6 Levels of MICROTONES (in Video Game Music)

Clarifications: 1. As a few people have pointed out, alternate 12-TET tunings (i.e. A=432) are NOT commonly considered to be microtonal! I included it in this video for 3 main reasons: a) In the context of Bloodstained, where some of tracks are in 440 and some are in 432, it is possible to hear the microtonal discrepancy in the tuning between tracks that crossfade into each other. I would consider this usage microtonal! b) People with absolute pitch are able to hear the difference between different tunings out of context, and that is at least worth addressing as the weakest example of "microtonality" (432 relative to internal sense of 440). and c) culturally in the "west", 440 is ubiquitous and is ALMOST ALWAYS bundled with 12-TET. the most common exceptions include: orchestra tunings, i.e. Japanese orchestras tune to 442 iirc, and the 432 tuning in things like Bloodstained, as well as sample rate differences for the sake of timbre (as was the case for Redbone). I felt that talking about non-440 tunings as "Level 1" was important to the context of microtonality in a cultural sense, as common western workspaces don't provide intuitive, robust ways of breaking out of the 440 12-TET frequencies. If you still disagree with 440/432/tuning being discussed in a microtonality video, that is completely ok! Discourse and discussion is music theory is GOOD and is what drives the development of the ever-changing definitions of concepts, as it's only retrospective analysis of ever-changing music and cultural contexts. 2. Arthur Morgan was NOT building that house with his buddies, it was actually John Marston. I didn't play RDR2 and instead read a brief synopsis on that part of the game, that is my bad lol.

All music is microtonal if you don't tune your instrument like a nerd

actually, it isn't just k.k. cruising! all of k.k.'s whistling is sharp, in all of his songs. they changed it in new horizons to be the same as his singing and guitar, so it isn't clear if the microtonal whistling was by design, or a mistake that they corrected.

14:34 the single measure of 1/8 had me DYING

Thanks for the shout out Cadence! Great video as always 😊

I think the k. K. whistling is a nod to whistlers not being in tune a lot. Like a lot of people whistle when they are at home and it sounds absolutely horrible

I didn't know that just intonation was the reason why barbershop sounds the way it does, but it's super cool. One thing I wish you'd touched on in the video was how the historical use of just intonation led to the idea of different keys having their own character and feeling, which was a result of certain keys feeling more or less "in tune" because of the way that just intonation works, which just doesn't exist in the same way with modern equal temperament tunings.

the Pikachu exploding jumpscare into microtonal Megalovania around the 16-minute mark is a true combo

For anyone curious about those Gizzard Wizards and their microtonality, i'd recommend Honey from their album KG, or Rattlesnake from their Flying Microtonal Banana.

As someone with perfect pitch, I actually love when the tuning of an entire song is off. It makes it sound so alien. Miss me with songs that have been transposed though.

15:39 My parents had a candle that played happy birthday when you twisted it. I learned that if you twisted it slightly, it would play flat, and the high notes were even flatter, as if it was struggling to hit the high notes. So, I tormented my perfect pitch gifted brother with it on his birthday for years, until it inevitably stopped working.

Re: Help with Microtones Hi Cadence, Yes, 22-EDO all day long! Sincerely, Wil Wheaton

Wow...... its crazy that you notated all of that. I can just imagine myself going insane trying to hear 48TET intervals.......

yippe just intonation Also the microtonal "Sadness and Sorrow" at the end made me laugh so hard 🤣🤣🤣

As someone studying ethnomusicology (the study of music as it pertains to culture, particularly music outside of Western classical music), knowing about different ways of tuning or dividing the octave. I'm a composer for a Skryim mod team that's set in a non-Western region of Nirn, and we're trying to incorporate traditional tunings systems from the real-world cultures being drawn from into our soundtrack. It's a ton of fun! I can't share anything, yet. Hopefully soon.

Undertale has Microtones! The song ASGORE has it pretty obviously.

16:12 I would kill for a full microtonal cover of Megalovania

Im into microtonality but i still want to say 12edo isnt exactly arbitrary, it just achieves one specific goal. When you stack 3/2 and reduce the ratios you get from that to be within 2/1 first you get... well technically first you get a 2:3:4, after that you get something akin to the familiar pentatonic scale, then diatonic(with the major third tuned sharp and minor third flat, and fifth exact), and after that you get a 12 note scale(mind you these are just the sizes at which there are only two step sizes and theres only one unusual fifth[generator more broadly, you could stack anything], its called a MOS but that is a whole bag of worms) this would be pythagorean tuning. If you flatten the fifth you can get the thirds closer to 5/4 and 6/5 and this is generally what various tunings of meantone do. These are systems that were used in western music long before 12edo became standard and the main goal is/was essentially to get 4:5:6, 12edo does this quite well for its size, of course theres issues with the major third being quite sharp but you would have to go up to 19edo to fix that and then the fifth would be flat, 31edo seems to be the most common alternative but now you have 31 notes to deal with compared to 12. 17edo goes the other way and the fifth is even sharper along with the major third which some think of more like a 9/7 or 14/11, but it does give you a neutral third(which may be one of the types of intervals that blue notes are aiming for) You could also stack alternating 5/4 and 6/5 to get whats called zarlino or ptolemys intense diatonic, this also extends to 17 notes(with 3 step sizes this time) but doesnt have a pentatonic form(though you can find one in it) Some alternative things you could use that can still reach semi familiar territory in an unfamiliar structures are porcupine in which you stack something in between one third of 4/3 and half of a minor third of your choice such as 6/5 or something nearby which gives you 7 and 8 note scales(and 15), theres also mothra or gorgo(maybe also called slendric) which is basically stacking something like 8/7 or a third of a fifth (im fond of 25/22) to make a 5 note scale and an 11 note scale which can get you close to having 3 4:5:6:7 or in sharper tunings more like a 6:7:9(idk what the seventh would be), both of these coincedentally have nice tunings in 37edo Also personally i dont think of alternate fundamentals as microtonal, it is something people should take advantage of but it doesnt actually give you any new intervals all the relationships are the same within the tuning. That all said i don't spend much time with these simpler ratios, ive spent a long time wrestling with 16edo along with mavila/antidiatonic which is shaped kinda like diatonic except the fifth is so flat that it generates a minor third before the major third and so all the major thirds and minor thirds are swapped but if thats all it was it wouldnt be much to wrestle with, the semitones become supermajor wholetones(like 8/7[the inversion of 7/4] but probably something rougher) which means the minor seventh is something like 7/4, and the wholetones become neutral seconds like 12/11 which also means the major seventh is replaced with a neutral seventh and the major ninth is also neutral instead, which certainly takes some getting used to(well some people seem to take to it quicker) i like the seventh and ninth better than the second personally but its growing on me. You can get this by stacking something like 40/27 or 28/19.

microtonality (especially poly-microtonality) is so cool. I feel like people should experiment much more with these inside more pop-oriented genres. It seems like the majority of it is contained in contemporary classical/experimental music in the west:(

2:56 I think it's important to mention that a plausible reason why 12-EDO was favored is because it approximates the first few harmonics pretty well. Intervals using the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th, and 15th all match pretty closely to 12-EDO, something that not all tuning systems can do. Imo the biggest disadvantage of 12-EDO is that the 7th 11th and 13th harmonics aren't approximated very well so we have some completely valid tonalities missing from our system.