FAR OFF SOUNDS - Microtonal Man

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John Schneider won a 2015 Grammy for his album performing music composed by the midcentury genius Harry Partch, an American pioneer of microtonal music. Why has Schneider, a music theory professor and radio host, devoted his entire adult life to reproducing the strange instruments and music of a man he never met? We dive in deep to learn about Partch and microtonal music, and to see John performing it on his couch and onstage.

[@cihant5438]

It is a bit of an overstatement to call Partch the "inventor" of microtonal music, when it had been around in other cultures for centuries.

[@petretepner8027]

And in our own, for that matter.

[@TowerofGuitars]

His music made live use of huge numbers of fixed or absolute intervals and in a hyper chromatic context. This is different from contextually fine tuning or shading a set of 5, 7, or 12 approximate intervals, or from a theoretical capacity to divide the octave into a huge number of parts in order to give the absolute tuning of diatonic scales. So in one sense all music is microtonal music, given that digital synthesizers, string sections, and church choirs set competing conservative western standards for what microtonal music isn’t, but in another meaningful sense hyperchromatic microtonal music is a specific style of experimental classical music which Harry Partch largely invented. Note that many of his peers at the time made hyper-chromatic music using 24 tet. Today hyper-chromatic music tends to revolve around just intonation, even high number equal temperaments are typically chosen for their JI approximations.

[@MiScusi69]

You don't even have to wander into other cultures: Renaissance Italy experimented with 17EDO, 31EDO, 19EDO... Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome used plenty of microtonal modes... In the 18th century, there were composers experimenting with 24EDO.

[@anthonycook6213]

Jacob Collier has made it mainstream.

[@rmcq1999]

@@TowerofGuitars And it sounds like balls.

[@FlowMaestro]

Professor Schneider was my guitar teacher at Pierce for many years until he retired. He is an amazing musician and teacher and I learned so much from him.. Imagine Bill Nye except for music!

[@legalizeit9558]

Camera guy: I'm rolling video. Sound guy: I'm rolling sound. John:... I'm rolling a joint let's go.

[@nirakshara]

Our South Indian music is all about microtones.. Our music lives in microtones.. Our music breathes in that.. Harry Partch? Google Saint Tyagaraja, Muthuswami Deekshithar and Shyama Sastri... These people are the three pillars of South Indian Classical music and they and their ancestors are the pioneers of microtonal music... Please do your research... And when it comes to Indian music, most of the people abroad think about Sitar and all... Actually that is just one instrument used in North Indian Classical music.. Our music is broadly divided into South Indian Classical and North Indian Classical.. Don't just simplify it by saying 'Indian Music' . Both streams have their distinct identities and similarities.. South Indian music, which is, I think, less known among Non-Indians, is really really complex and deep in terms of rhythm and pitch.. There is a lot to explore... A lot to savour... And yes, I agree that the people of the west have explored microtones incorporating harmony too and harmony is undoubtedly an incredibly deep subject...

[@beholdergamedesign]

I don't think the current microtonal music movement is trying to minimize the artistic beauty of South Indian Classical music. There's a similar thing we see with gamlan and a lot of people are studying it all the time. The issue is that we don't just want to play old classical microtonal music, we want to create new microtonal music. While there's things to be learned from studying successful use of microtonal music in other classical traditions, that doesn't solve the problem of wanting have good quality microtonal soft rock, or good quality microtonal techno, or good quality microtonal video game soundtracks. We need a fleshed out understanding of the music theory relevant to microtonal music, not just a library of classical pieces.

[@microtonalguitar]

Great video! I am a fan of John Schneider and Harry Partch forever :)

[@therealzilch]

Tolgohan- I should have known I'd find you here...

[@therealzilch]

Very nice tribute to Harry Partch, who was my inspiration to explore just intonation. Thanks.

[@stephenweigel]

"John Schneider won a 2015 Grammy for his album performing music composed by the midcentury genius Harry Partch, the inventor of microtonal music." Harry Partch did not invent microtonal music. Microtonal music was the only kind of music that existed before the Romantic period of the West, since all microtonality means now is, "not 12-tone equal temperament." Please change that sentence in the description. Instead, you could say Harry Partch brought Just Intonation back to the U.S.

[@faroffsounds]

Duly noted. Thanks for catching the slip.

[@jacobswaim449]

One could say he reinvented it, redefined it.

[@RolandTumble23]

While I'm not going to argue your main point (that Partch wasn't the "inventor" of microtonal music, it's misleading to call diatonic music in other-than-equal temperaments "microtonal"

[@leascaart]

I absolutely love learning new things.

[@magnumtrooper17]

that dog is so cute

[@Tyrell_Corp2019]

May Harry live on. I live with two Juilliard students. They are bores. They are automatons. They are simply virtuosic technicians who know nothing about music. Ask them about Partch and they become deers in the headlights. Oh... and then they recoil... into a defensive posture to feel superior. I hate the culture of the 'classical music.' I can't imagine what Harry went through.

[@A_New_Yorker_Lost_In_Florida]

dude .,.,. im gonna cry ... I love Microtonal man!

[@tonibrunet]

this is the ambient Tom Waits have done for most of his songs. Waits is a great Harry Partch's fan

[@sleepbaseballradio]

So great. Thanks!

[@Borndutch]

Very, very nice, John!

[@victora.r.8583]

That was inspiring... thanks!

[@crownofeternity1]

Great Job! Wonderful portrait!

[@progride2328]

Very interesting instruments!

[@totty2524]

Fantastic video!

[@chermonsieur]

great stuff, thanks.

[@willb3698]

Great. Just Great.

[@noone-jw4gm]

That's good sound, only wish there were less slides down so chords could ring for longer

[@richtrophicherbs]

9.08 et seq. Haydn, Beethoven, Bartok and others often make me laugh (in a positive sense)

[@JohnnyJohnathan]

what an amazing life story!

[@Discrimination_is_not_a_right]

I actually picked up an album at a library sale featuring this and other Partch works like "I Am a Peach Tree" and "The Dreamers that Remain". It made me laugh, so I can't really say it's bad music. :D At least it made me laugh. "Dreamers" is my favorite on the A side. The B side has some boring John Cage music. Something about the I Ching.

[@cee_yarr]

My equal temperament ears are preventing me from enjoying this music. I am frustrated.

[@johncavicchia5829]

this fella looks like matthew mcconaughey in old guy make-up; it's kind of unsettling.

[@ninadi00]

this is what happens when you survive black holes

[@StopFear]

Does anybody know whether John Schneider is ok? I saw him in a video from 5 months ago and he looks much skinnier.

[@paullivingstone640]

super glangin'!

[@johnsmith-ch7fg]

What's the open tuning on the guitar used on The Rose?

[@maandalen]

Pretty sure it's in Partch's "utonal" tuning. There's a video on KZbin called "the Harry Partch instrumentarium" where it is demonstrated.

[@keepitshortnsweet]

What is the name of the piece at 8:14? Was the complete performance documented?

[@UUCCKingston]

That's US Highball - you probably also will like Barstow!

[@johnsmith-ch7fg]

Beautiful rendition of the Rose - you dogs totally cute; what breed is it?

[@hbono1]

john smith Yeah, and his voice captured something of Partch too.

[@amayotato]

john smith Maybe it's a cockapoo?

[@SkronkPlonk]

Does anyone know where to listen to the segment starting at 8:20?

[@faroffsounds]

www.innova.mu/

[@ariansarrafan6665]

wooooooooooowwww

[@DAvishibatero]

What is the name of the first track that John is playing? Do anyone know?

[@Kaiveran]

"The Rose" from Eleven Intrusions

[@JJJJJOOOOOaaaaaoooo]

Does anyone know the name of the song he plays on the guitar in the begging?

[@Sevish]

The Rose

[@mynameforever1]

The 343s brought me here

[@Kaiveran]

What is the piece at 10:48?

[@eliassimon666]

I googled the little monologue and apparently, it's "Ulysses at the Edge (of the World)".

[@Kaiveran]

​@@eliassimon666Can I thank you 7 years later? It's one of my favorite pieces of music still 😂

[@nosy-cat]

Oh man, not one good shot of the guitar in the beginning. Why? I'd love to take a look at that fretboard. But no, a bloody water feature is apparently more interesting...

[@faroffsounds]

sorry about that! next time we'll get a good shot of the fretboard

[@nosy-cat]

@@faroffsounds sorry about my tone. I must have been kinda cross when I wrote my comment :) Great video otherwise!

[@martinluc2361]

8:13 idk this Zappa tune !

[@EmptyKingdoms]

Note: Partch did NOT "invent" microtonal music. Actually there is no such thing as that. Research more.

[@holygalaga]

Feel better?

[@EmptyKingdoms]

+holygalaga Mother is a great franchise! Love it! Just pointing out something that should be rather obvious.

[@vanelluspierrot]

Actually, it's use is also prevalent in the 'Dhrupad' style of Indian classical music which is quite ancient.

[@faroffsounds]

The Mother soundtrack is absolutely incredible! Some fantastic use of microtones in there as well!

[@dreck34]

The text says "pioneer of", which he was, and is not the same thing as "invent".

[@yusufkatrc7155]

Bizim tolgahan reis alır bunu.

[@rmcq1999]

It just doesn't connect emotionally with me at all. The entire corpus of this avant-garde nonsense doesn't have even a glimmer of the fire that, say, a Verdi opera does. It's just wank for eggheads and ideologues for the most part. I got a copy of 'A Genesis of a Music' over 30 years ago and found his ideas interesting. But the music itself is just bollocks. I love microtonality in ethnic and ancient music. But this DADA type noise assault on Western art music is just part of the overall creative albatross that's been around the neck of our civilization for so long.

[@nino805]

"American pioneer" is settler colonial BS. Nice try fixing "inventor." Why not just say "an American proponent of microtonal music." You'll piss off fewer people.

[@elbschwartz]

What, are we now not allowed to use the word pioneer anymore, even in a figurative sense? Partch was neither an inventor nor a proponent of microtonal music; he was an inventor only of his own instruments and musical system, and a proponent only of his own idiosyncratic musical creations (which happen to be microtonal). He was a pioneer because he did things that had never been done before; in other words, he explored new [musical] territory.

[@amj.composer]

@@elbschwartz There is absolutely nothing new about just intonation.

[@elbschwartz]

​@@amj.composer Just intonation describes an approach to tuning, not music-making. I consider his use of just intonation rather secondary (Partch would vehemently disagree, but he's not exactly here to argue) as his music does not demand a super high degree of tuning accuracy -- just a lot of pitches. 43 per octave, in fact. But ultimately, what makes Partch a pioneer is that he developed a new compositional language that simultaneously rejected conventional tonality and the atonalism/serialism of his era. He was loosely inspired by ancient Greco-Roman music and theater (as far as he understood it, at least), but his own music is not a historical recreation. He described his overarching theory as "monophony," a term sometimes applied to forms of traditional modal music, but his own music does not resemble that either. Not only did he design new instruments to realize this compositional language, but his ideas about staging and performance in general were totally outside of anything else going on in Western music at the time. Read his book - Genesis of a Music. The guy was crazy, but there's no denying his originality.

[@amj.composer]

@@elbschwartz Thanks for the book recommendation, I'll definitely check it out (been interested in reading books by composers) What about the book particularly interested you?