17 TET Music Project gets the job done!
About
For more than 200 years, western music has been confined to a strict set of 12 notes in an octave. While variations do exist in particular styles, the majority consider harmonies and melodies which use "out of tune" pitches to be bad or unpleasant. The 17 TET Music Project seeks to promote the knowledge of microtonality and encourage the use of the 17 Equal Tempered system as an alternative musical basis to 12 TET.
The 17 TET Music Project contains all the necessary information to translate to a 17 tone system from a 12 TET background. Our site also exhibits many theoretical ideas on how to compose in a 17 TET system. We also have a growing library of 17 TET music to listen to.
What does xenharmonic and microtonal mean?
Microtonality or Xenharmonic means to accept that out of tune is relative to a CHOSEN system and not absolute to any single tuning. Xenharmonic is the concept of music which can use any possible scale system to play it's tune. People who are microtonalist do not consider out of tune a bad thing but rather they tend to listen to the color of intervals and harmonies which arise from those out of tune pitches. We often have a name such as "11/8" for any mistuning of a standard 12 TET interval.
Why 17 TET specifically?
Once you enter the exciting world of xenharmonic music you quickly discover that there are a limitless possibility for scales and harmonies. We know the octave can be equally divided into anything so why pick 17 TET specifically? There are a couple of reasons. For one thing, 17 TET is pretty small sized making it much easier to digest than something like 31 TET. Secondly, 17 TET opens the door to roughly explore arabic and turkish scale as it has been used before as a theoretical basis in these cultures. It contains intervals which sound close enough to represent these scales at least somewhat closely. Third, 17 TET has good fifths which are very important to many styles of western music allowing things like power chords to seamlessly translate to a 17 tone system.
If you are interested, check out the 17 TET Primer to get a grip on how the tuning is set up.
Have fun!
