Learning Non-Western Microtonal Scales?

[none4u]

So I've been thinking recently about how ridiculous the 7 positions are as a simplification of how the trombone works. They're not even consistently placed by partials, and I've been thinking about how limiting learning trombone as a western pitched instrument is to my creativity and improv. If I have infinite notes, why limit myself to the chromatic scale?

So, I want to learn microtonal theory, but don't really know where to even look? Like I want to learn the traditional Japanese scales, the Indian microtonal scales, etc. Does anybody here know of good practice tools for this? Should I just find a theory book and program this into a DAW to play along with?

I think the hardest part is that my ear training has taught me to feel and hear half steps. I think I'll have to do some unlearning in order to start learning.

Any guidance? Anybody else been on this journey before? What pitfalls should I avoid?

[JacobsianApostle]

There’s so much music and so many modes/regions that it’s really easy to get overwhelmed. I tried years ago and couldn’t keep it up because I had no focus or direction. I recommend finding one particular style (I’ve been listening to Arabic maqam, for example), and zero in on one thing that interests you. I got started again recently after hanging out with a new friend who plays Middle Eastern music. He showed me one mode (hijaz) and then played melodies for me to play back.

This works well because it’s so easy to get lost in theory. The sheer quantity of scale fragments can be overwhelming, so focus on listening and imitating. Just searching “maqam hijaz” on YouTube is s good place to start because it’s a scale that is very common and ubiquitous to many countries/regions.

Also ‘Taksim’ is good to listen to for a horn player. It’s a style of rubato improvisation on one or a selection of modes, usually played by an oud or a ney (comparable to a flute). I just put that on and play back phrases. It’s mostly very simple melodies that make it really easy to hear the quarter tones. Trying to sing them back is even better.

If that music interests you then check out maqamworld.com. It has a complete library of scales with audio examples for every single one. There’s a channel on YouTube called Oud for Guitarists, which obviously is slanted towards the guitar but nevertheless has many great explanations on scales, quarter tones, ornamentations etc.

There’s also no shame in using a tuner to practice pinpointing the quarter tones (although different regions don’t tune their quarter tones the same way!). Ultimately listening is the most important. Getting the sound to come from the trombone will be a lot easier if you have it in your ears first.

[robcat2075]

"Microtonal" is a broad umbrella term for many different practices, some historic/traditional, some mere academic stunts, and everything in between.

So there is no one theory for it.

I think it is not an accident that most microtonal music lives on keyboard and fretted instruments that can be tuned to reliably reproduce specific tones that are not easily targeted by continuous-pitch devices like trombones and the human voice.

If the microtones are important to the composer, he will want that accuracy. If they are not important then... why bother?

[mbarbier]

Microtonal music is one of my primary focuses and I teach a bunch of classes on it, so it's always exciting when these kind of things pop up!

As someone else wrote, there's no one theory and there's a lot of different approaches so a lot of it comes down to what you are interested in cause there's a ton of resources. Maqamworld.com is a great one. Yusef Lateef's Repository of Scales and Melodic Patterns is incredible.

The biggest thing is your ears- microtonal music is played by non-fretted instruments all over the world (much much more so than fretted ones, especially fixed fret instruments) and our notion of equal temperament is really quite new. You've got to listen to a lot of what you want to do and retrain your ears to hear it. Khyam Allami ( https://khyamallami.com/ ) talks about this very articulately, in addition to being a wonderful Oud player. His website has some really great resources in this regard. Khyam told me a story about when he started Oud lessons for months it was just his teacher playing for him to help him remove his ears from equal temperament and that learning to hear is really the basis.

Also Robin Hayward's Tuning Vine software is an excellent resource towards understanding and playing in just intonation, which, in a massively simplified explanation, most microtonal music is based in.

Understanding the theory and all is great and adds a lot, but hearing it is really the only way in. Find what you're specifically interested and spend tons of time listening to it, even if you don't understand it yet. Just work on conditioning your ears. It really helps if you can go find someone where you are to study it with- especially not on the trombone cause then it'll just be about the sound rather than the how.

On the practical playing side, play with a lot of drones and really go slowly with trying to get into the sound and letting the slide make the adjustments rather than your face, which is a really easy pitfall with microtonal stuff. I find practicing with the kind of big over ear headphones the most effective cause you hear the interaction of your sound with the drones first (rather than hearing your own sound as the primary), if that makes sense.

It's really exciting that you're going into this interest- it's a really wonderful and endless world to explore!

[AndrewMeronek]

My microtonal interests focus more on just intonation, so I can give some feedback along those lines. IMHO JI is a good "intro" subject for a wide variety of micronality because a lot (not all) of it is related to how close or far from JI a microtonal system is.

Kyle Gann's introduction is excellent:

https://www.kylegann.com/tuning.html

as is his extended composition for 3 disklaviers: Hyperchromatica.

And of course I have to mention Ben Johnston's masterpiece string quartets for recommended listening - especially the Kepler Quartet recordings.

W. A. Mathiew's "Harmonic Experience" is another excellent reference/learning book.

[harrisonreed]

Yes, I was going to say that a lot of "western" music is really very microtonal, and in particular the trombone and violin family lend themselves to it:



7 positions? Hmmm.... If you aren't playing microtonal (Pythagorean) melodies you aren't playing!

"But every note in the scale was perfectly in tune!"
"Um, Squidward, could you play....better?"

I'd argue that only piano, and possibly modern (over-processed) rock/pop music is 12TET. Everything else, if it's good, is far more complex in terms of microtonality. There are other kinds of western microtonality too, you hear it in singers and also in really good commercial brass players -- in a lot of styles, if you are hitting the correct pitch and keeping it in the center of the pitch for the entire note, you are missing out on scoops, wavers, falls, etc. Many times a written pitch will only be the suggestion of that pitch, with the musician moving all around it. Getting that kind of style to still sound right, and in tune, is worth seriously studying.

Besides going to Japan and trying to sit in on a Shinto wedding, another great source on these scales is the Melodyne program. We think of it as the autotune that the industry uses in pop, but it is unbelievably powerful, and put together by real nerds. You can set the scale tuning to about a hundred different systems, including Asian and Middle Eastern systems. And of course, western scales. So when you hear a good pop tune and the tuning doesn't sound fake because the scales are tempered, it's just as likely Melodyne as it is talent. Indian and Middle Eastern pop music, too.

[TriJim]

Melodyne (version 5) allows you to record and then transpose music onto non-Western scales (Turkish, Arabian, Chinese, Experimental, and infinite tunings). This capacity for scale editing and transposition gives you an excellent resource to test melodies and harmonies unique to your microtonal tuning method.

I have the Studio Version of Melodyne - not sure if this capability is present in the free or low-cost versions.

[HermanGerman]

I hear microtonal trombone playing every day...

[GabrielRice]

https://bostonmicrotonalsociety.org/ind ... h%20Maneri.

Joe Maneri was teaching at New England Conservatory when I was there. Genius. I friend I played with in the NEC big band took his course, and his trombone playing improved in every way from the attention to this level of pitch detail.

[bcschipper]

Check out “ The Tarab trombone: trombone etudes and solos based on Arabic music” by Haecker

https://iro.uiowa.edu/esploro/outputs/d ... 7117102771

[SimmonsTrombone]

A surprising source for hearing Arabian influenced scales in pop music is Dick Dale’s guitar solos in his 60s surf music. He was of Lebanese descent and could play the oud and Tara Ali.

[robcat2075]

A way to play quarter-tones on conventionally fretted instrument is to tune alternate strings a quarter tone flat. On a guitar, you could potentially have a quarter-tone flat option for every note except the lowest fourth.

This guy has implemented it on one string...

[mgladdish]

I'm at a similarly early stage, albeit trying to introduce microtones into my improvisation language.

So far, I'm just spending time playing with different numbers of steps between intervals and trying to get use to them whilst making sure my ears are happy with what's coming out the end and that my chops are happy to centre the note in unfamiliar slide positions. E.g. by playing melodies but introducing more steps between the notes. A step of a single tone can become 3 equal steps and semitone runs can be doubled-up to quarter tones. Etc.

My theory is this approach should have a nice side-effect that it ought to fit nicely with the western jazz I already play, without having to move to an entirely different genre.

[AndrewMeronek]

My theory is this approach should have a nice side-effect that it ought to fit nicely with the western jazz I already play, without having to move to an entirely different genre.

Depending on what you mean by "western jazz" this approach may be fraught with problems. For example, the classic ii-V-I progressions that occur in so much jazz are designed to cycle specifically in 12ET, as keys change in that context.

But, if you go for some of the other "jazz" ideas that don't rely on ii-V-I progressions like blues or modal jazz, I think you'll find juicier fruit.

Also: focusing on splitting 12ET-based slide positions into smaller parts isn't necessarily the best way to go unless you're specifically trying for some kind of 24ET or 36ET. This approach is still based on the piano keyboard layout, and the vast, vast majority of pitch systems in the world are not based on a piano at all.

[mgladdish]

My theory is this approach should have a nice side-effect that it ought to fit nicely with the western jazz I already play, without having to move to an entirely different genre.

Depending on what you mean by "western jazz" this approach may be fraught with problems. For example, the classic ii-V-I progressions that occur in so much jazz are designed to cycle specifically in 12ET, as keys change in that context.

But, if you go for some of the other "jazz" ideas that don't rely on ii-V-I progressions like blues or modal jazz, I think you'll find juicier fruit.

Also: focusing on splitting 12ET-based slide positions into smaller parts isn't necessarily the best way to go unless you're specifically trying for some kind of 24ET or 36ET. This approach is still based on the piano keyboard layout, and the vast, vast majority of pitch systems in the world are not based on a piano at all.

Sure. But I reckon having the freedom to use more steps to get between notes in the existing chords/scale should work fine, regardless of the sequence of the tune. It should provide more possibilities for interesting, dense, runs of notes within a solo. I'm not proposing changing the chord sequence or playing just a C## for a couple of bars over a ballad.