Microtonal music is a term for music which uses microtones -- intervals of less than a semitone, or as Charles Ives put it, the "notes between the cracks" of the piano. The term is also used to refer to any music whose tuning is not based on semitones, such as western just intonation, Indonesian gamelan music and Indian classical music. An alternative term explicitly covering such possibilities is xenharmonic music.

Some Western composers have embraced the use of microtonal scales, dividing an octave into 19, 24, 31, 43, 72 and other numbers of pitches, rather than the more common 12. The intervals between pitches can be equal, creating an equal temperament, or unequal, such as in just intonation or linear temperament .

Pioneers of modern Western microtonal music include:

• Charles Ives (1874-1954)
• Julián Carrillo (1875-1965)
• Béla Bartók (1881-1945)
• Alois Hába (1893-1973)
• Ivan Wyschnegradsky (1893-1979)
• Harry Partch (1901-1974)
• Giacinto Scelsi (1915-1982)
• Lou Harrison (1917-2003)
• Sofia Gubaidulina (1931- ...)
• Alvin Lucier (1931- ...)
• Easley Blackwood (1933- ...)
• James Tenney (1934- ...)

Microtonal scales that are played contiguously are chromatically microtonal, those which are not use the various contiguous pitches as alternative versions of larger intervals (Burns, 1999).

See also

• Just intonation
• Harmony
• Genus (music)
• Scala
• Quarter tone

Source

• Burns, Edward M. (1999). "Intervals, Scales, and Tuning", The Psychology of Music second edition. Deutsch, Diana, ed. San Diego: Academic Press. ISBN 0122135644.

External links

• Joe Monzo's Encyclopedia of Tuning
• Huygens-Fokker Foundation Centre for Microtonal Music
• John Starrett's Microtonal Music Page
• The American Festival of Microtonal Music
• The Centre for Microtonal Music
• Modes and Scales in Indian music
• Xentonic -- Xenharmonikon, Interval, etc.
• Hearing Greek Microtones by John Curtis Franklin

Discussion of tuning theory and microtonal music:

• The Tuning List
• The Tuning-math List
• Making Microtonal Music

Theory pages:

• Paul Erlich
• Graham Breed
• Gene Ward Smith

Discography:

• Microtonal music on CD
• Carl Lumma's Top Ten microtonal albums
• Recommended Listening in Microtonal Synthesis

Microtonal music on the web:

• Kyle Gann
• Rick McGowan
• Jeff Harrington
• Andrew Heathwaite
• Aaron Johnson
• Joseph Pehrson
• Prent Rodgers
• Carlos Sampaio
• Gene Ward Smith
• Dan Stearns