If you have learned to play music you were probably taught things like scales, chords, modes, etc. Everything you would need to play any song you could think of.

You might as well ignore all that for now, you won’t need it here.

Asking deep questions

When I started learning music, it was on the piano. I was quite young, so I don’t remember much of what I learned back then. Later, I started to learn guitar, and that’s when I began to understand how the chords fit together.

Recently I began to wonder why music is structured the way it is. I wondered why the notes were the way they were. I saw no reason why you couldn’t move the frets on a guitar to different places.

What I found

As I did more research I found that the music we usually listen to was in what is called 12edo (Equal Divisions of the Octave). This means that after going up 12 notes, you will be an octave higher than where you started. The frequency of the notes is found with a mathematical formula involving the twelfth root of two. The details aren’t important but if you are interested check out this Wikipedia article.

With this same formula many other tunings are possible, and scales created with it are called equal temperaments. Any music that does not use the traditional 12 notes scale is usually called “microtonal.”

By the way, if you were wondering how you can play and listen to other scales, I found a website made by the musician Sevish for experimenting with them. If you want to check this out, the site is called Scale Workshop. This video explains how to use this wonderful tool.

In history

Before the 18th century, many different tunings were used all around the world. Because of this, if a musician from Europe tried to play traditional Chinese music they would not be able to on most European instruments, because Chinese instruments used a 7-tone scale

Another example is 53edo, which is the basis for Turkish music.

Whats the point?

In writing this, I hope to interest you in microtonal music and encourage you to do some of your own research. Having said that, some good sources are the Xenharmonic Wiki, and the podcast Now and Xen.

There is a whole world of music out there just waiting to be discovered, so what are you waiting for? Get to it!

The thing you just read was made by

Joe J.

I am a musician and programmer from [redacted] I play guitar and keyboard. Interests include space, math, and computer science. What else could you possibly want to know?