Sevish Music

Sevish - Orbital (Bohlen-Pierce beat) (2017x2)

: 19, 2017

Orbital is uses a microtonal (well, macrotonal) scale called the Bohlen-Pierce scale. If you ask a lot of people, they will probably say that Bohlen-Pierce music sounds surreal and alien. I would tend to agree, except that the Bohlen-Pierce scale can play familiar major/minor chords too. BP does force you to use wide open voicings but they actually sound very nice. For example if you want to make a major chord in BP, there's no major third or perfect fifth but there is a major tenth and perfect twelfth. My approach for this track "Orbital" was to use a lot of block maj7 chords at various positions. Since the Bohlen-Pierce scale doesn't contain any octaves, these chords don't connect with each other in familiar ways at all. The effect is that you can feel familiar and comfortable at any one moment without knowing quite where the music will lead to.