![]() ![]() ![]() We call it the Rosegarden Codicil : a mildly tongue-in-cheek adoption of the legal term for an addition or supplement that explains, modifies, or revokes a will or part of one (from the Latin codicillus, 'little book'). Through the extension of a powerful piece of existing open-source software, the Rosegarden sequencer, a rehearsal aid has been developed which is highly accessible to expert musicians and sufficiently flexible to handle many different microtonal scales. The composer's wish to explore the expressive possibilities of such alternative tuning systems presents new challenges to performers who, even at the highest level, may have limited experience with microtonality. So we have framed our definition as indicated above merely with our present practical purpose in mind. On the other hand, it would seem somewhat eccentric to call the various historical varieties of just and mean-tone tuning with twelve tones or fewer microtonal just because they are different from 12-ET. The function should take as inputs: the first note, the last note, the step (in semitones), and whether flats or sharps should be used. Scales with seven or eleven equally-spaced steps per octave, for example, could reasonably be considered microtonal. I want to define a Lilypond function that will interpolate two notes. For example, the definition could be so broad as to include all tunings other than the one based on the ubiquitous Western tempered scale with twelve equally-spaced steps per octave (hereinafter abbreviated as 12-ET). We are using the term 'microtonal tuning' here to mean simply any tuning with more than twelve notes per octave, though we realise that the term is sometimes defined more broadly. The subject of this paper is microtonal tuning and a project which has developed several technologically-assisted methods of rehearsing music based on one particular microtonal scale. This project was unorthodox for the following reasons: playing two microtonal scales on one clarinet, appropriating a quasi-octave as interval of equivalency, and composing with non-octave scales. Although there are programs today that can interactively handle microtonal notation, e.g., MaxScore and the Bach library for Max/MSP, we show how a computer can assist composers in navigating poly-microtonal scales or, for advanced composer-theorists, to interpret equal-tempered scales as just intonation frequency ratios situated in a harmonic lattice. Some computer code assisted us during the creation period in managing up to five staves for one line of music: sounding pitch, MIDI keyboard notation for the composer in both BP and alpha, and a clarinet fingering notation for the performer in both BP and alpha. Neither has a 1200 cent octave, however they share an interval of 1170 cents which we attempted to use as a substitute for motivic transposition. ![]() In 2012 we collaborated on a solo work for Bohlen–Pierce (BP) clarinet in both the BP scale and Carlos alpha scale. ![]()
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