Is 31 notes better than 12?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
- How does music theory change if we had 31 notes instead of 12? Today I respond to my eager commenters who want know why they should try 31EDO as opposed to 24, or 17, or 41. We cover ideas rooted in just intonation, getting pure intervals, new chords like the subminor, supermajor and neutral chord, as well as reasons you might want 31 notes per octave. These microtonal chords gives us so much freedom when it comes to building unique harmony, microtonal chord progressions, and unique xenharmonic music. I hope this microtonal music lesson gives you the tools to allow you to easily start making microtonal and xenharmonic music for yourself as well as some insights on the different tuning systems we have available to us.
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Here are some 31EDO or 31TET resources:
31et.com
- Awesome microtonal resource for 31 notes, includes a standalone 31TET keyboard, list of intervals in 31 equal temperament, and notes on enharmonic equivelants, ambiguous harmony and how to do notation with 31 EDO
en.xen.wiki/w/...
-Xenharmonic Wiki on 31 including interesting bits of music theory on the Neutral circle-of-fifths, Sagittal notation, and 31TET scales.
Screw it, let’s make Infinity TET
I’m on board, let’s do it.
that's just raw frequencies
Trombones are in infinity TET.
Or just go all the way to just intonation like guitarist Jon Catler th-cam.com/video/O2eukIoSsKM/w-d-xo.html
@@philipstapert3517 so are strings
I think a lot of contemporary worship songs would sound better in 31-TET instead of 12-TET. Since 31-TET's flatter fifth makes the sharps sit lower and the flats sit higher, to me it gives sharp keys a noticeably darker sound (though not so much that it sounds outright gloomy) while at the same time brightening up the flat keys. In comparison 12 EDO's wide major thirds and narrow minor thirds make it exaggerate the difference in mood between major and minor in comparison.
I also think that 31 would suit songs with heavily pentatonic melodies such as Hillsong's _Highlands,_ since the flatter whole tones and major thirds give a greater contrast when combined with the larger minor thirds, noticeably tightening up the pentatonic scale compared to 12-TET.
Excellent description
I don't get the hate for 24 tet. I personally like 24 and prefer it over 19, yet lots of people like 19.
24 tet is easier for me to conceptualize since it's a superset of 12 and I love the fact that the "new" intervals are the farthest they could be from 12edo.
(I love 31 edo too, I'm just defending 24 😛)
"farthest away from 12" yes that's an interesting perspective I never thought about, good catch.
I like 24 a lot too, and I like it more than 19. 19 is super cool but it's heavily outclassed by 31 in a lot of ways. 24 is just kind of a weird new set of notes, which is exactly why I like it.
24 edo lets you do great alternative approaches to 7 - 9 note scales without having an uneven scale of a wall of notes mixed with 2-semitone holes like in 12edo.
The compositeness and evenness of 24 allows a wide assortment and variations of symmetry. The neutral intervals have surprisingly less dissonance than what you'd expect. Also can have sorta 5edo sounding pentatonic.
@@noahlovotti7722 Yes! I'm so glad you mentioned the quasi-5-edo scale! I love that one! You can also do the weird 8edo scale.
24EDO still has inframinor and supramajor chords, the inframinor 3rds are just slightly flat and the supramajor 3rds are just slightly sharp.
What ratios are you using? I default to 15/13 and 13/10
@@romeolz Inframinor is 15/13, supramajor is 13/10.
@@Teak67TeakFirst of all, it's subminor and supermajor. Also subminor thirds are 7:6, and supermajor thirds are 9:7.
@@mertatakan7591 Yep, I know that. I was talking about 24EDO’s flavours of chords. Inframinor and supramajor are tridecimal intervals, slightly flatter than subminor and sharper than supermajor respectively, which both are septimal.
24 is awesome, but I agree, 24 is weirdly harder to get into for "beginner microtonalists" (I use quotes because I'm not trying to gatekeep xenharmony).
I like the concept of 31-TET, 41-TET, or 53-TET; the problem is building some of the instruments you would need for this. A trombone or fretless string instrument or well-trained steady voice is no problem -- just use as-is; but as mentioned in the video, the keyboard on a keyboard instrument gets gnarly, and the size of the instrument is increased greatly if not a synthesizer, and in the case of a pipe organ, it also gets extremely expensive.
A synthesizer could be programmed to only play a 12-note scale from 31-TET to give access to the special chords without having to buy a Lumatone
@@BellXllebMusic I thought of that -- it would be like when instruments were tuned in quarter-comma meantone. The problem is that when you modulate in notes from other keys, then you're missing critical notes. That's why meantone lost out to well temperament and then to 12-TET (12-EDO).
@@Lucius_Chiaraviglio What if you use a sustain pedal and program it to do a strategic pitch bend to give access to more notes? It does get a bit difficult at that point though...
@@BellXllebMusic I have read that such a thing has been done (not sure about a sustain pedal, but some kind of way of setting the home key on the fly), although I haven't yet heard an example.
come on 36-tet better get some love
Oh my god this answers my questions 😱 thanks for sharing this!
I think, 24 TET is the Equaltemperament which is the easiest to learn. Because only the semitones are halved again because then you get quarter tones.
Depends what you’re going for! They’re all great in their own ways tbh
As an early music enthusiast I love 1/4 comma meantone, and 31 TET is practically the same as extended 1/4 comma MT. Even on a 12 note keyboard in 1/4 comma MT you get a few subminor 3rds and supermajor 3rds and a couple of harmonic 7ths. I'm very much intrigued by the possibilities of 31 TET.
31TET is audibly identical with “Quarter-comma Meantone” tuning, used in the mid-late Renaissance. It’s a natural choice for the “Renaissancy” sound of Greensleves, for example. That’s probably how Christiaan Huygens came to promoting 31TET in the late-1600s.
I just wrote a piece in 31 TET today, my first time going out of the 12 TET "border"!
Fantastic! Feel free to share it when you’re done with it. Would love to hear!
@@LeviMcClain Oh, it's my latest video! (can't post links since youtube is youtube)
I saw this on TikTok too, this is awesome.
why does no one talk about 311 (imagine the video title Is 311 notes better than 12)
The subminor should be 0 7 18 btw guys
best explanation of why 31 I've seen
this was a fun video. love how you used the portrait mode for a change. very interesting topic as well
how about 29
I actually like 17 TET, it's basically considering sharps and flats as different keys
Where i can listen music, with 31 notes?
I’d check out hear between the Lines’s album “radical tenderness”
What about 1 Hz = 1 note
You wouldn't be able to distinguish adjacent notes
There's a mistake of being one note off in this video!
A subminor chord in 31EDO is 0,7,18. It makes sense because the 9 is the neutral 3rd. You go neutral>minor>subminor.
What software does this?
For most simple music DAWs this can be achieved with VSTs that support scala tuning files (.scl) or the XEN FTMS VST
I believe Reaper is the most open for this kinda stuff.
Ableton can using Kontakt