Putting the XEN in Xen.
Microtonal music can be an incredibly enriching experience for adventurous souls, and while it can very easily be made to sound good to the average listener, we all know who those guys are who try TOO hard to make something sound xenharmonic.
"Hmm, I like this musical phrase but let's change guitar to Bouzuki to make it cooler."
"Hmm, that works but let's make it more rhythmically weird."
" I don't like it, this sounds way too consonant, time to throw in some clashing notes!!"
"AH! This Brings back memories, I must have done something wrong."
"I don't like this tuning anymore, it sounds too familiar to me."
"This is too melodic, it needs more ambience"
"Screw this, it sounds too much like music."
Yes we all know you want to sound xen but it doesn't have to sound like a machine running to be microtonal.
Using lots of clashing pitches on purpose
I realize that those smooth comma pumps, and melodic shifts are cool but not everyone is impressed by a piece of music that says "Hey, look how many notes I have!!" Keep it chill, you can throw it out all you want but the groundhogs in the woods just aren't impressed my that. We can hear those microtonal-virgins now saying "Who wrote this crap? It sounds like a kid banging on a piano."
Just because you write a love song in a 34 notes per octave tuning doesn't mean you need 31 of them in one vocal line to get your point across.
Using alternate tunings as an excuse for bad music
Yes it's microtonal but that doesn't change the fact that writing a piece of music in 20 minutes isn't generally going to be a mozart masterpiece. Try writing one piece of music in an alternate tuning that you spend at least a week or two on. Most will not be able to do this because we all know that microtonal guys have ADHD. Trying to ask them to spend even three days on the same 13 EDO composition is like asking an engaged couple to hold off on tweeting about it till they are sure they want to go through with it.
We're so excited about the idea, we don't really care about the execution. After all, it's MICROTONAL MUSIC, that's enough to make it worth listening to right?
Making music too harsh for microtonal virgins
I do understand that many alternative tuning enthusiast love a good 20th century piece. The dirtier the better! It's not enough to serialism, and it's not enough to be microtonal, it must be MICROTONAL SERIALISM! And if you think we're stopping there oh ho oho, you have no idea. We're gonna make the piece so thick with walls of rich dissonance that it transcends your ear to a new place. You will enter microtonal val-hala, a place where normal music will sound as boring as a door bell. If you don't like it, you obviously don't have the ear it takes.
When 'regular' music goes sour
While the world of alternate tunings is a breath taking journey, it comes at a cost. Yes, almost certainly, once you step foot on the microtonal express, any of the music you used to like will become a stick in the mud.
"I used to love this band! Man, I can't believe that, I mean, all they're music's in 12 of course so it's not that great anymore. I guess I've 'moved on'."
And it's that thing to where anyone outside the Xen community is suddenly uneducated and simply in the "musical dark ages".
"I feel sorry for you that you can't enjoy this piece by Partch, I guess you'll have to go back to your Miley Cyrus."
Trying to be a Musical Hipster
It's always fun when your at a music major party with your microtonal loving friend. When one of the hosts asks you what types of music do you like the most? You respond with
YOU "I listen to alot of Indie and Mathrock".
HOSTESS "Oh mathrock, what is that?"
YOU "It's a style that is a subgenre of Indie which has a very liberal use of a time signature."'
HOSTESS "That sound's really cool." She turns to your friend who is busy eating a cupcake. "How about you."
YOUR FRIEND "Oh I like Sevish and Last Sacrament, they don't use regular pitches, they use tunings they invent themselves with a whole array of new chords and intervals."
HOSTESS "Interesting, I've never heard of that."
YOUR FRIEND "Yeeah, they're rrreeaallly underground, so, you probably haven't heard of them."
HOSTESS "Oh, do you like any Jazz or classical?"
YOUR FRIEND "Umm, no, I don't really like things that sound 'twelvish'"
Things turn awkward..
Tuning ADD
Even though there are many tunings to pick from, composers of xen music typically jump around from tuning to tuning. In fact, just when we're onto something, BAM we lose interest and look at something shiny."I finally found a cool way to work with this temperament in 14 EDO, it sounds sooo good I'm ready... OH 17 EDO looks so cool!! Screw 14 EDO." Only to result in "I don't do anything in 17 EDO these days, I'm all about 31." Then... "31 is too mainstream, I'm a 13 ET guy, it may be close to 12 but it's not at all."
We would all get alot more done with this mess if we would sit down, shut up, and actually spend a month extensively studying one tuning/temperament. For most people, once they've found all the surface bells and whistles, the tuning's old hat and it's time for a new toy.
Those Annoying Tuning Fundamentalist
While most people pursue microtonality for it's appeal in new sounds and flavors, there are some who are what I call "Tuning Fundamentalist". We know who you are. You walk about in your screen printed T-shirts labeled "Pythagorean will take the world by storm!" You're special ideal tuning society to where all music is written in this holy and sacred tuning created by God himself. And they all will preach the same message. "Anything but this tuning is fire and brimstone." God forbid you use a strange chord as consonance, a piece resolving to a neutral seventh chord will crack open the gates of Hell and damn the world to darkness for 1000 years as we know it.
"This is how our ancestors did it 1000 years ago, and this is how the arabs did it so DANG IT! I'm going to do it too." Forget experimentation, musical history is set in stone, don't pass go and don't collect 200 dollars!
The Secret of Life - X-EDO
We get it, you travelled to a remote island near the Bermuda triangle only to discover that what we've thought about tuning theory has been way off base all along. Now you're back telling us your discovery of how this equal temperament is the best tuning for the brain to hear because it was carved in stone by the Myans some 10000 years ago. "It's not enough though", you say, "Let me explain it to you with the universal language of science." Then you proceed to talking about how this tuning resonates with the internal vibrations of the universe allowing the best possible music.
Being a Math Genius
Tuning theory generally is heavily math based, however, that doesn't mean that everyone interested in it will be a math-wiz kid like you. You probably greased through calculus and algebra like smooth butter in July. Physics was like a walk in the park, and tuning theory with acoustics was simply the icing on the cake. But please keep in mind, not everyone gets you when you talk in a highly mathematical manner about something. Wise Otter-spirits know a thing you're talking about, much less the general musical population.
The Historian
Tuning history can be helpful in exploration of new tunings but there are some guys who just know too much about it. One question asked and there they go, off in a frenzy of "The iranians did it like this with this melodic resolution. 000-232-700-650, was a chord commonly used as a resolution to 000-500-750-955 in the Swahilian era. " You've lost me, my question became from simple to a mess of confusing trivia about the Iranians. Not real helpful.
