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Added beginning of microtonal draft Getty Ritter 8 years ago
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1 \meta{("microtonal-music"
2 "microtonal music"
3 ("music"))}
4
5 There was a recent, very good blog post by
6 \link{https://eev.ee/|Eevee} about
7 \link{https://eev.ee/blog/2016/09/15/music-theory-for-nerds/|Music Theory For Nerds},
8 which is a very good introduction.
9 That blog post inspired me to write about a
10 particular niche interest of mine, which is the slightly dauntingly-named
11 field of \em{microtonal music}. I'll rehash the important details from that
12 post here, but one way or another, you should do yourself a favor and read
13 that post, too.
14
15 Let's start by dipping way down into very basic sounds!
16
17 \h1{Consonance and Dissonance}
18
19 It helps us to think of sounds as abstract \em{waves}, which correspond to the
20 vibrations of air or other ambient material that create or carry sound. For
21 our purposes, we can think in terms of simple repeating waves like
22 \em{sine waves}, which sound like this:
23
24 [insert sound here]
25
26 We can visualize this sound like this:
27
28 [insert image here]
29
30 When we talk about the \em{frequency} of this sound, we're talking about how
31 often those peaks show up. Frequency is measured in hertz (abbreviated as Hz),
32 which just means "number per second".\ref{hertz}
33 \sidenote{It's also my least favorite kind of donut.}
34 Two sounds that have the same number of peaks per second are perceived as
35 "the same" by human beings.
36
37 Additionally, sounds whose frequencies are simple ratios are perceived as
38 somehow "pleasing", and the less simple the ratio is, the less pleasant the
39 sound. For example, a \tt{2:1} ratio of sounds is still pleasant:
40
41 [insert sound here]
42
43 However, a ratio of [INSERT RATIO HERE] sounds awkward and harsh:
44
45 [insert sound here]
46
47 In music and music theory, sounds which sound pleasant together are
48 \em{consonant} and sounds which sound unpleasant together are called
49 \em{dissonant}. These two terms aren't separated by a strict line:
50 some pairs of sounds are clearly consonant (such as the \tt{2:1} ratio)
51 and some are clearly dissonant, but there is no well-defined cutoff
52 point where sounds stop being consonant and start being dissonant. It's best
53 to think of them as relative terms: a pair of sounds can be
54 \em{more consonant} or \em{more dissonant} than another.\ref{condis}
55 \sidenote{It's also important to note that the terms \em{consonant} and
56 \em{dissonant} are old, but have been informally and sometimes
57 contradictorily defined for centuries: some people define them in terms of
58 frequencies, some in terms of perception, some in terms of both. Defining
59 them as \em{pleasant} and \em{unpleasant} is pretty reductive, but
60 not completely wrong.}
61
62 So, when we