I recently had a conversation with an AI about microtonal music.
In case you're wondering what that is, the normal western stuff is a scale separated by 12 tones between octaves. Where to chop each tone along the uncut line of sound between these octaves is determined by their frequency ratio. The frequency ratio between two semitones in equal temperament is the 12th root of 2, which is approximately equal to 1.05946. This means that the frequency of each semitone is about 1.05946 times higher than the frequency of the semitone below it. Microtonal music is when (which we don't hear in western music much) the semitones themselves are also divided.
Not that any of this math matters, but more to my point. A lot about what makes melodies and harmonies sound the way they do has to do with the relationships between the notes. So, for example, the relationship between a 1st and an 8th is an octave.
Cut that in half.....so we go from the 1st to the 5th and we have the next sweeter note than the octave. As we divide the octave more and more by half we get more and more dissonant sounding notes. But here's the rub, including the root (the octave that begins the scale), there's only seven notes. So without dividing the frequencies beyond the emergence of the scale we're used to in the west, we can't divide the octave in half, and this is what drives a lot of western music. It's what Jazz and blues is based on. When we go to the 5th tone, and then five tones up from there and five tones up from there, we can keep going, eventually we end up where we started. Following this Circle of 5ths is how improvisers can always hit a note that's gonna' sound good, and explore the more dissonant relationships.
I asked the AI about microtonal music. I wanted to know if within the more tones gotten by dividing up semitones there are other Circles, like the Circle of 5ths. I didn't see why there wouldn't be, and I was thinking it would make microtonal music, which can be so abstract, and lost enough to the normal western ear, that it can sound awful. I wanted to know if, by way of new harmonies, predictive pattern recognition and incomplete circles like the Circle of 5ths, note sequences could be harder to leave alone, and because of that, made more attractive. Notes are emotional because we associate subtle stressors with different factors of resonance. It's our lack of associating different intervals with different emotions that makes it sound technically dry, and our association of negative and harsh emotions with novel dissonance that makes their relationships sound bad or uninteresting. Music can be made technically, but the ability for it to lend itself to emotion is pivotal.....that's why it's so popular. I figured that if there were other Circles, and maybe even if three different Circles could be harmonized as we do when using through notes in a scale to form a chord, that that'd lead to a more pleasant sounding melodic phrasing.
Well, at least according to the AI, I was right. It gave two examples of many circles, the Circle of 3rds and the Circle of 7ths. That is, in order to move around the scale, (3 or 7 notes at a time), by cutting it as much in the middle as possible, starting at the 3rd and at the 7th, a path takes us through the entire scale, just like with the Circle of 5ths, corresponding with the 3rd or 7th respectively.
My thought now was that nobody is making this kind of music because it's so dam complex, that it's not just inconceivable for most of us, it's also that hard to play......so I was thinking that an AI would be able to write such a piece, but I asked, just to make sure. Surprisingly, it told me that there actually are a few composers making music like this already. It gave me a list, and they're all just truly amazing.......but I really liked this video. Enjoy. It's long, but some of it is just incredible. TOTALLY worth the patience.