Thoughts on the 15 Tone System - Part 1

I became highly interested in microtonal music ever since I heard quarter tone piano pieces not long after I had started piano. Naturally, I had never been exposed to anything like it thus became insanely fascinated by it. Over the years I found out exact quarter tone multiples of 12 Tone were well, boring. It was too mundane honestly, and not worth the trouble. It was more exciting to try something more odd, and unconventional. 

Going by the wayside, I picked up a number of tuning systems by retuning my Yamaha keyboard and improvising. ( Because I'm too lazy to write anything concrete ). Through out this experience, I gained alot of knowledge about xenharmonic music. I tried 16 and 22 first and loved both of them. I also worked with 13, 14, 22, and 19.   

It was then I wrote a post on the facebook group saying that I have done alot with lower divisions of the octave with the exception of 9, 10, and 15. I was suggested to try 15 which at the time new next to nothing about. I eagerly began listening to some 15 tone music and loading some scales on my keyboard. 

A 15 TONE JOURNEY 

The only thing I really knew about 15 was that it had porcupine like 22 did, but that it was lesser in tune. That was all I knew about it at the time. So upon beginning my exploration into uncharted territory, I was starkly surprised. 

15 is, in a word... different. Like, when I tried 16, it had a nice melancholy sound, very easy to write melody in. But 15, well... it had this angular, chunky quality which I initially didn't like. But something fascinated me about it. I think it was how small it was and how strange it worked. 

For those unfamiliar with xen, divisions of 5 are very strange. Being used to 12 which isn't divisible by 5, the sound of 5 can take some getting used to. In 12 tone we have the nice whole tone scale which is a 6 tone scale or the 4 note diminished seventh chord. In 15, we have neither of those, we have this 5 note equal scale.  

It sounds NOTHING like seriously NOTHING like anything I have heard aside from a few encounters with Gamelan music. It's very south-asian flavored, like Indonesian, or tropical. It is really friggin cool to have at your disposal. But there is something else about it, it sounds fun. And that stroke me about 15 in general. 

In my exploration of xen, most scales had a generally colder, depressing quality to them. It was likely my limited aural comprehension at the time but that was how I interpreted them. 15 being based in this 5 x 3 framework was capable of sounding fun, and almost cheesy. It felt sugary, but also tropical like some mixed drink at a tropical result or some shit like that.  That's not the end all of the system, but sounding like that isn't difficult. 

NEW SOUNDS AND MOODS 

Going back to the 5 note scale, 15 has three of them similar to the way 12 has 3 of those diminished seventh chords you play at halloween parties. Thus you could think of it like 5 x 3 rather than 4 x 3. This scale was called 5-equal or some odd name like equipentatonic which sounds crazy. Me and a friend came up with the name Pentatonal Scale or "Pende Scale" for short.  It is, in essence, a cross between Pentatonic scale, and Whole Tone scale.   But don't go try playing it expecting Jason to visit you this Halloween, all you'll get is may'be a mimosa from a waiter of an invitation to Indonesia. 

One reason 15 is so bizarre despite it's close size to 12 is that it has two principle....... "tones........"

I ridiculously over exaggerate that because they are barely tones at all.  One of them at 160 cents is so narrow it's basically a neutral second, dead between the whole tone and half tone.   The other is one step of the pendetonal scale which is some second-third limbo freak of nature. It is by far, the most difficult interval to sing or get used to. 24 has a similar interval but the difference is 15 FORCES you to rely on it along with it's weird flat as hell second. 

The fact that this system lacks anything resembling a whole tone makes it tricky to get used to. I bought an M-audio keyboard to rekey to 22 Tone and ended up going to 15 because 22 was kinda stupid given I couldn't reach anything near octave length. Playing xen music on a keyboard set up to the tuning is game changing, it's a whole new experience. However once that "newness" wears off, you gotta buckle down and practice it daily if you wanna get good at playing it. That on top of the fact that you have to learn to expect what things will sound like in an alien tuning system. 

A RATHER ODD CHAIN OF FIFTHS  

Something weird happens in 15 and any multiple of 5 where the best representation of the perfect fifth is 720 cents. Five of them leads you to the note you started on. I know, I didn't believe it either till I tried it. You get five fifths and you are back where you started, that's it. The reason is pendetonal scale in which 720 cents is one of the intervals.  So like, you know how if you stack major sixths in 12 tone you'll get the same notes as a diminished seventh chord?   Think about it, C A F# D# then if you stack another, from D#, it's B# which is C right? 

In 15, the same kind of voodoo happens but with fifths. Stack five you are back to whatever you started on. The thing is, at first, you're brain can't hear it that way. You expect that sixth note to be a new note and the odd thing is, we tend to hear it as a sixth pitch that really doesn't exist. It's hard to unlearn 12 habits.    Oh NO! Someone broke the circle of fifths!!    Welcome to Pentaland, dude.  

The Neutral Scale

I'm writing today about a scale I had forgotten about. The neutral scale which to xen theorist is known as "Maqamic"[7] or "Mohajira"[7] depending on how it's tuned. The neutral scale is basically the middle ground between major and minor. Consider this, if we take the natural minor scale and raise the third sixth and seventh we get a major scale. But if we only raised those pitches by around half that distance which ironically is a 1/4 tone then we would have the neutral scale. Neutral land is very weird as all the major chords and minor intervals and chords are equated with each other to produce chords which sound both dark yet a little sweet and pungent.  The sound actually to me at least resembles train whistles and clock chimes. The sound is a bit hard to describe in general. They are extremely mellow yet not as crisp or stark as minor.

Structure 

The major scale has a structure of L L s L L L s while the minor has L s L L s L L. In this particular case, the L represents a whole step while s is a semitone. However, in a neutral scale, the s step represents a neutral tone being roughly mid-way between the whole tone and semitone. Thus we get
L n n L n L n  as the neutral scale.

The diagram above shows Major in purple, Neutral in pink, and Minor in blue and how they relate to one another. Notice how two neutral steps makes up the same distance as L + s or s + L.  Here we used n to represent neutral but in reality, we would simply use two step sizes normally except that the small step represents a neutral tone rather than a semitone.  The result is L s s L s L s.

The Neutral Scale Alphabet

If we wish to base music in a neutral tonality, we may want to create a new set of altered letters to write music. The alphabet C D E F G A B C is all connected by a single chain of fifths from F as is the minor scale from Ab, C D Eb F G Ab Bb C. However the neutral scale isn't actually built from a chain of fifths but two separate chains of fifths. Four of the letters connect by one chain and the other three letters by another. 

The simplest way to do this would be to use some sort of sign to indicate an off-set from a chain of fifths. Here I use arrows to indicate and raise or lowering of a pitch rather than # and b which have meanings of their own. These arrows represent a smaller value, more like a 1/4 tone but it depends on how the scale is tuned. 

C D E↓ F G A↓ B↓ C   The ↓ sign is pronounced "Down".

The above makes perfect sense to someone who understands music notation but there is another option which is cleaner though less intuitive. That is to drop E A and B for alternative letters to indicate they are not part of the same fifths chain. I like using greek letters so I wanted to find three letters which weren't just greek versions of the letters and followed the same pattern thus I used η κ and λ or Eta, Kappa, and Lambda to represent these notes. The lowercase was more snazzy looking to me so I chose this as the alphabet:  c d η f g κ λ c 

The alphabet: 

This isn't very difficult to learn as the large steps occur on letters which come from the same alphabet. Thus κ to λ is a large step but d to η is a small step. 

Dissonance for the 21st Century

This post is me musing about my own harmonic language I seem to be developing for standard tuning. At this point, I feel that I am still very immature in my musicianship and certainly my musical approach. My ideas for non-microtonal tunings or any form of 12 note based system is this:  A new approach to harmony.

I feel we are at a pinnacle point in time now or at least, we're close to it. Music has always been about dissonance for a long time, because dissonance makes something sound cool to us. I want to push the level of accepted dissonance in a way that is outside of our comfort zone but not so much that it makes people go "Eww that's just noise!"

If you think about it, nothing in tonal music sounds bad to our ears anymore, thus there isn't a huge amount of tension possible without going into the "atonal" zone. Even in many forms of jazz, we're keeping our hands out of some of the most clunky sonorities. Why?  I dunno, probably because people think it kills the mood. Personally, I feel music needs to go somewhere with harmony, obviously microtonality will solve this but 12 still has some gas left in the tank too.

Where should we go next?  My personal opinion is to stop being scared of a little clashing. My god, this is 2016 and we still rarely hear a chord that we consider to be a little uncomfortable. I mean obviously 20th century music is rough to many people and modern composers but is there no middle ground here? Ok I may be historically inaccurate or whatever, but I'm sharing my opinions here so cut me some slack haha.

My point is let's explore dissonance. REALLY I mean seriously, when I say dissonance I mean 21st century level dissonance! Not that silly little V7 chord or even most jazz chords which by now have lost their bite because we hear them so often.  But the point is not to wallow in dissonance, it's to USE IT for tension.  We already have incredible piles of music which is dissonance based, that's what most modern classical is and I do like alot of it myself. But here's an idea, why not combine some chords with a little roughness with more harmonious chords?

What I'm proposing is to heighten the level of dissonance, alter a bit what we consider a resolved chord, but still keep it on a level that it doesn't sound like a train wreck to normal listeners. We want to CHALLENGE their ear not beat it with a sledge hammer!  Make the music as dissonant as possible while still keeping some degree of listenability to those not accustomed to odd styles of music.  It's not being a sell-out here, I'm not trying to please listeners, I'm trying to explore the realms between crazy atonality and strict tonality.

I began to get this idea when I began asking questions to myself about harmony. I said "Hmm, so a B in a C major chord sounds good and sweet, then how about an F# in it up an octave?" I tried it, obviously it sounds great, it's that #11 I've grown to love so much.  But then take it a step further, what about C# in a C major chord?  That sound is one I initially did not like. But i tried it more, and found if you put it up two octaves from the root, it sounds alot sweeter.  But this C# in a C chord is not a major seventh. It's a sound rarely ever used in music outside of a "horror effect" why is that?  Is this sound bad?

Nope, this is a very cool sound but it's new, it's quite weird in a tonal context but that's what makes it so cool.  You'll notice if you put a Bb in the chord that C# sounds then more familiar, just sounds like a diminished chord or something.  But try C# with just a C major triad or a C major seventh or even C major Ninth chord.  It's totally different.

What I'm getting at is, in my music I am really trying to experiment with these "wrong" chords. I have two general ideas here:

1) No chord is always bad, there is MULTIPLE ways to use the same sound to accomplish different effects. This means if you can do it, you could hypothetically get a very clashing chord to sound tender if played in a certain context.  Try it! Do it with G# A#  G D A.  It's tricky but possible.

2) Try to go in and out of harsh chords and more normal jazz chords. In general the more dissonant your normal chords are, the easier it is the make the chords with more bite flow. But remember, try to keep them to a tolerable level.

3) Use the odder added notes to regular chords to create even more jazziness than normal chord extensions.  Try C#, D#, G# and A# with C major extended chords.  Each one sounds different. Try them in different octaves too!   Try clusters too but these are harder to voice lead, I recommend clusters with notes that are a larger leap away to create easier voice leading.


So I urge any musician, try messing around with chords that clash! Use some chords that you think sound terrible and MAKE THEM WORK IN A TONAL CONTEXT!! I believe a good musician can make any sound work, remember it's context that makes chords sound scary or disturbing, not the chord itself.

Below is a three track piano EP called "Forbidden Colors" demonstrating this idea I have.

Categorial Perception Experiment Phase 1

As of late, I have noticed more and more how my black and white thinking when it comes to music is very bad for my creativity. Being that I've now become so ingrained in years of thinking about chords and scales in a certain way, I want to free myself of this line of thinking. I'm not sure how well this will work but I'm going to preform an experiment on myself to see if I can change the way I perceive categories in music. So how will I do this exactly? By constructing a new synthetic system of theory and notes in which music can be written in. The idea here is to be as strict as possible in order to enforce new ways of thinking in the musical system. The result hopefully will be that in the end, this new system will become ingrained to some extent and allow me to learn how to shift categorial perception away from the same old thinking rut.

The new system will contain nothing of the old what so ever. The only constant will be that 12 Equal Temperament will still be used. This is merely to allow myself to be able to use this anywhere, not just at home where I have a keyboard which I can change the tuning of. This way, touch is involved at a consistent rate rather than setting up some odd scale on the keyboard. The new system will have new names for pitches which will be named after six fruits rather than letter names. The fruits will take the place of the notes: F# G# A# C D E as:

"Raspberry", "Lemon", "Pear", "Blueberry", "Orange", "Banana".

This system is so weird now that my brain couldn't possibly relate it to any sort of thinking of traditional western theory. In addition, you'll notice these are fruits, they are words not letters. These have meaning on their own which perhaps may influence my categorial perception even more.  I also purposely paired names to pitches that are contrary to what I felt paired together. I felt C would be Lemon but I made it blueberry, something that for whatever reason felt very wrong in my mind and that's exactly what we want, to go against our learned perception.  What's more these names have no inherent order. They are random fruits, they all are fruit but unlike letters, they do not fall in any specific order in my mind. Internalizing them will be tricky but it will add to the fun of brain crushing chaos haha.

The scale corresponds to the "Whole tone scale" which has little in common with the major scale making it even more taboo.  I could have went with other scales such as the diminished or augmented but I wanted to keep it simple as well as pick a scale which does not contain major and minor triads. I also fairly enjoy this scale but have found it confusing to work with, may'be now I can see it in a whole new light.

The other six pitches are known as "Scratch Tones", they have no actual basis as pitches but rather are considered in this new system as "spaces" between the notes. Essentially they are ambiguous and might be considered out of tune compared to the six fruits we used. They are for embellishments or something.  I'm not sure yet because this is a system we're building as we go along.

The piano layout:

PHASE 1

The first stage of this experiment is to memorize these notes by heart. I need to know what note corresponds to which fruit without any second guessing or doubt. I imagine this will take like a 4 days to a week to finish this step. I don't want to start defining any rules of play until I internalize this system as is.   

I encourage others to join in the experiment with me, it'll be a fun way to see how we can screw up our categorial perception. Dunno how long I will do this but I imagine around one month to get a good result point. 

Phase 2 which I will write next will consist of defining some initial properties and functions for this system. 

７平均律と14平均律

YoutubeでKnowsurというユーザを見つけた。７平均律をダイアトニックスケールで使ってつつ、14平均律をクロマチックスケールで使っていた。僕はこそ爽やかを感じたよ。７平均律の音が素晴らしく聞こえたので、僕はその調律を試さなきゃ。思ったので、僕はその調律を試しなきゃ。マイクロトーンの調律を使うことはなかったなぁ。「どのようにスケールで音楽を作るのか」とか「モードが１つしかないんだよ」とか、面白くて難しい性格を待ってるんだ。なんて７平均律を全音階を使うことがなかったよなぁ。それ、「どのようにこのスケールで音楽を作る？」とか、　「もちろん、モードが一つだけあるんじゃないか…」それで、面白く難しい様相だよ。よい響きを感じるけど、やり方が分からなかったなぁ。　　　

このブログでは、７平均律や14平均律について少し書こうと思った。日本語でウエブサイトには、マイクルトーンやゼンハモニック情報がないので残念だよ。将来のために14平均律に関してボログを書こうと思う。　はじめましょう

７平均律の構造は…？　

７平均律は、オクターブを７つに均等に分割する音律です。　完全に平均のスケールなので、全音階とはやり方が少し違っているんでしょうなぁ。その構造は、長音階の構造と比べ音 格はすべて違ってるんだが、その音は長音階にまだ似てるんだと思います。こいうことは、文章で説明するより、自分の耳で聞いた方が明らかになるんでしょう。

はい、念のため補足すると、14平均律と７平均律は両方とも均等分割です。つまり、一つ一つの音は、隣の音の間に同じ幅の空きがあるので、モードがひとつだけ作られます。長音階と主な違いはこれです。

CDEFGABCの音階はEFGABCDEの音階とは違っているんだが、７平均律はすべて位置が同じだ。一つ一つの音の間には148セントがあります。

音の名前は…？

14平均律は２つの完全五度で一連でつながらない７平均律の組み合せと考えられる。
７平均律は大きく音が異なっているので、まったく新しいアルファベットを作るのほうがいいと思う。日本語はカッコイイと思うだけで、そのアルファベットを作ることには平仮名とカタカナを使っていたと決めた。普通な音楽で使われる（ABCDEFGA）のアルファベットは、ロジカルなシステムです。14平均律も同様に、ロジカルなシステムがいいんでしょう。だから、僕は日本の数え方の略語を使うといいと思う。

「い　に　さ　し　ご　ろ　な　い」（いち、に、さん、し、ご、ろく、なな）を７平均律の記号とします。
聞くときは、以下をクリックしてください：　
Upload Music - Audio Hosting - 7 Equal Temperament Naturals
それは１つのダイアトニックスケールを作ります。

そして、他の1７平均律スケールの記号は：
イ　ニ　サ　シ　ゴ　ロ　ナ　イ　　になります。
嬰の７平均律を聞いてください：　 Music File Hosting - Embed Audio Files - 7 et sharps 　

それは先ほどとは別のダイアトニックスケールになります。

しかし、発音するときは仮名の前に「えい」を発音する「嬰」をつける。たとえば、「し」は「し」のままだが、「シ」は「嬰シ」になります。

14平均律すべての記号は次のようになります。　
い　イ　に　ニ　さ　サ　し　シ　ご　ゴ　ろ　ロ　な　ナ
１　２　３　４　５　６　７　８　９　10　11　12　13　14　
そしてまで、「い」に戻る。

もちろん、14平均律で調号が二つだけあります。　

どのように楽譜を書くことは？

14平均律の楽譜を書くことは簡単です。14平均律は２つの完全五度の一連でつながらない７平均律の組み合わせと考えられます。７平均律の音は12平均律のピアノで白い音、すなわち変化記号をつけないことで表されます。もう１つの７平均律には矢印記号をつけることで表されます。

下の７平均律記号を見せてください：　

下の全部14平均律半音階を見せてください：　

例えば？　

Knowsurは14平均律のアルバムを作っている。これに聞けます：　

http://www.split-notes.com/004/ 

もちろん、タイ音楽は７平均律を使っているけど、14平均律は使っていない。

僕も14平均律を作り始めた。特にタイ音楽とラグタイムを交えるに興味がありまあす：　 
このようなちょっと悲しい歌も作っています：　

次のブログは７平均律の音楽の作り方について書きます。　

Absolute Pitch - My Experience and Myths

Today's post is about the wonderful world of Absolute pitch, or Perfect pitch, or whatever you wanna call it. There is alot of debate online and in musical classrooms about it and well, while I'm not a scientist, I am a person who has absolute pitch.  I can't offer scientific experimentation but I can offer my personal experiences from a real person who is writing THIS article and not someone quoted from a book.  So take it from me, a real living-breathing absolute pitch guy.

What is Absolute Pitch?

Let me define what absolute pitch is.  Normally it's something like "The ability to name pitches on the piano without a fixed reference point." that is only have the story AND it's not even that accurate.
My best definition of absolute pitch is the internal sense of the color produced by musical tones and scales.

 It's not necessarily being able to identify any note without a second though, we do second guess ourselves, we can get confused. You still have to work at it, no one and I firmly will declare that it is a FACT that NO ONE was born with absolute pitch that allowed them to instantly name every pitch. It's all about developing a relationship with the notes and while I agree you can be gifted, it has far more to do with a mindset and experience than your freakin stupid genetics.

There is Psychological phenomenon called Anomic Aphasia which is the inability to always name colors or other things. You know what it is but you can't play the name with it. This phenomenon can occur with AP I think, I may have it and others don't, I really don't know. It's like seeing a cup and saying bowel, no plate, oh a cup.  

"bbut mozart had absolute pitch... " BLAH BLAH BLAH I'm tired of hearing about genetics being involved with it. It might play a small role but generally, it comes down to what you're paying attention to. I imagine talent might matter in your development of it but everyone, I mean everyone with musical training can name pitches without a reference tone, if you think hard enough.  That's not to say that I believe everyone can differentiate keys or tones but that's not important.

Tonal Color

With me, my experience with AP is that each musical tone and scale has a color to it, not a visual color, it's not freakin synethesia, I don't see colors when I hear sound. It's more like, if our ears heard colors, well that's what AP is like. It's like when you see blue and you feel that blue color right? Not a physical sensation, but it's BLUE, you don't doubt it.  So when I hear G, I will just know it's G. That's not to say I can't get it wrong time to time. But it's that feeling of G, sometimes I'll hear it and can't immediately think of what note or key but I just feel the texture of it.  I guess it's kind of like how someone with good AP can tell a major from a minor chord but it's a little more tricky than that.

I cannot fathom what it's like to hear sound in black and white, to hear a piece of music then the same one again in a different key and then not being able to tell that they have entirely different colors!   For me, hearing someone say G and F# sound the same is like saying Red and Blue look the same - it's nonsense and just ridiculous.

Literally every single major/minor key has a unique flavor. Trying to tell you what they sound like is like trying to describe to a blind man what colors look like. I can tell you that F# sounds a bit tinnier than say a robust D but alot of that is timbre specific such as F# is very metallic sounding on a piano and D is not. On other instruments it's not quite as noticeable but there still is that lingering flavor that is F# major.  I just can't imagine what it's like to not hear like this.

Generally keys that are a perfect fifth away are more like discolorations. C G and F share a few qualities but they also are quite different. The stranger part is that some keys are easier to name than others. I imagine this all comes from associating childhood experience of favorite songs or something. Like I could near always name a song in D major or F# major but B major or E major can throw me. It's not like I don't hear these keys extremely differently but they share similarities.

This is all really subjective though. All people with AP probably hear things differently. One thing is how complex it really it. Root note, timbre, and visual context all have an impact. It's like a super complex network of associations. This is why we can get confused, it's not set in stone. G major sounds different in different context but there is still that lingering familiarity with it.

Ah... Relative Pitch..... 

There's that thing I'm tired of hearing. Everytime someone tries to learn absolute pitch and makes mistakes, they're told they have relative pitch. This makes no sense. Relative pitch IS all about being able to feel musical space of intervals, chords, scales etc... this is a no brainer, you must have good relative pitch to survive in the music world.  

Relative pitch is about Space, Absolute pitch is about color. Relative pitch must be paired with absolute pitch to get any practical use out of absolute pitch. Absolute pitch is extremely useful but at the same time, optional in the music world. Absolute pitch without relative pitch is like Tamarind without the rest of the Pad Thai. It doesn't work well, it's not very functional, and it's really slow. I can feel notes all day long but I can't just name note after note in a piece of music in real time, that's stupid. Typically I will figure the root of the scale key first and use relative pitch for the rest.  

What I don't like it people dismissing absolute pitch as useless when they don't possess it themselves. Absolute pitch to me is like having an enriched musical experience. I don't get what it's like to not have it, to not hear tonal color. I'm not trying to brag, I just can't wrap my head around people having Relative pitch but not able to hear tonal qualities of pitches. It's weird to me.  

Point is, you determine if you have AP not some teacher. If you have AP you will have no doubt that C and G# sound totally different, if you cannot hear an audible difference in color, you don't have it. 

The Joys and Annoyances of Absolute Pitch 

 TRANSPOSING 

One of the most annoying aspects of having AP is that you care about transposition while the majority of the population doesn't give a crap. If a song I know is in D major, for the love of cats, play the song in D! I know singers have to transpose but it's very annoying when your the only one who seems to care. Sometimes changing the key can have an interesting effect but most of the time, it's just cheesy, because the song's color changes.  Cheesy is how I would describe it, it seems fake, like not genuine when it's in the wrong key. 

TUNING 

A common belief is that people with AP are seriously annoyed by retuning music. As if retuning a guitar 1/4 step down will annoy us. If anything, it sounds cool to people like me. I do have an interest in alternate tunings so that may be why but quite literally, I don't see how someone with AP would see playing in a different reference pitch such as A 432 as anything but a good thing.  If all the regular keys sound unique, the 1/4 step down keys sound EXTREMELY different. They are quite literally hard to identify, they sound fresh yet foreign to me. They also don't retain qualities much of the key that is 1/4 step higher or lower.  C major tunes 1/4 step higher sounds nothing like C major at 440 hz to me.  

IDENTIFYING PITCH 

A thing that happens with AP is we hear things as musical, period.  More than the average musician person I imagine. Like I'll hear a lawn mower and my brain has a habit of wanting to know what the key sounds like. Heck, if someone farts, I'll normally be able to identify the pitch, I don't try, it just happens. 

LISTENING TO MUSIC

One annoying aspect of AP is that I need variety. I cannot stand to hear too many songs in the same key! I will not listen to 4 songs in a row in G# major, it's boring to me.  This causes issues because my brain tends to pay attention to the tonal color rather than other elements making two songs sound more similar than other people hear them as. 

Another thing is key preference, I like songs in B major, F#, and D major best. I think E major is my least favorite major key, like it's pretty definite, I don't like E major, sounds cheesy to me, I don't know why. 

Can you learn it as an adult? 

While I cannot prove this considering I've had an ability to hear musical color since I was 13, I imagine you can. If you want to develop AP, you have to make your brain think it needs to know the difference.  I developed it mainly from arranging pieces, I quickly noticed there were very different tonal qualities to the different songs I was arranging.  It became useful to me to know what key it was in, I tried to guess it not to hunt and peck till i found it. Well, honestly at first I did hunt and peck but I started needing to do it less. 

To be honest, the ability to name pitches out of thin air is extremely learnable, it's no different from learning to identify symbols. But being able to feel the musical color that people with AP experience, that may not be learnable but I honestly have no idea.  

Thing is, if I stop practicing it, I lose it. I cannot name pitches as fast, I can figure it out without any reference pitch but it takes a bit of time and confusion.  What never goes away is how I hear music, and I'm not sure if that's something you can teach yourself or not. 

Crap Microtonal Musicians Do

This is not to be offensive, just to be funny. I'm not meaning to hurt anyone or offend anyone, these are just some of the quirks about the xen community.

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.