Information on Alternate Tunings

Audio examples for the book
The Arithmetic of Listening:
Tuning Theory and History for the Impractical Musician

General Theory and Reference:

A beginner's crash course in Just Intonation (6.21.05)

An introduction to Historical Tunings (3.7.98)

Anatomy of an Octave: a reference chart of more than a thousand intervals within an octave, defined by ratios and cents (2.22.20)

For tuning aficionados, here are My Idiosyncratic Reasons for Using Just Intonation (6.14.04)

How to Use Ben Johnston's Just Intonation Notation (12.15.18)

The Advantages of Tuning to A 432 Hz

Combatting Anti-Just-Intonation Propaganda (5.9.18)

Documents on the Pre-20th-Century Use of Quarter-Tones (4.14.24)

Kyle Gann's Music:

Hyperchromatica, at three hours and 23 minutes, is the longest fully notated piece of microtonal music I know of (7.12.17)

"Completely Familiar and Completely Alien": Some Technical Aspects of Working within the Harmonic Series in my Piece Hyperchromatica (wonkish)(5.9.18)

Scores and recordings of most of my microtonal music

"2.3.5.7.11.13 JI - Kyle Gann" - on Now & Xen, Stephen Weigel and Jacob Barton interview Gann about his microtonal music with many audio examples, Oct. 31, 2019; or listen here

Conference Papers and Keynote Addresses on Just Intonation:

How the 13th Harmonic Saved My Sorry Ass, a talk on my microtonal methods for the Beyond Microtonal Music festival at the University of Pittsburgh, delivered Feb. 28, 2015 (3.6.15)

"La Monte Young's The Well-Tuned Piano", published in Perspectives of New Music, Winter 1993

"The Outer Edge of Consonance" from the book Sound and Light: La Monte Young / Marian Zazeela (PDF)

A Whole Different Serving of Tapioca: Exploring Just Intonation Dissonance - for the 1/1 journal

Key Eccentricity in Ben Johnston's Suite for Microtonal Piano - for the Huygens-Fokker journal

Navigating the Infinite Web of Pitch Space - for the Open Space journal, Spring 2000

Keynote Address for the 2012 Harry Partch Conference in Boston

Regarding Ben: A Keynote Address to the Microtonal Conference at Wright State University (2010)

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