her keyboard tone
Thanks for all of your great videos and information! I’m so interested to know how adept you are at singing these microtones/hearings them before you play them. Your hearing is so elevated! It’s amazing.
Thanks Aimee! It is remarkable to me how quickly a musician’s ear can adapt to distinguishing new micro-pitches (pitch-colors) in the gray area of flat/sharp chromatic pitch distinctions. Vocally, I think it is easiest to begin by practicing pitch-matching.
An exciting goal for the future is developing a sense of physical resonance which occurs when singing pitch-colors (micro-pitches) within polychromatic chords. When listening, I can hear/sense moving shapes in ‘auditory space’, and I can feel them a bit. But when singing, it seems to amplify the resonant characteristics within the music on a whole new level. It would be an amazing project to collaborate with you on a polychromatic piece with vocals if you have any interest in this type of music!
@@dolomuse Ray Lynch did that 33 years ago.
@@andrewgohring7625 in the Otoman classical music, they are doing that for centuries.
@@andrewgohring7625 maybe, more important than who did this first, the fact of thinking out of the box is the most remarkable part of this. To imagine, and compose/perform of course, all the new music you can get out of it!
@@MoaEdmundsGuevara As expressed elsewhere in the comments, this is little more than someone goofing off with a choral slide whistle. It's not new, hence, no longer "out of the box"...
Highly informative, and not only that, the music is beautiful
Cool to see you here man!
I think you like the effect, and I like it too. But using it to make good music is a skill she doesn't have.
Hello Dolores, I am a microtonalist from Japan, and I've watched this video so many times since last year. I joined the DVD MICROTONA and felt so happy and honored that you were also in it.
The concept "polychromatic" is really nice and clever and I hope it will be a big influence for the next generations.
It is, really going forward to get one of those polychromatic keyboards. I'm in complete love since i always thought that in the future the technology would be more holographic, more geometry-friendly and with weird and complex tools such as those Microtonal instruments. But we're so far ahead....
Hi, I study Indian classical music in which each raag ("scale") has it's own "colors" for each note. This is very interesting and could be a bridge to connect both western and indian traditions
Awesomeness! This is totally crazy!
Each chord becomes a universe of its own.
Perfect instrument to write music for film!
+Matthew Whistance Here are some other artists I would suggest checking out:
Marco Parisi (Seaboard) czcams.com/video/Oy4Y5xPAC7A/video.html
AR Rahman (Continuum) czcams.com/video/ff_-lhLLjLU/video.html
Aaron Hunt (creator of the Tonal Plexus) czcams.com/video/1eteR1zqC_E/video.html
Stephen J Taylor (Microzone) czcams.com/video/SpD_Kh6u-_s/video.html
Carlo Serafini (Opal Chameleon) czcams.com/video/8zdUazdH510/video.html
Antonio Machado (Eigenharp Alpha) czcams.com/video/lVTF0iK9y08/video.html
Jeremy Cubert (Linnstrument) czcams.com/video/A9HvufPjuUM/video.html
Lee Gauthier (Soundplane) czcams.com/video/tETB9VFawnM/video.html
Buchla 200e Skylab czcams.com/video/8QDP9_WcsAM/video.html
+John Rodmes
hpi.zentral.zone
Aaron Hunt has taken a break from making them at the moment but he is selling the parts for assembly.
I hope that someone with a talent for electronics will pick up the torch and begin making polychromatic keyboards.
In the meantime, check out the Linnstrument. It has an isomorphic design (i.e. every scale/chord/key has the same fingering). www.rogerlinndesign.com/linnstrument.html
+dolomuse Im almost crying the1st chord u took on that polychromatic thing...omg I was dreaming about for the last 15+ years..I already started to develop it (started from software) because how much i wanted my music to really sound the way I hear it..OMG, such a blessing.. WOOOOOW
Learned something new, ty!
The sound moves. That's the best way I can describe it. Each individual chord has a pattern of motion. That motion gives us another dimension of music so we can choreograph high resolution motion within the chords with the lower resolution traditional harmonics.
It was wonderful to find this video today, I'm a classically trained pianist and I've been trying to learn more about Polychromatic music and am planning to buy a seaboard this year. Your color system is very interesting and opens up whole new worlds of possibilities! Thank you for the insight!
Did you get one? Let's hear!
as for the seaboard, i can imagine a keyboard like that in the future that has programmable bumps that protrude into any arbitrary shape.
I like the idea of using colours to describe microtones. C Violet makes a lot more sense than C 1/16 sharp or something like that.
What if someone is colorblind though?
Daptor Well I mean, blind musicians still exist, so I suppose that it would be somewhat similar only a little less terribly difficult
Then it won't help them as much as it will help most of us. Besides, there are different kinds and degrees of colour-blindness, so it may not be as limiting as you might imagine.
Further, knowing that other musicians apply the category labels "green" and "blue" can still give a colour-blind person more information, through the medium of language; saying the note is "green", for example, might mean "change its tuning by +50 cents", which is very similar to saying "make the note sharp" (since that changes the tuning by +100 cents in the everyday 12-EDO tuning).
How does it make more sense? Which is higher C violet or C red?
If Violet is defined as 1/16 sharp (or more likely some comma sharp) then that's fine but it doesn't make sense at all in and of itself.
If you can remember a rainbow, then it will make sense.
Amazing to witness genius at work. The path to the future of music runs directly through your heart.
I think your specific approach to chords with these midi controllers/keyboards are the future, these microtonal controllers give the right people a more intuitive way to explore and combine subtle moods into something so powerful it becomes alien to the ears. I'm still astonished and wish I could hear "temporal parallax" in person.
You are such an inspiration for me and my musical career. It makes me proud to say musical artists today are beginning to push the boundaries of how many tones can be in our every day music. I am quite excited to see the whole world rejoice in the space between the notes and experiencing a new outlook on music as art form. Thank you for your contributions. :)
That chord you did at 7:50 is very reminiscent of Steve Roach's "Structures From Silence". There's something about that dense, drawn-out texture that I find very appealing, even moving. Thanks for this!
The kanun for Ottoman music played by Goksel Baktagir gives a powerful impression...many modes and great dexterity on the instrument gives a great introduction to more than 300 modes! Really!! The kanun allows microtuning from.the little levers or mandals while playing...vibrattos are also possible. The speed of execution.attains the fantastic!
He is living legend
It's west meets east! Some of my favorite musical instruments are from the eastern hemisphere. The Chinese Guqin and Erhu are both great examples of instruments which aren't stifled by a system of set notes. The Guqin was very popular among Chinese philosophers and academics, and for good reason!
I just bought the seaboard yesterday and so far its been so fun! This video is blowing my mind..
This is all very interesting, though will probably never be more than a very small part of music composition and performance. Through the decades, I spent much time in progressive rock bands mastering synthesizers and programming. With synths, you can utilize tunings and micro tonal sounds that you can not get with something like "formally" tuned instruments and their note ranges. Though for the most part, these tunings, and using a 12 note system, and learning standard music theory, is probably always going to be the "norm." These type of micro tonal instruments can be used for creative sounds of nature, many that don't have a traditionally measured "pitch," such as wind, rustling of leaves, and many other "created" sounds, that can be used with traditional instruments in composition. The Theremin that was used in Good Vibrations in the 1960's, was probably the first example of an instrument that could be used micro tonally, although you could also do things like this with a pedal steel guitar...etc. Though as a former music professor, musician, and classical music composer, I have found that most humans that are "music lovers" have "expectations" when they listen to music, of what is pleasant and acceptable to their aural liking, and what would just be considered "noise." Even Schoenberg's serial system of tonality has STILL not gained a huge foothold in the music world, for the majority of musicians and listeners after 100 years. And yet, I STILL had to teach his methods and ideas in college. In order for micro tonal "music" to become common place and acceptable for human ears, the entire human race would basically have to be "retrained" aurally. And even if that were to occur, I would bet that they would STILL choose Mozart, Beethoven, melody, and harmony, over micro tonal "noise.".....Peace!
Thank you for your insightful comments. My perspective comes from a belief that human musical language is ever-evolving. And as technology improves, we have new possibilities to expand our musical language beyond the limits of mechanical-era (fixed pitch) instruments.
From my perspective, the chromatic scale has reached a point of exploratory exhaustion. Serialism, Micropolyphony, Microtonality, Stochastic, Aleatoric and Sound Design/Arts are developments which express an endless striving toward expanding our sound languages beyond earlier modal systems. And as the ear becomes accustomed to increasing perceptual discrimination, further sonic vistas will emerge. The question is whether an audience will emerge that seeks these new expressive potentials existing beyond the masterworks of prior eras.
As artists, we strive to expand creative boundaries. Two analogies come to mind - the limitation of 12 colors to a visual artist, and a symbolic language limited to 12 letters/symbols.
In the 8 years I have spent working with 106, 72 and 53 equal divisions of the octave, I can attest to the development of increased auditory acuity with exposure to micro-pitches and micro-harmonies - especially when aesthetically presented (perceptually) in compositions and systematically presented (conceptually) in theory.
Polychromatic music is a radical development and I am surprised by how quickly these musical examples and ideas are spreading. As a musician, I intended to create a system that is intuitive and one that, by unifying an idea and notation of any micro-pitch scale within a ‘pitch-color’ concept, facilitates comprehensive explorations of the pitch continuum.
Interestingly, Schoenberg’s 12 tone method seems to be most important as an example of the spirit of radical exploration and discovery. I find this process immensely inspiring, even if the music created with it resonates more conceptually than emotionally for me.
you never know. EDM and Jazz have been experimenting with microtones recently. it's definitely been gaining steam
@@AOstudiosFILM It's all because of that Adam Neely's microtonal lo-fi hip hop video :D
I love this ladies insight and passion, the way she describes music as colour and shape. Perfect. Great.
Limitations of speakers? Everything is LPF in our ears anyway which only get worse over time. My ceiling is about 16kHz, and I'm not even 40 :(
Awesome, never really thought a lot of polychromatic until watching this. Combining this with intense sound design and composition would bring out some things in music you've never felt. Very inspiring, thank you.
i love your approach and your realism surrounding the subject. this is such a great video, i look forward to hearing more of your music.
So helpful to see this as someone considering getting a microtonal instrument. I find there is very little in the way of video demonstrations/comparisons/reviews of these except for directly from the company itself.
Wow, that was really interesting. And using color to represent the other dimension is very cool. 2D, up down left right. and when played the third dimension of the music is heard when played in time. This type of music is 3D. Pretty cool.
+Nesta125: You can choose to organise the pitches on a hexagonal keyboard layout so they have three dimensions of pitch relationships. One way is to go up vertically to raise a pitch by a perfect fifth (frequency ratio 3/2), upwards to the right by a major third (frequency ratio 5/4), upwards to the left by a minor third (frequency ratio 6/5).
So now how many dimensions do we have? ;-)
Probably I eared about polychromatic before but I'd never stopped to have a look what is it about until I found by accident this video.Thanks very much for develop a new way of make music . :)
The way you describe the music in terms colors and shapes, I have to wonder: are you a synesthete?
+W4t3rf1r3 everyone is if they try to see it
+Latex: No, most people lose all their native synaesthesia by the time they're in their teens, or even earlier. It depends largely on environment. Also, most people - synaesthetes included - find it confusing to ALWAYS associate, say, a sound with a colour, or a printed letter with a taste, or any of the myriad other combinations that can occur; so having synaesthesia is seen as a practical impediment, even a disability. I've been trying to LOSE my letter - colour associations ever since I was about seven!
Yo Yo! That sounds crazy cool man I don't think I've ever experienced that outside of acid lol, I was playing my guitar and making these multi colored underwater laser beams when I was on 3 hits and it sounded nuts.
I have kept mine on purpose, as I've always thought of my childhood state of mind as the "real reality". I have lost most of that, but my mild form of synaesthesia is not that distracting. Some smell/picture associations can be annoying, but i find the auditory smell/collour connections to be an advantage. Especially now that i know what it is. Everything is a disability these days, I think the norm of what is normal is way to narrow.
Frode Haugsgjerd
So, do you smell different kinds of music differently? Human voices? Animal sounds? Vehicles? Don't think I've ever known anybody who smells colours ...!
Aspiring composer/conductor here, I really appreciate what you're doing with polychromatics. Always interested in your new videos. Please keep posting.
Omg, she is probably the only person I would actually take piano lessons from ~
Thanks to your gorgeous colourful Brain.
" think of the universe in terms of frequency and vibration".
this is the future alright and you have a good way in presenting it through colours and developing sound format capacity.
after watching this I'm going to rewrite the concirto in colourful Notations.
13:10 .. it makes no sense to further improve the wav-file format. lol - it includes already all the infomation you need. you can save a 100kHz frequency in a wav.file.
Well that's enlightening!
Color notation makes a lot of sense. I have an an electronics degree, and so in my mind colors are already strongly associated with the range of numbers they represent in the resistor color code. The concept of mapping a rage of something to a range of colors seems very natural. (Though perhaps challenging for the color-vision impaired)
Outside of polychromatic music I haven't heard music that can so simply/directly push and pull on base emotion. It's like an auditory rollercoaster when a G-Blue chord changes to a C-Green.
You've got all the cool instruments! I've thought about getting a Continuum, but I haven't been able to justify the purchase yet, with my composition skill being heavily skewed towards sequencing and not performing. The colored notation stuff was interesting too.
WOW ! I'm a cro-magnon man ... Seriously though I can visualize it . Your explanation is cogent / understandable . Love your channel - I'm hooked !!!
I have had a theory for some time that frequencies above what we can detect have a direct harmonic influence on the frequencies that our own ears can hear. I am still looking for more evidence on this, but you have been motivating me to try experimenting with audio again in higher resolutions (tonally and otherwise), there's definitely something to be explored.
Ultra-high frequency manipulation is used for super directional sound sources. Take for example two waves at 38,000 Hz and 42,000 Hz. It can be shown sin(38,000×2π) + sin(42,000×2π) = Sin(4,000×2π)×Sin(40,000×2π). A 4,000 Hz audible tone is thus produced from two inaudible waves.
@@guitarvibe75 spot on !
Mexican Julian Carrillo Trujillo had already discovered this idea in 1895 and called it the 13th sound system (Sonido 13) I see in this talented woman the birth of his spirit again.
This is very cool and way beyond just theory. You are doing cool things with these instruments! Artist and scientist!
your passion is magnetic! i love u😂 the depth of expanding dimensions... you go goddess!
"It makes [TONAL] sense to me that our chromatic system would evolve to a polychromatic one." 🤣
The harmonic spectrum of any note- is the original "source" for scales, modes, chordal progressions. Trying to make any sense outside this frame of refernce, can be quite hard - Microtonality is being heard in the music of many different cultures aroud the globe - A result of several generations exploring subtle nuances in relation to the basic harmonic series . Peace
@@wilhelmbeck8498 r/woooosh
@@CommunistBearFighterFor me, any Swoosh or Wooosh will always be better than Schoenbergian Torture
@@wilhelmbeck8498 r/woooosh means that the joke from the OP went straight over your head.
@@CommunistBearFighter Oh THANKS ! ( still can't believe it was a joke, unless some degree of human meanness was involved )....Peace
I'm on, this is an opening door out of rigid, narrow frequency into multi-dimensional levels of frequency, I will follow your exploring I will dive further into this sea of colors and tones, thanks for introducing and your great conveyance:-)
12:25 A violin would have great difficulties playing pitches at this high of a resolution? It has difficulties playing chords, but you can play any microtonal note you want.
+Cretium
Absolutely true! The difficulty is with playing specific micropitches accurately, precisely and consistently.
It is very challenging but not impossible. It would require microtonal ear training and the development of new fingering techniques for the precise performance of melodic phrases (micro-intervals).
+Cretium The resolution is not a problem for the violin. Much more of a nuisance is the violinist's (bad) habit of adding tremolo and vibrato to everything in sight! Only exceptional violinists, like the legendary Eugène Ysaÿe, have complete control over the tone they produce and how much or little pitch and dynamic variance they add. But performers like him show that it IS possible to produce pure microtones at any desired frequency.
You're right about chords - even the best violinists rarely triple-stop (produce a three-note chord). :-(
+dolomuse The proof of the pudding is in the eating: Your musical performance is convincing proof that at least some of us CAN do these things! :-)
Yo Yo! I don't know what violinists you've been listening to,but no violinist that respects himself doesn't just add a tremolo or a vibrato to any note.Have you even ever studied music...
Any self-respecting violinist:
(1) knows the difference between vibrato and tremolo;
(2) can produce either one when necessary; and
(3) has the musical taste to know when it's not.
But some less discerning musicians fall into sloppy habits - such as pianists who use way too much pedal. The violinists I was talking about - but thankfully not all! - fall into the same category.
Perhaps if you were also a musician you might have understood me the first time? Sorry if I assumed too much.
I get it Delores. This is the future. What you shown us here is a tiny infinitesimal sample of the possibilities that are unlocked in these new systems. Good job.
wow people like you only come once in a generation, you're a musical engineer!
A lot of professional musicians are also engineers, especially people who majored in music who often also get a degree in engineering.
she didnt creat the instruments. idiot. obviouslt trhose people are more once in a generation but still i wouldnt say so
An engineer would use math and equations to describe the different microtones as opposed to color and shapes.
This is extremely important video to the future musician... to evolve and constantly use ear and eye coordination, Calming soothing sounds " the music" I love the tones great job awesome video
I'm getting Eerie 2001 vibes, ominous futuristic psychedelic, badass
Dolores, this is truly beautiful; thank you so much for sharing. Keep making songs; your compositions are amazing!
Most interesting and non-academic discussion of microtonalism I've ever heard. Awesome.
Is there a protocol like MIDI that allows for more pitches per octave? It would be super cool to program with more pitches in a DAW. What kind of information does the tonal plexus send out? Can a standard DAW receive that kind of information?
It's a shame that even if there were a standardized protocol for dealing with more than 12 pitches per octave, so many beautiful sounding current and vintage synthesizers would need to be heavily modified (mostly in terms of their processing) to deal with the data, even though they're already are perfectly equipped to actually produce the pitches.
The most efficient way that I have found so far in programming microtonal layouts on a MIDI controller is h-pi Custom Scale Editor. It is a micropitch template creation app that retunes hardware/software sound sources by midi note number and channel, which are then easily recorded (but not edited) in a DAW. I use Cubase primarily because of the depth of its MIDI editing capability - but neither it nor Logic have any intuitive microtonal editing capability... yet.
Thanks for the response! I've been using the h-pi Custom Scale Editor and it's a good solution for some things for sure. I was wondering, in your pieces like Toward the Continuum and Spatial Harmonics, what's producing the sound? Are you using a software synth or some hardware that's capable of microtones? Thanks, and thanks for the music.
Midi already allows you to break a semitone into 8192 parts with pitchbend range set to minimum, that's 98304 pitches per octave. I wrote software that fully supports this in software synthesis mode (an open source midi file player) including support for pitch bend events at up to the sample rate of the sound card and I've recently become interested in a continuum to exercise it fully, but I can't justify the cost, and even if I could it still doesn't produce data as fast as my soft synth can consume it.
Wow, i was expecting to leave this video very confused as to how all of those overwhelmingly-complex-looking instruments work, but it makes so much sense to notate and transcribe pitches using color that i'm amazed it never caught on. I took one look at that keyboard with hundreds of buttons and i immediately saw the horizontal 2 3 2 3 pattern of black notes and knew that they had the same functionality as they would on a regular keyboard, but with dozens of added microtones inbetween on the vertical axis that were colored differently. Now I want one lol.
She’s so beautiful! Clear skin, lovely silver hair, straight white teeth... She has so much youth to her, between her smiles and laugh and her voice.
sure, but more importantly she is a great musician and teacher.
I have several analogue keyboards dating from the early 1970s which have pressure-sensitive and/or vibration-sensing keys. For example, my Roland SH-2000 circa 1972 is VERY expressive and capable of micro-tonal notes and seamless glissando/portamento. Also, the 'resolution' mentioned in the video is not an issue with analogue instruments which generate a continuous spectrum of sound that extends beyond the range of human hearing in both directions. If you pair that Seaboard with an analogue synth as the sound source you'd get a similar effect with access to a wider range of harmonics.
Still, I really enjoyed this video. Love the music and the passion with which it is explored and performed.
I watched the video. So polychromatic is an instrument that can play all the tones between notes? I don't feel it was explained too well.
The polychromatic music system is a way of using pitch-color to simplify any number of notes per octave more than 12 (chromatic). New electronic instruments are polychromatic if they are able to incorporate colored micropitches in their playing surface layout design.
Currently, each microtonal, black and white language uses incompatible and unintuitive notation systems. The polychromatic system is a unifying framework in which each pitch-color has a relative value, defined at the beginning of a composition. This is unlike chromatic systems which have absolute pitch values.
dolomuse: Have you had any luck interesting other new instrument designers in making their devices polychromatic? That would make them SO much easier to play.
Basically it's throwing mathematical music theory out the window and ending up with this... sound...
Michal Valta
???? Just because she's using colour to describe and notate doesn't mean this is 'throwing away mathematical music theory'
Had an instrument with these capabilities been available hundreds of years ago music theory would be very different today.
Thank you for sharing your beautiful insight and perspective. What a wonderful look into your studio and instruments. Fantastic!
You are amazing! This is so inspiring and full of hope for the future :D
Thank you very much for sharing, not only the info, but the passion as well
Can you access these "colored" polychromatic pitches through detuning by cents in a synthesizer?
Yes , but it can be very tedious. I use the h-pi Custom Scale Editor which allows you to assign pitch values to midi note numbers. With it you can create pitch templates for any type of keyboard layout. This software renders the specified pitch values by sending pitchbend messages. It allows pitch programming with fractions, ratios or cents. hpi.zentral.zone/cse
Thanks for the lead!
Hello, I’m a 17 year old high school student from Berlin and currently working on a research project (towards my high school graduation) evolving around perception of microtonal music. Besides the concept and historical background overview that I want to describe in my research paper (have also planned to visualise the concept on an infographic website I’m currently programming). I want to add experiments related to perception of microtones. Here’s some of the things I’ve read in my very brief literature survey: analysis of perception
- perception of microtonal (quarter tone) intervals vs twelve tet intervals (consonant and disonant) of musicians and non-musicians in terms "roughness" rating and "liking".
- one interesting issue is how musicians and non musicians categorise microtonal level intervals.
in chromatic and diatonic context
- how micro can a microtonal scale be without destroying the identifiability of typical melodic fragments in other words what is the smallest practical interval size between adjacent scale steps. (Parncutt + Cohen)
- when tinkering around with certain parameters such as tonal, duration, metric, interval size, melodic contour, accents/weighting in various melody fragments and evaluating the musical stability (have to look into this one..)
I have the next little less than a year to delve into this project, and will turn it in - in the form of a 20 paged research paper.
I’m looking for any feedback - which of these could lead to problems? Are there any additional ideas you would have? Just thought I’d throw this out here - seems like the right kinda crowd.
agreed yes with you -the future will have polychromatic music appreciated by large audiences - but how long will it take i wonder.
And possibly much longer for players to accurately hit microtones on continuous controllers.
I really like the tonal plexus because the frequencies are already set - i want one -
It's amazing! This is the future of music. Tritones were banned in Renaissance, now they are widely used in contemporary music and accepted by society. Microtonal LoFi is yet another proof that the revolution is near ...
Tritones were never explicitly banned by the church nor was it uncommon, monteverdi commonly used the dominant seventh, which contains a tritone
@@oibruv3889 never heard about it. as it goes "the more you know the less you know" :) Anyway, thank you for your comment!
13:20 Re: beauty > 20kHz ... "it's just not possible yet, with the limitations of speakers and recording formats"... and human hearing!
+Will Rice
The conventional limits of human hearing of 20Hz-20KHz were based on sine wave testing (no harmonics) in a laboratory setting. Check out this article! There are untapped areas of auditory perception that are waiting to be musically explored. Such an exciting time to be a musician! www.cco.caltech.edu/~boyk/spectra/spectra.htm
But harmonics ARE sine waves!
I loved the video, but am yet to be totally convinced on the last point :)
That assumption is leading to some fascinating questions that I am exploring…
Is sine wave analysis of musical sounds a ‘reductive’ mathematical analysis - based on the premise of a linear system? Reductive, meaning generally accurate, but incomplete?
Theoretically, a complex tone (harmonics included, exclusion of inharmonics and nonlinear influences/effects) can be described as a combination of many simple periodic waves like sine waves.
The sine wave, as a mathematically derived, fundamental building block of musical sound, has some interesting characteristics - linear approximation of a nonlinear perceptual system (hearing), an incongruity between integer multiple harmonics and an equally tempered musical language, and marginalization of non-integer multiple inharmonics to a nonmusical category of ‘noise’.
It seems that as we explore higher pitch-resolution musical systems, increasingly complex aspects of what we perceive in hearing will become prominent and create a conceptual/perceptual divergence from the simplifications and generalizations embedded in a Fourier analysis based on simple sine waves.
These questions open up areas of exploration into contrasts between scientific description vs. perceptual experience of complex sounds and music.
dolomuse this is a result of phase canceling. If you play two sin waves, one within one outside the range of human hearing, you will be able to hear that the way the first note is modulated by the higher note.
Human ear is too far from being a perfect sensor, it's very rough and non-linear, making a lot of intermod distortions. It may result in audible aliasing tones generated from ultrasound: 24000 Hz + 26000 Hz -> a set of tones including 2000 Hz, 4000 Hz and so on.
Dolomuse.......its you that gave me the inspiration to buy a Roli today!!! .....Thanks a lot!
WHY AREN'T POLYCHROMATIC SCALES MORE OF A THING
Newzealand261 is too complicated for the average brain
the brain is moldable
It's not too complicated. Music in general is complicated. There are just many instruments that cannot do it. And most of the music we are exposed to today simply does not utilize polychromatic, so it would be challenging for folks to do this on their own; however, as pioneers forge new techniques and compositions, possibly more people will be exposed and maybe it will become "more of a thing."
It's too complicated for the average **instrument.
id523, It's not too complicated for an instrument. It simply is whether an instrument can do it or not. Your traditional piano cannot because of the nature of the instrument; however, a violin can.
Really beautiful and inspiring. Thank you for sharing. Looking forward to hearing more of your work.
If Philipp Gerschlauer can do it on his saxophone I'm doin' it on my clarinet hell yeah
Lovely. I think similarly in these terms. Far from the mere limitations of 12 standard pitches. Why I almost singularly compose with Analogue and Digital/Analogue Hybrid Synthesisers that enable, through detuned oscillators, spreading of oscillators, individual tuning of said oscillators, not to mention various sweepings between chromatic scales through the use of multiple LFOs. Yet we have been using electronic and analogue instruments to get outside the standard 12 pitches for some time now, dating back to the mid and late 20th Century, so as though I don't find this to be "new ground", I do love her approach with these new "polychromatic instruments". Lovely discussion starter, I say!
Dolores should have been the composer of Blade Runner 2049, instead of Hanz Zimmer.
I love your "tab" notation for sketch compositions...it seems so efficient
Get this into the hands of my mans Jacob Collier
So glad I found this video! Thank you for explaining this. I understood Polyrhythms, but now understand Polychromatic's a lot better.
Cool but you should try find some better sounding presets that doesn't sound like old FM synths
+arseniy old fm synths are awesome :(
It is possible to use them with a VST synth, right? Or do the synths only go with normal MIDI?
+ScarryChili
Working with VST's has been a bit complicated and difficult for me...
With Kontakt, Aaron Hunt created a microtonal script that has to be implemented (if the specific Kontakt instrument allows script editing). Then, in omni mode, Kontakt can run 16 channels of independent micro-pitchbend. Other VST instruments are hard to find with a pitchbend range low enough for triple digit microtonality.
As for multitimbral VST's, they must have simultaneous, channel-independent, pitchbend implementation - this is a problem I have run into frequently. Spectrasonics (Omnisphere, Trillian) has 8-voice multitimbral VST's with this channel-independent pitchbend implementation.
Ironically, channel-independent pitchbend was a standard feature in the old multitimbral hardware modules and currently seems to be the exception in multitimbral software based instruments.
+dolomuse Maybe it's possible to use several VST with same preset but each is pitch shifted? So it's like layers each one slightly pich shifted.
It seems not good if you can't use some great modern synths for this.
arseniy You would need a lot of layers then...
thanks for naming or giving a name to the music that I've listened to for decades.
so this is just like a Floyd rose guitar in a piano
Is it just me, or does your music help me focus more? I am falling more and more in love with microtone stuff, mostly thanks to you Dolores! Thanks for this!
dolomuse - THANK YOU for highlighting the ROLI foibles. I didn't find them till i bought it and seriously, i would have just waited and got what i rally wanted - Continuum. Try getting them to authorize a return, I dare ya. My biggest beef is they said i could easily load my own samples. You can't. Their reply to that was buy a sampling softsynth, Yeah, i can do that, unfortunately i chose to believe them when they said i could beforehand.
Sorry for the bitch
Sorry to hear that. I am using the Seaboard as an interface for sound design exploration and to explore the strengths/limitations of a silicone playing surface. The feel and 'action' is distinctly different from rigid surface... the closest analogy for me is the difference between running on soft sand vs a solid surface. While it is much easier to play (polyphonically) than the Continuum, the drawback of this relative ease of use is microtonal expressive limitations and expandability - being 'locked-in' to a chromatic based pitch system.
most the stuff i do is far from doe ray me, so equal temperament doesn't come into play that much. i do appreciate the third coordinate control variable for/aft the keys of the ROLI. but for live performance, i wanted a platform that could play prerecorded soundbites as most of my sound generation is analog via modular and repatching on stage isn't really what they come to see lol. I've ended up using Battery with the roli, so mission accomplished, but ya know...that added to the pile of $ that i though the ROLI would avoid..because i believed what they told me ;)
Very interesting stuff indeed- thanks!
I'm primarily a medieval harpist, so I'm limited to seven notes per octave. But I do like playing around with alternative tunings, especially just scales. One scale I've come up with recently that sounds pretty cool is 8,9,10,11,12, 14, 15. The eleventh does sound rather funky, but the blue note, 14, is surprisingly consonant.
cheers from cool Vienna, Scott
+Scott Wallace Nice! :-) You can play some sweet blues with that "septimal" 14, as it's the octave of the seventh harmonic.
Yo Yo!
Yeah, it's a neat tone. You can also use it as a very low minor third in the chord 3/7/9, as Kyle Gann does in his _Fractured Paradise:_
www.kylegann.com/Fractured.html
Lately I've also tried my same scale, but with the 11 replaced by 45/32. That makes a just third with the second note of the scale, not as funky as the 11, and nearly makes a major third with 14, giving you a nice augmented chord on D (or whatever your second note is). I'll try to get some clips up on youtube soon.
*****
Please do post some of your music, here or on Soundcloud! I really enjoy music using extended JI (just intonation). Even (and especially) the simplest tunes sound better to my ears when they have pure ratios from the overtone series. Of course, despite what purists believe, JI doesn't suit every musical style - some (mostly grungy or industrial) things even benefit from the rough "buzz" of the standard tempered 12-EDO scale's inharmonicities, and delicate tuning is irrelevant to other styles that use "thick" (noisy) tones.
Thanks for the link to Kyle's piece; his work is cool. I think I'd rather call the 7 in 3:7:9 a septimal (minor) tenth, because the septimal (minor) third is 7/6, isn't it? I also noticed the conspicuous lack of 13 in your series! It can be hard to take ... and it's a challenge to use it in a musical way, I find.
Yo Yo!
Thanks, I will see if I can get some of my stuff up soon. And yeah, I agree about 12-EDO: it's a great system for lots of stuff.
I will try putting together a scale with 13 in it- the main reason I haven't yet is the difficulty of tuning it. I don't use an electronic tuner, and it's pretty hard to get a 13th harmonic to sound loud and clear enough to tune to.
cheers from cool Vienna, (no kangaroos here) Scott
Yo Yo!
Hey Yo Yo. I just joined Soundcloud and put up a sample, if you're interested. Cheers.
soundcloud.com/scott-wallace-189088488/oops
i like your mind...it's so open... rare thing!
+dewybolas Apparently, the sexiest organ in the human body is: the mind! ;-)
Yo Yo! Not the sexiest for sure but indeed the most fascinating and troubling for kids like me (trying to read some Neurology and Psychology, it's killing me).
Your way ahead of your time. One day we’ll all catch up to your innovative thought process. Simply brilliant.
That demand for higher resolution audio formats is just bull crap. Are you a bat or a dolphin? Everything above 48kHz as a final format is just a waste of space on your hard drive
I agree. Not many adults can actually hear much (if anything) beyond 12kHz-15kHz, so even sampling at 44.1kHz should be more than enough.
Some audiophiles often make ridiculous claims about audio technology, all deeply rooted in pseudo-science, hype created by snake-oil salesmen with an expensive product, and grand overestimation of their hearing capabilities.
In any case, there is no *musical* application for recording at supersonic sampling rates.
jaydy71 the only reason why I sometimes record in higher resolution formats is because it actually makes a difference when the material is time stretched or pitch shifted. But yes 95% of the high res discussion is just marketing and esotericism
Yeah I guess there can be practical reasons where using higher sampling rates makes sense. Certain DSP algorithms might perform better in the audible range when processed at a higher rate, some anti-aliasing filters might perform a bit better in some configurations, things like that.
But those are probably limitations of such implementations, rather than high sampling rates being actually meaningful in itself for the end product, if that makes sense.
edit: I tend to record at 24bits myself, just to minimize any possible unwanted processing noise in the mix (which can add up). Not because I think 24bit sounds better than 16bit in itself.
I think the misunderstanding here is related to understanding the implications of harmonics within complex sounds. Our current understanding of hearing is based on research with sine wave ‘tones’ (rudimentary trigonometric functions without harmonics). Even if you were able to have full bandwidth to 20 KHz throughout the sound recording, editing, encoding and playback chain, this only captures up to the 2nd harmonic (1st overtone) of a complex 10KHz sound; or the 4th harmonic of a 5 KHz sound, or the 8th harmonic of a 2.5 KHz sound, etc.
Standard digital frequency bandwidth-resolutions up to 20 KHz severely truncate the upper harmonic content of complex sounds, resulting in the loss of many harmonic interactions occurring within real world complex sounds. One example of the audible implications of harmonic interactions occurs with the perception of simple combination tones. Yet it also seems that combination tones are only surface-level examples of a more comprehensive process.
the best deciphering explanation of tonals and chromatics🔊💹
best microtonal instrument yet... your own voice.
Debatable
THIS was seriously great! One has to wonder if the end result, long after our time, will be that there IS NO scale, only mathematical distances between tones at any and all fractional values...
i bet whales would love hearing this music
Philip Gerschlauer has already been pioneering microtonal saxophone playing, so I believe that it is very possible for these instruments from the mechanical era to journey into the polychromatic area of music and I would love to see it.
fuk that tonal plexus is next level!
your tab notation looks like a combo guide for a jazz chord fighting game i love it
How to be a polychromatic musician :
1: Be rich
2: Buy 15 keyboards
Nice vid by the way
I'm still working on abstract atonal electronic Yamaha 76 grand piano, which often seems neither atonal nor abstract, .... thanks for this wonderful intro to these instruments.
so where is the music?
Mach Vild Most of the beginning. Can you not hear it?
That is not music though. :D You can give it some new name. You can like it. You can love it. But it's not music. Making a synth sound doesn't equal creating music, there is a little bit more to it than that. :D Maybe this is more difficult than playing actual music with actual instruments (I seriously doubt that) but still, it's not music.
How is it not music? Because most of the sounds are coming from synthesizers? Or because the sounds being played are in polychromatic scales?
Can I just ask you, what is music then?
hes right it wasnt playing music she also said it herself when we become used to this then the fun starts we can start creating music she said herself come one guys
Very interesting video, this is the future of music and the unlocking of full musical and harmonic potential.
nothing new here- in classical music this has been known as poly tonal music for about 90 years.
+Sarah DuBois
I think of polytonality as a modern compositional technique, a simultaneous use of more than one key/tonal center, which is (generally) based on the chromatic pitch language.
The polychromatic language is an expansion of the chromatic pitch language itself, not only with an exponentially larger number of pitches per octave, but also with an ability to move beyond fixed (absolute) intervallic relationships. A pursuit of increasingly complex musical languages to match and challenge the nonlinear potentials of auditory perception.
Another distinctive aspect of polychromatic musical languages, is the use of color as an intuitive method of conceptualizing and notating micro-pitches.
it sounds like the same old electronic music that's been popular for years
+Sarah DuBois that's ridiculous. :-) those chords are not even close to what you get out of a 12 note per octave keyboard or can consistently get out of a bunch of fretless players. In theory, classical music has been doing this. But the interfaces on electronic instruments have been making it impractical to apply such ideas to electronic instruments. There hasn't quite been a simultaneous combination of absolutely solid < 1cent microtonal accuracy, ability to still play intuitively with virtuosity, and ability to perform full synthesis. You either end up with the slop inherent in a fretless instrument, or the terrible interfaces of mechanical designs.
+dolomuse unless you are writing microtonal music in quarter tones no matter what or how you superimpose there aer still only 12 notes to the scale and the tape that's played sounds JUST like many many composers who write mixed chord clusters. mixed chord clusters will provide more overtones. this is nothing new. it's just electronic instruments.
+Sarah DuBois: Did your _ears_ tell you "only quartertones"? Or was it what lies between them? Perhaps if you take the trouble to listen again, you may hear the abundant microtones much smaller than the 50-cent quartertone. We need "open ears" just as much as we need "open minds"!
from a jazz perspective it seems as though C is yellow, E is red, Ab is blue.3 places for home in a world full of substitutions these 3 tones changes shade but keeps the same color up to just before its a quartertone away from its equal tempered tone.
in this video i heard sounds, but not music.
Vadim Dvoskin What is music to you? Ask yourself that question before assuming what you will hear will be music. There is no limit to music. A song can consist of silence if it wants. Musical thought has no restriction, and is only limited to the individual. Most people consider radio music the only music because it follows a formula. Listen with a good set of speakers or headphones while relaxing. If you feel an emotion-good, neutral, or bad, it is music and the universal language is speaking to you.
let me put it a different way: what i heard did not compel me. On the contrary, when I was little and heard beethoven for the first time..., i did not ponder the meaning of music, genre, or life..., all i knew is that it made me feel good, and i wanted more.
Everyone has their own taste in music, as in art, or food, furniture or any other cultural product. I find that it's good to try new things from time to time; otherwise, there's many good things one might miss out on! Case in point: have you ever eaten the tropical fruit durian? They say "It smells like hell, but tastes like heaven." For some people, it's an acquired taste, others just love it from the first, yet others never "get" it. I'm very glad I made the experiment :-)
Vadim Dvoskin So then it is music, and more than just a "sound." I understand though, everyone has a unique perspective.
Vadim Dvoskin i agree. i didnt make me feel anything personally. it sounded cool for sure but there was too much musicality there imo.
Some other microtonal acoustic options (besides voice) you might consider are:
classical fretless strings, e.g. violin, viola, cello, etc.
fretless guitar
trombone and other brass with slides
saxophone family with slides
Composing with these instruments would add tonal qualities outside the electronic pure tones you were concerned with being limited to.