Influences

Microtonal Artists

Many musical artists have said something microtonal in the past, but in contemporary music, this is often not really the intent. However, I want to make a list of microtonal artists who have created things I consider interesting.

If you make microtonal music and you want me to check some of it out, I want to hear from you, so, post a comment at the bottom of the page with a link to your stuff.

My personal sparks

As a kid, I studied pedal steel guitar, sitar, and a bunch of other stringed instruments. It's kind of difficult not to notice the way these instruments are tuned when learning how to properly play them, so it brought me into a world of tunings that didn't mesh 100% with standard A=440 Hz 12-EDO piano and guitar tuning. So, my first influence into microtonality was my own personal music teacher, Vito Lafata.

During my time at University, I began playing around with different synthesizer tunings, based on the harmonic series, based on 17-EDO, based on 19-EDO, based on 7-EDO, and other divisions of the perfect octave or equal divisions of the third harmonic. I was initially very surprised at how useful these sets could be in creating music. The music, to my ears, sounded very familiar, even if it was slightly different from what I was accustomed to hearing. It was at that time that I used the internet to find artists who were already playing around with different tuning structures.

Neil Haverstick led the charge for me. As an already accomplished guitarist who had been on high profile recordings before I even stated playing, his work on The Gate (1994), and Acoustic Stick (1997) were my introduction to 19-EDO guitar on albums.

John Starrett also had some songs that I found on the internet: "Limp Off to School" and "Citified Notions." These are good examples of how 19-EDO can sound perfectly normal and then do something cool.

William Sethares was another early find for me, although I stumbled on individual songs before coming across his first album Xentonality (1997), I found the track "Truth on a Bus" to be another excellent example of what 19-EDO could do.

The haunting sound of "Tibia" by Paul Erlich in 22-EDO also struck me early in my listening experiences.

I studied websites and papers referring to theorists like Ivor Darreg, Kyle Gann, Dave Kennan, and Michael Stearns, as well.

Then I found Jon Catler's approach of 12-EDO plus, and that led me to his web-store, where I could purchase a microtonal guitar at last.

So that's when I started messing around with 19-EDO a lot more seriously.

Since, then I've come across quite a few guitar-oriented (or in some cases, not, but still cool stuff) microtonal musicians who do some cool stuff. Here's a partial list:

David Fiuczynski

Tolgahan Cogulu

Ron Sword / Last Sacrament

Jute Gyte

Cryptic Ruse

Syzygys

Elaine Walker / ZIA

Brendan Byrnes / Ilevens

Massive Audio Nerve (a.k.a. M.A.N.)

Aphex Twin

Dave Tremblay / Melopoeia / VOD

La Monte Young