Welcome to our first episode of 'Hear Between The Lines', kicking off a triology focusing on microtonal modulations. First off: Pivot Tone Modulations. Using notes as anchorpoints to modulate around is quite an old phenomenon, but it can also be really useful when working with much smaller intervals.
Today's topic: Contrary motion! A harmonisation tool dating back centuries. But viewed through a microtonal lens, it opens up mostly unchartered realms of possibilities!
In our third episode of 'Hear Between The Lines' - our series about microtonal harmony and voice-leading - we focus on dividing intervals into ever smaller steps, and how to harmonise the results.
In the past few episodes we have used quite a lot of jargon that some of you might not yet be familiar with, so today, let's dive into the world of Microtonal Lingo!
Barak Schmool is a fantastic composer from London. He's also funny. When he asked us if we wanted to collaborate we were in immediately! This is a repost from his Instagram page. You should definitely check out his musical sketches and bits, you're gonna crack up!
Coltrane's master-meme was the first of it's kind, preceding all other memes, and it's been around longer than the internet itself. Many have since grappled with the Coltrane's tune, but there is something new on the horizon... They have always been there, but they only existed on the fringes of our collective consciousness. Now, however, they are taking the stage: Quartertone Modulations!
There are a lot of meme-y microtonal cover songs. However, we wanted to unleash the microtonal potential slumbering within the world of popular music and try to reharmonise a tune and make it sound even more like itself, if you know what we mean… In this episode we ask ourselves what it would sound like if Stevie Wonder was a microtonal composer! We love his music and compositional style and it was huge amounts of fun to pretend that this was a 31-TET composition. So here’s what we came up with: En-joy Overjoyed!
This is our rendition of his classic "Overjoyed". We hope it does the original justice while being fresh and microtonally innovative at the same time. And who knows, maybe Stevie will join the xenharmonic community after all? How cool would that be! We also would like to say a gigantic thanks to Tina Burova (Violin) and Peter Scharonow (Bass & Beatboxing) for their awesome commitment and their musicality. You flarping rock!
This is our short version of Jacob Collier's 'Once You'. Inspired by the amazing Subhraag Singh and his awesome new MIDI plug-in Infinitone we asked ourself what would a Jacob Collier song sound like if it were in just intonation. Here is what we came up with :) We're going up all the way to the 13th overtone, can you spot it?
This video was only possible because we had an armada of amazing artists contributing to it: Our main feature on this track is Subhraag Singh who not only played wonderfully but also developed and built the ‘Infinitone’ instrument and the ‘Infinitone DynamicMicroTuning’ software himself. Thats what we call commitment...
Folks, we are back with a brand new five-episode mini series about 31 Tone Equal Temperament! We are most grateful to proclaim that we got to work with the amazing team of the „Hamburg Open Online University“. Big thanks to Goran, Tam and Victor for all their support and work!
Ever wondered what a heart 9 chord sounds like? Or how to include overtones in your dominant chords? And what the flarp is a 13-limit chord?
So many socio-political and ecological dark clouds loom over us every day, it's hard sometimes to see clearly. Treat this rendition of one of Rami's favourite song as an antidote for harsh times.
What makes a blue note BLUE? And what if we told you that you could improve your Blues chops by learning Traditional Arabic Music Theory concepts?
This time we'll inspecting scales in 31 TET. Due to its step sizes differing from the "conventional" 12 TET semitones, 31 TET harbors many ways in which we can create scales and invites us to explore some exciting wormholes to which to travel...
In our final Episode of this mini series covering 31 TET we'll do our best to break down our microtonal Bossa Nova 'Colourblind'. We'll divulge the kinds of approaches and techniques we used composing this piece. Many of them are explained in more detail in previous episodes, so be sure to check those out if you haven't yet!
Without further ado: here's the first single!You might know it already from our live session a year ago. We gathered the same awesome musicians in our studio this summer and recorded a studio version!
We were blessed to be able to work with an entire orchestra of friends who happen to be professional musicians as well. They absolutely nailed all the microtonal ideas we had in mind! And on top of all that, clarinet virtuoso Samantha Wright agreed to play us a soothing solo! Thanks so much, Sam!
The song features Rami playing a solo on his newest instrument: a Cello da Spalla made by his amazing luthier Thomas Thämlitz (www.holzblut.de). And, speaking of new instruments, we were able to get the microtonal luminaries Dolores Catherino on various microtonal keyboards and Erik Natanael Gustafson and his NEOD on board! Working together remotely, from Alaska and Sweden, the two of them composed and performed a mesmerising, ethereal intro for this song. Thank you!
We wanted to write a love-themed song, kinda like Billy Joel's iconic „Just the way you are“, BUT at the same time have a new 21st century, critical perspective on love – and especially music and its role in keeping stereotypes alive. So we twisted things around wherever we could, but we just couldn’t live without the Saxophone Solo, that these kinds old love songs tend to feature. So, inevitably, we asked the mind-bending Philipp Gerschlauer (who's able to play a staggering 128 notes per octave on his horn – what the flarp, indeed...) to join the fun!
Finally we have a new theory episode for you! This time we will dabble around with 24 TET and hopefully widen your horizons when it comes to micro–modulations! We created a game just for this video to show how to make use of the set of rules we came up with.
Hey! Finally we can share this freshly baked 31 TET soundscape with you! It also marks another milestone on our way to the album release. Now we're only desperately waiting for the physical CD's and Vinyls to finally send them to you lovely people out there! Thanks for the great support and your patience.
We invited 31 notes, squeezed them all into one octave and just observed what would happen... Will they get along or will they clash in unbearable dissonance? You be the judge!
HBTL are off to space – exploring the depth of the tonal cosmos in a literally inter-stellar collaboration with the harmonic supernova that is @JakeShermanWooo performing his post-mondial anthem Can't Say We Didn't Try !
Exploring the depth of the tonal cosmos in a literally inter-stellar collaboration with harmonic supernova @JakeShermanWooo, performing his post-mondial anthem Can't Say We Didn't Try ! Buckle up, let's take off together in T minus 10… 9… 8…… ;)
Join our adventure into tonal territories far beyond the outer realms of our sonic systems, — to escape the long shadows cast by the 12 TET empire... We experience „free flow“ and it dawns on us that we have merely scratched the surface of sonic possibilites!
As the title and thumbnail probably gave away: Freddi is leaving Hear Between The Lines. Why? Well, put it in a nutshell: He needs more time for other projects and had to make the very hard decision to let go of this great, albeit time consuming project. It’s important for us to state that we are splitting up on good terms and will for example continue giving classes together at our university. Rami will continue the channel and can already announce that there is a new series in cooperation with the Hamburg Open Online University (HOOU) in the making as well as other videos.
Wow, it's been a long time. Thanks for still being here! There's much more to come in the following months, heaps of exciting news, so stay tuned...!