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Welcome to Bostjan Zupancic: MicroMetal - Tuning google site!
This site is a sketchbook for my tuning ideas while I flesh them out. Feel free to post messages or email me at bostjanzupancic1980@gmail.com to discuss guitars, music, tuning, microtones, or mathematics.
First off, introductions...
I don't know how you found me here, but in case you stumbled upon this site randomly, I am Bostjan Zupancic (the musician). As far as I know, I am not related to the similarly-named human rights activist, but, hey, I'm all for human rights, too...
I play the guitar. I've taught some lessons and I've tried to push the envelope just a little bit with my music. I try not to get too far off what I consider the beaten path, but everyone has a different path, so that's not really a universal statement. I've been actively playing guitar in bands since 1995, and I started doing microtonal stuff around 2005, but I started getting a lot more serious about it around 2015. Here's a page with links to my music, if you're interested.
Next, my scope:
I've played around with a lot of microtonal tunings. There are things I like about each and every one of them, but some are very difficult for me, and others just kind of jump out. I'll be mostly focused on what I consider the easy ones. I think the term "microtonal" is used in a way that is extremely vague and unfair. "Micro" makes me think of small things, so I think of microtonal scales as scales with tiny intervals. In common parlance, this is really not usually the case. Some tunings have huge interval steps, some have regular sized interval steps, and some have small interval steps, but they are usually all called "microtonal," unless they are the one conventional tuning that guitarists and pianists generally use.
Some tunings have equally spaced notes, and others do not. Equally spaced notes are easier for fretted instruments, and also offer key equality. There are also some sort of hybrid approaches that have their own quirks and tricks. I like equal tunings that divide up the octave, purely because they are very easy for me to parse into my mind. I also will be using my own brand of "just intonation" for the sake of discussion and categorization. I don't think just intonation has an appeal for implementation on a fretted instrument, nor on any instrument with finite note selection designed to play in different keys.
I wish I had some hard data, but I *think* I can say with some confidence that, outside of standard tuning (take the octave and divide it equally into twelve pieces), called twelve-equally-divided-octave: "12-EDO", the most commonly regarded "microtonal" tuning is 24-EDO, which is to take each of the standard notes and split it in half.
When I first sat down with a keyboard programmed to play scales in different tunings, one just really jumped out at me as seemingly the balance between sounding musical and offering new possibilities. That tuning was 19-EDO.
From here on out:
Check out these links:
My Influences