Achievement Unlocked: Microtone

Part of working on these micro songs with Hilder has got me back listening to micro tone music.

I guess I must have first been exposed to non chromatic music at some point in my childhood. Sitars for example don't follow an equally tempered scale. So I had some idea that there was something beyond the tone-semitone of the piano and the guitar but that it was only for the east and not something you found in Europe.

Where I lived growing up, Crawley, there was a video shop near me. It was called Empire Video 2 (Far Left  with yellow writing in the window) Nobody knew what had happened to the first one. Anyway, the staff in there did not give a fuck. It must have been a very cosy job. Watch films behind the counter all day, serve the occassional customer and pick up your earnings at the end of the week. Many of the staff were late teens/twenty somethings and probably students at the local college. They didn't care, it was just a part time job. That's how, at the tender age of 12, i managed to rent a copy of The Shining.

If SOMEHOW you don't know it here's the trailer...

Three things to take away. 1. Great choice of font (as always.) 2. Blood. Lots of it. 3. Creepy music.

Now while i could talk about just the trailer for ages i won't bore you. The music in the trailer has a number of whole tone instruments and is backed by violins playing quarter tones. It has this very giddy sensation, during the first half of the trailer what are you seeing? A standard lift area, with some chairs. Normal words move up the screen. Yet, it's ominous. Something grave is about to happen and it's this microtonal backing that is chewing into your subconscious.

There are a number of microtonal pieces in the film by Polish composer Krystof Penderecki and they all help convey this feeling of being abstracted from the norm. Of being caught somewhere both ethereal and dangerous. Here's one piece (in full) called Polymorphia from the film's soundtrack...

I think what i came to love about microtonal music that almost among all music styles it is unique. Every other musical style conveys both positive and negative emotions. Pop music revels in the differences the happy fall in love song that one day permutates into the sad breakup song. So it is true for country, rock, hymns, jazz, blues, gospel, reggae, funk, rap etc etc. But microtonal music is always bleak, dark and shimmering. With no counterpoint to say "oh ignore that everything's going to be O.K."

The dark splinter in the fleshy thumb of existence, hidden beneath the surface, is what the microtone strings are doing in the trailer; and what Penderecki's music is doing throughout the film. Tapping into your subconscious, buzzing away. Never stopping. Omniscient ominousness.

Sleep well.