Microtonal Scales
The term microtonal music usually refers to music with roots in traditional Western music that uses non-standard scales or scale intervals. Mexican composer Julián Carrillo created in the late 19th century microtonal scales which he called "Sonido 13", The composer Harry Partch made custom musical instruments to play compositions that employed a 43-note scale system, and the American jazz vibraphonist Emil Richards experimented with such scales in his 'Microtonal Blues Band' in the 1970s. Easley Blackwood has written compositions in all equal-tempered scales from 13 to 24 notes. Erv Wilson introduced concepts such as Combination Product Sets (Hexany), Moments of Symmetry and golden horagrams, used by many modern composers. Microtonal scales are also used in traditional Indian Raga music, which has a variety of modes which are used not only as modes or scales but also as defining elements of the song, or raga.
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Famous quotes containing the word scales:
“It cannot but affect our philosophy favorably to be reminded of these shoals of migratory fishes, of salmon, shad, alewives, marsh-bankers, and others, which penetrate up the innumerable rivers of our coast in the spring, even to the interior lakes, their scales gleaming in the sun; and again, of the fry which in still greater numbers wend their way downward to the sea.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)