I tried microtonal music and liked it

The pitch of a note is determined by its frequency, and frequency can vary within a continuous spectrum. And yet, in the western music tradition, we only use frequencies with discrete values. That’s not a bad thing, but it implies a whole world of possibilities not explored. Microtonal music, also known as xenharmonic music, sets out to make use of the unused frequencies.

I recently tried listening to a lot of microtonal music, because I discovered that you can find lots of it through the microtonal tag on Bandcamp. Sure, a lot of it isn’t very good because anyone can put music on Bandcamp, but there were enough gems that I continued to peruse the tag. I’ll share just two examples. First, I selected Brendan Byrnes, because I think his music has the most pop appeal, while also being unapologetically microtonal.

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A music post for 2017

2017 was a good year for me in terms of discovering new music.  You might have seen this intrude upon my blogging a few times.  I even started a separate blog for music–which I won’t link to because I’d prefer to keep my followers in the single digits.

I have a few highlights below the fold.  And yes, this stuff is thoroughly inappropriate for Christmas.

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The joys of not being a music critic

What are the qualities that are desirable in a music critic (or a movie critic, or video games reviewer, or book reviewer)?

Generally, the very first thing we want is that they review music that we have a chance of listening to. Maybe we’re considering whether to buy some music, and need some help to make a decision. Or we’re looking around to discover new music that we might like. Or we’re already listening to the music and want to reflect on the qualities of that music.

That means that we want music critics who like some of the same music we like. And since music critics usually wish to reach a sizeable audience, that means music critics have to like a lot of different things. Their tastes should be eclectic. Or, if a critic’s tastes are more particular, there needs to be an easy way to match them up with an audience with similar tastes. Music genres usually fulfill this purpose. For instance, if a reviewer only really likes post-rock, they can advertise themselves as a critic of post-rock.

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Time for some music

I have hangups about sharing music. Basically, I hate everyone else’s taste in music so much, I can’t see why I should expect anyone to feel different about my tastes. At the same time, I hope that people hate it, then they might know how I feel about culture in general.

Multiple people have said the music I like is “depressing”. I can see why, although I have never thought of it that way myself. I just like the tonality. But fair warning. Streaming videos below the fold.
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