Composing in quartertones....

[Kyle Pyke]

Has anyone here ever composed a piece using mainly quartertones?

 

I'm interested in writing a piece for solo clarinet, and electronics. Any hints, advice, or techniques?

 

Kyle

[Kyle Pyke]

... Or does anyone have recommendations of pieces/ composers to listen to?

[Tyler Hughes]

I have worked very limited with quarter tones on flute and sax, however not with clarinet. This site might help you get started with quartertones for clarinet:

http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/~ahugill/manual/clarinet/extended.html

 

As far as pieces, the first one that comes to mind is Charles Ives 3 Quarter Tone pieces:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXJPnUZhETg

[Fredrick zinos]

Ive had some compostions played by groups that seemed to specialize in quarter tones.Their basic view of music seemed to be "What's a 1/2 step between friends?" The Viola player's vibrato was a dead ringer for the opening bar of Fur Elise.

[Bob Morabito]

Scala seems to be the software Ive heard most mentioned in conjunction with this--

 

http://www.huygens-fokker.org/scala/

 

"Scala is a powerful software tool for experimentation with musical tunings, such as just intonation scales, equal and historical temperaments, microtonal and macrotonal scales, and non-Western scales. It supports scale creation, editing, comparison, analysis, storage, tuning of electronic instruments, and MIDI file generation and tuning conversion. All this is integrated into a single application with a wide variety of mathematical routines and scale creation methods. Scala is ideal for the exploration of tunings and becoming familiar with the concepts involved. In addition, a very large library of scales is freely available for Scala and can be used for analysis or music creation........."

 

Bob Morabito

[Kyle Pyke]

Hey guys,

Thanks for the responses.

Tyler- Thanks for the Ives link, I've heard of the pieces, but haven't had time to sit down and listen to them- I'll give that a shot tomorrow. As for the clarinet resource, my girlfriend's a clarinetist, so my question wasn't so much how to compose quartertones for clarinet, but if there were any voice-leadings/ modes/ intervals that are particular to the scale, that can be used in composing.

 

Bob- I've used scala before, but find to be generally sluggish, especially because it's impossible to play the same note a quartertone apart. For example, if you relay the MIDI signals from scala into Kontakt, and try to play C and C 1/4 sharp, the program uses the same note 'C', one modified with a pitch bend, which ends up effecting both notes. I've used Akoustic piano, which has a quartertone piano built in, and Omnisphere which has a whole bunch of alternate tunings, as well as awesome synth patches.

 

Thanks again!

 

K

[Bob Morabito]

Hi Kyle-

Ive never tried Scala before--but have heard of it/read about it repeatedly thru the years..and in all honesty , this is the first time Ive ever heard something bad about it.

 

Good luck wth your project:)

 

Bob

[Rudi [Rudolf Schmitt]]

Hi Kyle,

I was experimenting with quarter-tones with Notion 3. It works very fine - even instruments with fixed pitches like the piano can play quarter tones! Hope you'll post some work. There's a composer Haba who's work may be interesting for you.

Rudi

[Chris Alpiar]

how about this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7vZURdhucM&feature=related

 

*snicker* or this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUB3wFfAY-s&feature=related

 

[Kristofer Emerig]

Never encountered this before. Thanks for the link Bob.

Bob Morabito said:

Scala seems to be the software Ive heard most mentioned in conjunction with this--

 

http://www.huygens-fokker.org/scala/

 

"Scala is a powerful software tool for experimentation with musical tunings, such as just intonation scales, equal and historical temperaments, microtonal and macrotonal scales, and non-Western scales. It supports scale creation, editing, comparison, analysis, storage, tuning of electronic instruments, and MIDI file generation and tuning conversion. All this is integrated into a single application with a wide variety of mathematical routines and scale creation methods. Scala is ideal for the exploration of tunings and becoming familiar with the concepts involved. In addition, a very large library of scales is freely available for Scala and can be used for analysis or music creation........."

 

Bob Morabito

[Bob Morabito]

You're welcome, Kristofer.