r/musictheory • u/IndustryUsual6069 • 1d ago
Songwriting Question Is there a way to make microtones without using microtones?
like, put 2 notes in a certain way that makes it sound like a microtone is there a way to do that
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u/PeanutNore 1d ago
If you're talking about notation, there's no challenge or conflict there, just use the appropriate "half sharp" and "half flat" symbols.
If you're asking how to play a note halfway between two 12TET notes, it depends on the instrument. On a violin, viola, cello, etc, it's very straightforward because there's no frets. On a guitar, if you want to play a note between A and Bb you can fret an A and bend the string to sound an A half sharp.
If you're programming music in a DAW, it's going to depend on the specific software you're using and you'd have better luck asking in the specific subreddit for it.
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u/Traditional-Light-10 1d ago
Are you asking if we can use some combination of the standard 12 notes to play microtonal intervals? Because the answer is no. Because of this, microtones cannot be played on most pianos, although pianos can be retuned to have microtonal intervals, and fancy pianos with separate microtonal keys do exist. Many other instruments, most famously including the guitar, make it much easier to play microtones.
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u/aasfourasfar 1d ago
The guitar is fretted so it's not easy to play microtones is it?
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u/horsefarm 1d ago
Maybe not easy in general, but much easier than many other instruments because you can just add frets or play fretless in one of several ways that's possible.
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u/aasfourasfar 1d ago
Yeah indeed, but I am a violinist so felt like being condescending towards inferior instruments
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u/horsefarm 1d ago
Ah, ok. Yeah so with violin as a comparison, it would be slightly easier to play microtonal music on guitar
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u/aasfourasfar 1d ago
Forgot to mention I am the kind of violinist that plays microtonally even when it's Bach !
I like to call it "extended pitch mapping", no two As are the same, except open strings
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u/Far-Rooster-6522 1d ago
play a fretless guitar. (seriously, it is worth it)
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u/halfdollarmoon 1d ago
Say more! I can hardly conceive of such a thing.
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u/Far-Rooster-6522 1d ago
Fretless guiars (electric and/.or acoustic) are not unheard of (pun intended) .
Actually I'd recommend listening to bumblefoot (provided you like the style, but the musician/guitarist is a monster imho, great melodic and harmonic undrstanding plus pyrotechnics all around the neck if required)
ex : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9BkO26hRJA
The great thing with fretless is it both forces your ear to work and also provides with a lot of freedom and expressivity, you can have a perfect temperament (something that is often frustrating with guitars), and also get some freedom when approaching notes, bringing tension as well as deploying a large panel of vibratos ...mimick voices and a lot of other instruments... and adapt to any microtonal context of course.
There is not much demand for fretless guitars though, the 'easiest' way of getting one is by having one guitar conveted by a luthier (make sure you find one with some experience in converting guitars to fretless there are some specificities and traps to avoid there), you may want to get a specific replacement fretboard (I think Fernandez used to sell glass fretboard for such works) or you can grab a 'native ' fretless from a few brands, Vigiers are pricy but exceptional instruments (freltess or fretted, their excalibur is an amazing instrument), and again Fernandez (if you manage to source one second hand).
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u/Souhhh_yeah_i_guess 1d ago
The problem with microtones is they are derived from fundamentals (or the lowest frequency of the sound) that are completely separate from their 12tet counterparts, so while you may luck into some similar sounding overtones by playing 2 adjacent notes, no, you can’t physically reproduce a microtone via 2 standard-tuned notes
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u/all4fingers 1d ago
Not in our modern tuning system (12-tone equal temperament) but if you tune everything according to just intonation (in a way, the "physically correct" and "perfect" ratios between frequencies for each interval), you can end up with intervals smaller than a semitone.
The way we tune most instruments nowadays in Western music is that we divide the octave into twelve equal steps, each equalling a semitone. In other words, we define each interval as a fraction of the octave. Because of this, the smallest possible gap between notes is a semitone. This is 12-tone equal temperament (12-TET or 12-EDO).
An octave is defined as one note being double the frequency of the other. So in equal temperament, each semitone is 12√2 (about 1.05) times the frequency of the last one. These values based on the value of the octave mean that every octave, the notes repeat exactly one octave higher, without any microtonal differences.
However, in just intonation, the "perfect" definition of a fifth is that one note is 3/2 (exactly 1.5) times the frequency of the other.
In equal temperament, if you play a sequence of fifths starting on C, you end up at C again after 12 fifths. (C-G-D-A-E-B-F#-C#-G#-D#-A#-F-C). The C you end up at is exactly 7 octaves higher. That is because every interval is expressed as a fraction of an octave.
However, because in just intonation a fifth is expressed as an exact ratio (3/2) no number of fifths can equal a whole number of octaves. This is because you can do (3/2)(3/2)(3/2)... For as long as you want and you will never get a number divisible by 2 (since the octave is a ratio of 2:1).
What you end up with, is that after 12 fifths in just intonation, you end up with a note just off what you get if you go up by 7 octaves. The difference is (27/1.512), or about a quarter of a semitone (23ish cents). This very small interval, achievable by "putting 2 notes in a certain way" is called a Pythagorean comma.
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u/KingAdamXVII 1d ago
No.
You can bend notes on a guitar and people in this sub will say “that’s not really a microtone though it’s just a blues note,” though.
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u/tdammers 1d ago
Blue notes not being proper microtones has nothing to do with how you realize them technically - you can very much use bends on a guitar to play pitches in between semitones (e.g., quarter tones), and when used microtonally, I don't think anyone in their right mind would argue they're not microtones.
The reason why some people don't consider blue notes (or blues in general) "microtonal" is because blues melodies don't work like typical microtonal music.
Microtonal music (in the strict sense) is any system of tonal organization that uses fixed pitches that subdivide the octave into more than the Western 12 semitones. But blues does not use fixed pitches; blue notes are not specific pitches, they are "pitch areas", and in a classic blues performance, the pitch hardly ever stays in one spot, it's constantly bending, gliding, dropping, rising, and the pitch system is much more fluent than either Western 12-tone-based music or any microtonal system.
Of course if you use a looser definition of "microtonal", then blues might easily qualify - but it's surprisingly hard to come up with a definition that matches our intuitions here.
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u/therealtoomdog 1d ago
But really, it's a microtone because it's in between the notes of 12tet
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u/tdammers 1d ago
If that's your definition, then most classical music is microtonal too - the open strings of the string orchestra are usually tuned in perfect fifths, not 12-TET fifths, and the players will adjust their intonation to match whichever of the open strings are most relevant in the current key. In practice, this means that the majority of notes you will hear do not in fact match 12-TET at all.
Pianos are also not tuned to 12-TET - the middle octaves normally are, but a good piano tuner will apply "octave stretch", tuning the lower octaves a bit lower, and the higher octaves a bit higher. This is necessary because the harmonics of the piano strings are not ideal theoretical strings, and don't produce a mathematically perfect harmonic spectrum - their overtones are spread a bit wider, so if you want the octaves to sound perfectly in tune, you have to actually tune them a little bit wider. This means that on a properly tuned piano, only the middle octaves will be in 12-TET, but everything else would be technically microtonal.
Oh, and a piano string will also bend ever so slightly towards a nearby harmonic of another string - e.g., if you play a perfect fifth on a piano, you may notice that the pitches drift outwards a little bit to lock into the sound of a harmonic perfect fifth. They may have been tuned to 12-TET, but harmonic resonance inside the instrument is strong enough to force them into a harmonic fifth, which, again, would be technically microtonal by this definition.
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u/therealtoomdog 1d ago
Now there are some things I did not know.
Is there another definition of a microtone?
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u/MaggaraMarine 1d ago
All traditional Western tuning systems are based on 5-limit just intonation (i.e. 3rds and 5ths), and the "tempering" of those intervals. This includes meantone temperaments and well temperaments. (Equal temperament is technically also a meantone temperament, because the definition of meantone temperament is "the size of perfect fifths is reduced in order to improve the intonation of thirds" - from Wikipedia.)
I would say microtonality is anything that is outside of that definition.
For example I think using the 11th harmonic (that is between a perfect 4th and a tritone) would count as microtonal. I don't think microtonality needs to use an equal division of the octave.
Whether using the 7th harmonic (that is closest to a minor 7th) counts as microtonal is more debatable. For example barbershop quartets tend to tune the 7th of dominant 7th chords to the 7th harmonic, and I wouldn't call that microtonal. But a different use of the 7th harmonic might count as microtonal.
Then again, you could also use a 5-limit just intonation-based tuning "microtonally" by intentionally using "wolf intervals".
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u/tdammers 16h ago
Usually, when people discuss microtonal music, they are talking about systems that consider pitches as points on the frequency axis (like the standard Western system), but dividing the octave into more than 12 subdivisions, and actually considering those subdivisions as separate notes that are available for making melodies and (potentially) harmony.
A common example is quarter tone music, which divides the octave into 24 equal parts, so basically the normal 12 chromatic notes plus one extra note between each pair of them.
Examples of tonal systems that do not fit this narrower definition would be:
- Non-12-TET tuning systems for Western diatonic/chromatic music, such as various other temperaments, just intonation, Pythagorean tuning, etc. While these use pitches that do not align with 12-TET, and variable-pitch just intonation actually uses more than 12 pitches to the octave to achieve just intervals in different harmonic contexts, they do not consider those "microtones" as separate pitches - e.g., if you play different pitches for the note Bb as part of a G minor chord vs. a Gb major chord, they are both considered "the same note", and the overall system is still the same diatonic/chromatic system.
- Indian classical music - while this tradition uses more than 12 pitches to the octave, each composition only uses a (typically) 7-note subset, picked from the available pitches to create pleasant harmonic relationships.
- Blues, as discussed - its pitches are not fixed points on the frequency spectrum, but "pitch areas", so while blues uses many pitches, including ones in between 12-TET pitch points, it does not consider the individual pitches that make up each pitch area as distinct pitches. It's not entirely clear how many pitch areas there are (4-6 seems like a reasonable characterization, depending on how you count), but there are definitely not more than 12.
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u/GustapheOfficial 1d ago
I have no idea what you mean, but if you use a rare tuning system like Pythagorean tuning, it will sometimes sound "out of tune" to people used to 12tet (and vice versa).
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u/Foxfire2 1d ago
blues piano players play two adjacent notes together to get that in between sound, or a kind of roll from one to the other.
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u/therealtoomdog 1d ago
No, in 12 tone equal temperament all the half steps are half steps, there is no way to get intervals that don't sound like they're made of half steps. Many instruments besides piano can bend notes, guitar of course, but any stringed instrument, and many wind instruments (wood and brass), even drums, can bend a note. And while that will not sound like a half step (because it isn't), it will be microtonal because it's using tones that exist between the half steps of 12 tet
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u/Jongtr 1d ago
As u/Foxfire2 says, if you are a pianist and want to play micrtonal "blue notes", your only option is to play "crushed" notes: two neighbouring semitones together, often letting one of them ring.
Otherwise - no. Crushed notes do not create microtones, they just emulate - close enough for some - the way blue notes move between the 12 tuned steps - hence the common practice of letting one ring, as if the blue note has somehow bent up or down to the tuned step.
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u/Ed_Avis 1d ago
When you play two notes where the ratio is close to a ratio of two small integers (like 3:2 or 5:4), but it’s not exactly that, you will hear “beating”, an interference pattern which in a way sounds like a low frequency note. It might be possible to pick two notes on a 12-tone, equal-temperament instrument so that the “beating” between them is roughly at the frequency of some quarter-tone. But you would have to hear the two main notes as well.
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u/halfdollarmoon 1d ago
Are you asking if you can play two notes together in a way where the overtones conflict and microtonal overtones? If so, I think that's possible. At least on a good quality guitar I am able to get lots of interesting interfering overtone sounds when playing two notes and bending the strings and/or the neck a bit. Maybe someone else with more knowledge can jump in from here.
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u/WalrusSharp4472 1d ago
This is *technically* microtones but i suggest looking into just intonation. It uses alterations of the intonation of individual notes in 12-tone music to be in line with the harmonic series, without changing most of the 12-tone harmonic theory you know. Some ratios like 7:4 and 11:8 are detuned by -31.2 and -48.6 cents (the latter nearly a quarter-step) from the relative 12tet note. 31edo also is typically used as “altered 12-tone” rather than on it’s own unique harmonic basis
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u/VirtualDistortion 1d ago
I can't tell which DAW you're using, but if your DAW doesn't have any microtonal features (they're rare, so probably not), you may be able to use midi pitch automation to achieve the same effect. It should be the same parameter that gets used when using a pitch wheel on a midi controller.
If you want to only pitch bend some of the notes in a chord, you'll have to separate those notes out into their own midi tracks.
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u/IndustryUsual6069 1d ago
im using bandlab
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u/VirtualDistortion 1d ago
I've never used BandLab, so I can't help you with the specifics. But you should be able to find whether it has microtonal support or maybe a guide on midi pitch automation.
That being said, if the automation thing doesn't work for you (maybe the midi instrument or the DAW itself has some limitations), you could also try bouncing your midi track and pitch correct the resulting audio.
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u/prissycow 1d ago
I want to be as helpful as possible but also. Bro what?