> > Or we could change to a new system that doesn't
> > use twelve tones, thus opening up an entirely
> > new playing field.
>
> I've always wondered why there aren't any notes between the notes we have already (such as between A and A sharp, for example). I don't think it would be that hard to make an instrument that could play those. We'd have to modify our current musical notation system, though.
>
> -eric sleator
> Fri 22 Jun A.D. 2001


It's not the question of the instruments; many instruments (violins, trombones, guitars, the human voice... anything without a predefined set of valves or keys) already can play a continuous range of notes.

The tricky part is the rewriting of musical notation, which would be a pain and a half. And the fact that our ears, and the ears of most of the Western world, trained from infancy to hear only a twelve-note chromatic scale, would find most "microtonal" music dissonant, off-key, and basically weird.

That's not to say it doesn't exist, though. I believe the traditional scale used in India is seventeen-note, the scale used in some Middle Eastern countries is fifteen-note, and the scales of some cultures, like the traditional Hebrew music, are, while still twelve-note, on a different twelve-note scale from ours. (That's why we Westerners listening to Indian or Hebrew tunes find them so, well, weird.) Approaching from the other direction, the scale of China and Japan was the always-euphonic five-note pentatonic scale (admitted by Western musicians everywhere to be the foundation of the chord progression and the easiest way to start learning to compose). To the East Asian ears back in the time of first contacts (before everything got contaminated by Euro/American classical and pop), *Western* music was dissonant, off-key, and weird because of all its little in-between microtones.

Microtonal music does exist today as a modern art form, though, and there are always enthusiasts willing to compose, perform, listen to and purchase it, though from my impressions it's still one of the nichiest of niche markets. Still, you might be interested. They *have* invented a new staff to accomodate fifteen, twenty, thirty, or even, I've heard, one-hundred-note scales (at that level I imagine you'd have to use a computer to compose and a synthesizer to play). Though much of it is synthesized, they do modify acoustic instruments. Guitarists learn to play fretless or make big, extended guitars with lots of extra frets; pianos get taken apart and bloated with extra strings and tiers of keys; woodwinds and brass instruments get extra valves and holes punched into them all over. I've seen pictures, and it isn't pretty. It kinda reminds me of people who take apart and overclock their computers; I always feel like something's going to explode.

Anyway, there's websites on the 'Net about the stuff, and there's probably a FAQ somewhere, as well as a USENET newsgroup. However, I, as usual, am ready to go to bed now and extremely unwilling to go to the trouble to look any URLs up, especially since someone else will come up with them and know much, much more than I do about the subject in about two seconds after I hit "Post".

Ar"exemplifying the spirit of online communication"thur