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Hey guys, I would like to share some info about a music project I have been working on, as well as a bit about my musical background. I was originally planning on starting that series on Magic that I was talking about last week, but due to something I don't want to mention just yet, I am going to wait to get started on that. I've been getting a lot of ideas, and will get started on it sometime soon.

In the meantime, I would like to share some info and music that I've been working on. I started out as a typical punk rock/classic rock musician playing mostly bass and guitar in my teenage years. Late in High School I started to wonder what the rest of the world was doing with music, and I started exposing myself to other musical traditions.

I got a sitar from India late in High School, and after I got out I started to collect instruments from all over the world. Since I had a decent understanding of Western music theory, it made it much easier for me to apply that knowledge to any instrument I picked up, and all I needed to do was to familiarize myself with the ergonomics of the particular instrument I was learning.

After spending many years teaching myself everything from the Scottish bagpipes to the Egyptian oud, with several other flutes, jaw harps, and other assorted items in there, I really thought I knew a lot about music. About seven years ago, in 2013, I learned something about music that made me realize that I didn't know very much about music at all. I was a highly developed player in the context I was working in, but I found that there is way more to music on a theoretical level than I ever could have anticipated.

What I learned was the equivalent of a portal to a parallel musical universe. In the West, all of the music we make uses a system called “12 Tone Equal Temperament”, which means that we use 12 notes that are equally spaced mathematically. I found that this system is a relatively recent musical invention that came about in the past 350 years or so, as a compromise to a tuning problem that has existed since ancient times.

It used to be that the way in which one divided up the musical octave was an art form in and of itself. In Europe, during a time when standard units of weight and measurement were being put into place, the musical octave became one more thing that was standardized along with everything else. What ended up happening as a result is that we have compromised the integrity of musical harmony, for the sake of musical simplicity.

Basically, what I have been studying and practicing for the past 7 years is using other mathematics systems as a basis for the divisions of the octave. Music is, after all, mathematics in vibration. If one applies different mathematical concepts to music, you end up having access to a whole range of frequencies that aren't even accessible on a normal guitar or keyboard.

There are literally thousands of ways one can divide up the musical octave, each system possessing it's own characteristics and a system of music theory that is unique to that system. I talk with other musicians about this stuff from time to time, and 99% of them have no idea what I'm talking about. It's a completely different ball game, and the music world has become so accustomed to the 12 tone system, that we have almost completely forgotten that there are other ways of doing things entirely.

To give an simple example of how this looks on paper, instead of spelling out a sequence of notes like:

C – D – E – F – G

It would be spelled out like:

1/1 – 9/8 – 5/4 – 4/3 – 3/2

The 1/1 in this case would be your tonic. All of the other frequencies would vibrate in perfect mathematical harmony to whatever frequency that is. So the second tone would vibrate at 9/8ths the rate of 1/1. The third tone would vibrate at 5/4ths the rate of 1/1. There are hundreds of different mathematical concepts and algorithms that one can use as the basis of the scale division, and you end up with thousands of variations. Pretty much every culture in the world has their own unique way of doing it. Though many are adopting the Western system.

While my first set of endeavors in exploring this stuff were on the sitar and a fretless bass, I eventually realized that if I were to invest some money into electronics equipment that allowed me to change the entire tuning of a keyboard with the click of a button, that it would allow me access to a larger number of sonic options than what I was doing at the time.

After a fun night winning $1000 on a craps table, I got started investing into state-of-the-art computer based synth software that would allow me to do literally anything I want with the musical octave, and make some pretty good music at the same time. I can use microtonal tunings that come with the software, or I can write my own systems and plug them into the software, and again, gain access to a whole range of frequencies that aren't available on ordinary instruments.

After about a year of tinkering around with the software, I finally started to make some progress with it. I did a bunch of recordings a few years back, and I released some of this stuff on an album called “Omega Phase”. There is however a wider variety of music on my Soundcloud page. There is some electronic music, mediation music, ambient music, all utilizing different types of microtonal scales.

Here's my Soundcloud page: https://soundcloud.com/xenharmonix432

A lot of this music uses a system called 12 tone Pythagorean, based on the system Pythagoras used. Some of this music uses simple 5 tone Gamelan scales from Indonesia, and some of it uses as many as 31 notes an octave instead of the usual 12.

I have a much bigger project in mind that I will hopefully be able to get up and running this year, complete with custom made microtonal guitars and basses to match the frequencies I'm using on the synthesizer. It's going to be really quite extraordinary when it's all up and running, and totally different than what we are used to hearing. There will be all styles of music, rock, jazz, electronic, reggae, world fusion, as well my own genre, all utilizing microtonal musical scales.

I wanted to share this in the meantime though, as I'm really not sure when I'm going to have more recordings available. The equipment that I need made isn't exactly cheap, and there are only a handful of guys that I've found in the U.S. that even do the type of custom work I need done.

I'll make another post sometime later this year when I get some more recordings done. So in the meantime, enjoy.