Sevish Music

Named after a beach in Cornwall where I took my holidays as a kid, where the low tide would reveal soft sands that seemed to escape into the horizon. Two tunings were used. You’ll hear TOP Blackwood[10] throughout most of the piece. The ending section uses the 1 3 7 9 11 dekany. A dekany is a combination product set tuning dreamed up by Erv Wilson. Blackwood[10] is one of my favourite tonal structures, as it contains 5 major chords and 5 minor chords distributed evenly and symmetrically, with no need for a diminished chord like you would find on the 7th degree of the major scale. You might have heard me use this scale in 'Enterprise' and 'So Thankful'. I would recommend Blackwood[10] as a scale for beginner microtonalists to explore as it's easy to navigate, not too many notes, sounds fantastic and has a good balance between familiar/xenharmonic.

Blackwood decatonic - one of those legendary microtonal scales. And it's a great example of a tuning that has some familiar chords that connect in unfamiliar (massively un-diatonic) ways. While you listen to So Thankful, listen out for a series of 6 chords that descend. You'll hear this series repeatedly throughout the song. These six chords alternate (minor major minor major etc.) in a way that the Western 12-tone equal tempered scale can't achieve. Give it a try and see what happens. What I like most about microtonal music is that it can be very familiar and pleasant but also novel and unexpected (in an awesome way). Of course, you can also use microtonality to create massive dissonance, way more harsh sounding than any 12-tet music, but where's the fun in that?!! Microtonal scales offer countless doorways to exciting and new original sounds - WE (the musicians of the world) should be exploring these new ideas without ever forgetting the importance of moving butts.