she would make a great sci fi church organist of the future

Thanks for your comments and questions! The 21st century seems to be an amazing transition period in music. On one hand, mechanical era limitations are being supplanted by developments in electronic music. On the other hand, in this early phase, modern electronic instruments are still operating within the limitations and restrictions of the mechanical era. (i.e. traditional keyboard design: flat, rectangular, chromatic, one pitch-region per key switch; also, the stagnancy of old digital protocols in music during a rapidly evolving technological era: MIDI circa 1983, 'legacy' hardware limitations programmed into new software systems).

Many years ago I studied microtonality as a student with Easley Blackwood at the University of Chicago. While I fell in love with it back then, I've found over the years that it's been extremely difficult, often downright impossible, to explain the world of microtonal music to others. I want to say thanks to you for giving this wonderful and easy to understand talk, with so much passion and enthusiasm, and sharing your music and discovery with the rest of us (and the world). I found your other clips on your KZfaq channel to be inspiring too. Words can't describe the sense of wonderment that they make me feel! :)

This was 5 years ago and still groundbreaking! Hopefully lands with the right people and truly forge a new music for the 21st century. I have hope as MIDI 2.0 comes on board and MPE becomes more widely used in the traditional 12 note system. These 2 things will at least help broaden the expressive capabilities of electronic music. May composers also seek out these polychromatic ideas as well!

i love the subtitles when Dolores plays. It says: yeah yeah yeah...

Thank you Dolores for when you started playing I closed my eyes and my ears got socked in joy with the colour pitch of the sounds. we thought the sun had only one colour but it has seven and the possibilities are truly endless.

As a mathematician and amateur musician, I like to look also at the mathematical aspect of our 12-tone (duodecatonic?) scale. Why did we wind up with 12 tones, not 5 or 10 or 29 or whatever? The short answer is 3 things: 1. Harmonics 2. Logarithmic scaling 3. Continued fractions 1. Harmonics are the integer multiples of a base frequency. Double the frequency (i.e., the 2nd harmonic) and you have an octave. Triple it (3rd harmonic), and you get the fith in the next octave; etc. These small ratios of frequency tend to be pleasing to our ears. 2. Logarithmic scaling is how we perceive changes in pitch - equal frequency ratios sound to us like equal musical intervals. 3. Continued fractions (CF) is where this gets into some mathematical nitty-gritty. It's basically a way of optimizing a fraction, b/a, to approximate a real number, x, be it rational or not. Optimization here is taken as simultaneously minimizing the error (b/a - x) *and* the terms, a and b. This is a repetitive process, in which ever larger terms produce ever more accurate approximations. And by adopting the octave as a standard, you look at the next harmonic. The ratio of these is 3/2, so with the octave as our unit of change, and logarithmic scaling, this fifth interval is expressed as the logarithm (base 2) of 3/2: log₂(3/2) = (log3)/log2 - 1 = 0.5849625... where the unspecified logs are in the same base, which can be arbitrarily chosen; it won't affect the value. It is *this* value which now becomes the subject for CF analysis. The resulting succession of "best" fractions goes*: 1/1, 1/2, 3/5, 7/12, 31/53, 179/306, 389/665, ... What each of these means is, in an even-tempered division of the octave into "a" parts, a perfect fifth is best approximated by "b" of those parts. And the one that got picked is 7/12 - in a 12-step chromatic scale, 7 steps make a fifth. Note that the next fraction is 31/53, which calls for a 53-step chromatic scale. What Dolores (or whoever she got the idea from) has done, is to split these in half, probably because that gives pretty much the smallest change in pitch perceptible to human ears. (If the reason was something else, maybe she can tell us.) And the rest of that list yields truly indistinguishable pitch changes, so no point in going any further. * Math afficionados - those familiar with the standard way of doing CF's: Take note that my method is a bit different, in that when I invert each residual, I take the *closest* integer, + or -, so as to avoid getting fractions that, while technically "best," can be improved substantially with a modest increase in terms. This leads to a sequence of coefficients whose absolute values are never less than 2. It also shortens the path to a given "best" fraction.

wow... even with my limited knowledge of western music, THIS- somehow tickles my brain the way this old brain had been kicked the first time i listened to ELP, i think it was the Love Beach album (a long time ago on an isolated island in the pacific vast...back when we were naive). i've never heard of polychromatic music- but yes, i've listened to hours of bird and nature's music all around me and wished...

Fascinating. I usually only watch the science and tech talks, but this one merged that with art. I'd love to see more talks about this stuff.

Great stuff! I'm really pleased that you are getting recognition about this, and that the new "language" of polychromatic music is being introduced to people! :-)

simply brutal. I allways agree with microtonal music and east music included!

A truly inspiring speech and woman... I am going to try and get my hands on a tonal plexus! And play it, after much practise and persistence I'm sure!

I'm going to love this system.

I have come to the show 2 years late. Listening to the piece called 'Slipstream' from 10 minutes into the video, there are a couple of parts that grabbed my attention. I can definitely hear a human voice quality in those parts. That's what I would like to develop more knowledge of - how to make instruments sing like people. I know how to make a native American flute and want to make a pentatonic scale flute with an extra drone hole running through it. The plan was to make the drone hole of equal length to the main hole so with no fingers on the flute, breath running through both holes would produce the same note. Now I'm curious about ending the drone hole the right fraction of micro tones short of the main hole, to get something like the human quality I heard in parts of 'Slipstream'.

Interesting talk. I can understand how this could open up a lot of new possibilities for musicians and composers. But just as the proof of the pudding is in the eating, the worth of micro-tonal music is in the listening. On that front I'm waiting for some micro-tonal music that I truly love. Most of this music that I've heard sounds to me like it belongs in a modern art exhibition: abstract sounds to match abstract art. Also some electronic music which is kind of interesting but not earth shattering. I guess it's still a case of 'watch this space' for me.

106 note octave!!!!!!!!! 2:26 Fascinating, amazing, I want to understand this. Thank you.

Remarkable and compelling! You're a visionary! ... can't wait to see where all this leads...

I first came across your music back when you had only one or two tracks on you channel - I'm so excited to catch up with your new compositions; and this talk was great!

Superb ma'am... Awesome

thank you @dolomuse , the bird intro was on point. hopefully more open instruments like this soon

great speech! I applaud what you do, I hope someday micro tonality catches on in the mainstream

This is fascinating! We already combine parts of melodies from other songs to mix things up. But now we can slip entire songs inside of new songs! What an excellent development this is.. Good job planet earth!

I want to dive further into the world of microtones, even though I know my compositions will one day be viewed as old-fashioned, simple or not reguled by the new dominant micropolytonal pitch division/ratios

I've thought about this much myself its great to see the real work going into organising new dimensions in musical theory. I'm working on a music sequencer and sampler that i intend to embody a syntax for micro tonal systems, developing a visually intuitive way of expressing harmonics and progression, its inspiring to see your work put into practice ideas i've only begun to imagine.

Very cool! Very informative! and VERY Emotional! I love everything about this Ted Talk. Easily one of my top 10 Ted Talks of all time. Thank you Dolores!

I can’t believe I’m just noticing this now. This is completely fascinating.

Dolores you we are soulmates!!! I live in Brasil but I share the same feelings about music evolution everything has been done it is time to explores timbre in new ways and since sound is vibration and light is too why not mix them to create a palette with more sound hues. It is not just about the aesthetic value of the music but also about it`s contribution to allow for new and creative was of expression. We definitely don`t live in a black and white world. A flat 9th chord in the early 20th C was considered a wrong chord and today everyone plays it and likes it or at least tolerates it, especially in Brazilian music. I also would like to explore the possibilities that these sounds have in their application to Music therapy with people with different ways of expressing. I do not know if this is the futures of music but i certainly belief that it is in the right path. Sound phenomena is under explored, and it certainly has the potencial to push human consciousnesses forward. Please come to Brasil with all your gadgets and blows our sound minds away do not be discouraged by tonal conservatism. I do not like veggies but I know they are good for me, your music is good for everyone who believe in expanding our music consciousness. Thank you for your work, keep it up.

...And here ends my youtube "zapping" session, with my mind blown.

Sounds awesome! Makes me think of Allan Holdsworth.

This is the future of music!

The last chord could have stayed for minutes! beautiful

This particular development of music is interesting, as it opens numerous questions and debates about the limits of pitch perception, oscillations and beats, heterodyne and spacial effects... But is this the future classical music? I'm still thinking about the acculturation and limits of our society, and the facts that there is very little space for a massive audience of any form of evolved music. And for the happy few with a musical education, the question is also to fight against centuries of chromatic intervals, and what you could call perfect pitch. Some notes played here sound right, other completely disturbing, and that depends of the auditor, and eventually of it's audio equipment! Guess 99,9% will certainly consider this absurd or no way out gadget, like many dodecaphonic last century movement, repetitive or cluster music, but who knows? Thinking about oriental tonal fundamentals, Hindi or Pakistanese music is somewhat sounding strange, as our classical music could sound strange as using different tonal divisions for their proper cultural approach. Maybe I'm of the 0,1% happy to ear something different and applauding in this refreshing view and new notation approach that could be the future 21st century classical music? And I wish Dolores Catherino a great success in this fundamental adventure!

Thanks for the insight into this world. I look forward to perhaps Instruments that with a foot click we can retune.

I’m a young musician, fresh out of high school. i’ve been composing in 12tet since i began. microtonality is the future of music and i’m 100% ready to dive in and discover everything is has to offer. I absolutely love the idea that there’s this entire side to music, undiscovered. It’s almost like the europeans discovering the new world. Yes, people lived there already, but they unfortunately did not have the tools available to become as prosperous as the europeans, much like composers in past generations like Ben Johnston or Charles Ives. This generation, with our brand new, shiny technology, have the potential to discover things that no one has ever heard, or even thought could be heard. 106tet HEAR i come ;)

Very fascinating!

Hello, I think this is a really great talk. This idea of polychomatic music is fascinating to me, resenting on a deep level. I'm curious if you had considered color deficiency when designing your new notation? Being a person who is color deficient to red and green, I feel like it might be hard to read this notation if certain shades of reds and greens were included. It is possible to choose a color scale that is perceivable by folks with my kind of color deficiency? Anywho, thanks for sharing your work with us. I'm excited about what future this musical language holds for us.

Fascinating stuff. I came to this TEDtalk via listening to Glenn Branca. However, the 12 note scale is not any type of enigma or mystery that needs solved. The 12-note scale is a refinement of hundreds (1000s?) of years of western culture composers experimenting with what is MOST pleasing to the human ear (pop music). I learned a lot about eastern music in ethno-musicology classes in college, and about different scales and the sharing of these musics and their instruments around the globe between cultures. Just studying the emergence of, development, and cultural differences in what we now have as a basic acoustic guitar is mind blowing. I am a fan of music that most would call noise; Indie, Bop Jazz, Dubstep & Ambient House, and there is so much music out there that does't fit the mold. Pop music is generally innocuous, forgettable, and fails to engage the listener, but that is how most people like their music. The music business loves it that way! Even classical music has elements of this sometimes cacophonous polychromaticism, and most people hate it! But cheers to creating outside the box! I have to get some work done now.

Interesting how these sounds make me think of celestial spaces and spectrum of colors that we cannot even see.

Here’s what I find interesting: as someone with a strong learned pitch, I find this music incredibly liberating to listen to. But the myth goes that, someone ‘born with’ perfect pitch, would find it intolerable: it suggests that perfect pitch, even in people with a “born in” capability, is a matter of acculturation, not innate ability or absolute perception. For instance, if someone has perfect pitch, would they have a preference between just intonation and equal temperament? And if so, wouldn’t they find the opposite just as disturbing as this music? If they do prefer one to the other, what is there to suggest which one is more “naturally” correct, as they both result from scientific developments and musical trends? I do believe one day this will be the modern trend in music, and 12 tone scales will be the “legacy” of our current epoch... and there will probably still be people bragging about their ability to hear perfect pitch

The way of complexity. Why not ! Entropic music for an entropic World.

Beautiful sounds... reminds me of my Oberheim Matrix 12 when I turn it on and don't hit the auto tune. :) Seems a fascinating world to explore.

I get it that this notation and this instrument and the pitch color paradigm that Dolores explores, offers the lifetimes of exploration. For example, why something that not adheres to classic tuning can sound pleasant? This is not as much of musical instrument now, as than the prototype of idea. Thinking scientifically, you first have to isolate the phenomena you are exploring. Using synthetic sounds actually benefits the understanding of wtaf is happening, because you can reproduce same experiment (e.g. some interval) over and over, with consistent results, whereas on a violin you could definitely try doing exactly same things and even more, but it would take you ages to find DO actually harmonics of C orange - F violet sound good, before you would decide to add it to your musical vocabulary, because you are not isolating variables. Did you mess up by half a millimeter on a string, or it just sounds awful? And that's just one subdivision, while the pitch is not discrete but continual. As the resolution increases, in this case to 106edo, it takes more advanced technologies to be applied to have a complete model and to understand offerings of each new subdivision of HD soundscape. The framework is essential, this way we will be able to create, train, notate, record and reproduce such music, and only at record and reproduction stage you will finally take a violin, skills and, for example, 106 chromatic sheet music paper, and play it. Improvising in those enormous possibilities of pitch continuum without language or an idea is simply walking in the dark. Thank you, Dolores, for moving the art+science hybrid forward. Those harmonies captivated me, and many of us. Still don't understand why these harmonies sound so familiar, something since being a kid.

This is wonderful.

Great video! it is surprising that modern music has not developed more towards microtonality. Although I guess everyone has been to occupied with serial 12-tone music..

Its really good that people are becoming aware of the possibilities now of microtonal music and I'm glad of that and anyone who advocates it. I don't want to be too critical, this is a good talk but I want to make a point. At 7:33 "the real value in the study of music comes from the practice" it might be good to examine that statement "where we develop awareness and a diversity of perspective" implies that we are not aware without practicing arpeggios for zillions of hours and that sitting in a room we develop "diversity of perspective" ... Most microtonal composers are obsessed with 2 things pitch and virtuosity. A very European outlook. Its a little ironic that she advocates high resolution pitch color then ignores all the other high resolution possibilities available to us now, like timbre, meter, rhythm, spatial location. - What is really important in music? Proving that one can play something that's hard?... Or imagination and creativity? Computers have made changing tunings easy now, and they've made a lot of other possibilities easy. What's hard and rare is compositional imagination. We don't listen to Beethoven because he could play an arpeggio faster than other people... we listen because his ideas were revolutionary and his concept of music was completely different.

When will this be made worldwide? This thing sounds fantastic.

It's time for us to explore more advanced music because the way we analyze and use it now is way too simple when compared to what it can be

Dolores, it's so great to watch this presentation with such great passion of yours. It's so touching and inspiring. I've translated this into Japanese language on my tumblr mewomihi. Is it okay to make Japanese subtitle on this KZfaq as well? mewomihiというtumblrに日本語訳を掲載致しましたので、日本語訳を読みい方は是非見てみてください。

I defretted a couple of guitar a decade ago (was it THAT long ago!) but, despite a little bit of playing around in microtonal, I'm so locked into a 12 tone mindset it's fairly rare that I intentionally venture outside unless I'm just sliding through. The rare experiments I make are probably mainly within a puny 24 notes. I'd love to play around more with the extra notes but just don't really have any framework to understand what to do with them. Maybe a starting point would be to work on some simple microtonal scales but I couldn't imagine consciously handling, or even distinguishing, 106 notes per octave.

As a musician I can understand this concept of the poly-chromatic tones it's been demonstrated as the band teacher would talk about the distinct tones between the c and c# but with this poly-chromatic concept at this point only one instrument at a time could play because the notes that could only be produced the poly-chromatic instrument would not come so easy for conventional instruments. A band or orchestra trying to pull this off would sound like a ball of noise due to the poly-chromatic notes going against the key, harmonies, and scale of the song, and most instruments would not fair well if they had to make the tuning adjustment on the fly, or play in tune with the poly-chromatic electronic instrument thing. It's a beautiful concept but may need it's own environment for a while for this sound to be appreciated, personally I like the poly-chromatic electronic music thing I probably could do some cool stuff with it!!!

Excellent!

Hello, i was playing only the black keys on my 88 key- board. strings or organ, it sounded kind of perfect and I wondered : is there an instrument with only the black keys , disregarding the white ones. In my opion it can open up new musical ways and overnight I could not stop thinking about it. In my search I saw your video's (TEDx) and was amazed. maybe now i now why I didn't like piano lessons afteral ! btw, the 106 pitch per octave instrument, is it a special or common available? love it !

This sounds like you're using the harmonic purity of 53 EDO with the addition of 'tones in between the tones'. Might I ask what you're looking for in those in between tones?

Yay Dolores! Amazing!

Very interesting! Is the octave divided into 106 equal parts?

Sounds so frickin good

To each his own.

How well established is polychromatic music in the modern musical scene? Would you be a pioneer of this kind of technical complexity or are you discovering the facets of it yourself personally?

Besides tuning, there is are also sound morphing, realtime resynthesis, and much much much more - check i.e. Technos Acxel Resynthesizer / Canadian product !! On top, sensing or experiencing 'music' depends not only on the individual, but also time, place, season, gender and many factors that could not even be defined today. We try to, but...Science ? Way beyond...probably.

Thank you

very interesting, this is much like different between analogous (polychromatic) and discrete (diatonic/pentatonic) in the analogous mostly dissonance sound although in diatonic it can also but by design it always to get the harmony..🤔

Ok, I get it, it's just a matter of resolution of the scale, but isn't a violin or any fretless instrument a microtonal instrument? obviously if you want to play chords you can't with a single instrument. Also while having more resolution is in theory great, isn't always the case in practice as I think the best human creations usually come from limited resources, be it color palettes, materials, tools or fixed scales. we tend to find beauty in complex things made from simpler ones, not so much in complex things making even more complex things, which to most people tend to find cacophonic. Too much information can result in a lack of focus and too vague, that's why I think fixed scales will last forever in music. Who would want to listen to a 2 hours whale singing concert? But it is very interesting and enlightening.

I want to play Metroid now

I always find Dolores Catherino's work very interesting, sincere and timely - but for me it's the choice of electronic voices that I have difficulty with - very basic wave forms. At least with everything I have seen so far.? Is this a limitation? I mean are the rich harmonics (and subsequent interactions) of a more complex waveform too much for 106 notes per octave? Enquiring minds need to know. Any links to other examples gratefully received!

I'm aware of the microtonal keyboard, but what software/VSTi is being used to generate the tones and chords? I've just become aware of ZynAddSubFX, but its limited to 12 notes per octave. Looking around for something more extensive, especially able to handle chords. Over a decade ago I was able to use SCALA with Sound Blaster LIVE! card for any scale any JI or temperament with any number of notes per octave. What are people using these days?

I think that polychromatic music opens up new doors......Only drawback as I see it is that such an instrument is very difficult to master.

Maybe in the future, small amounts of microtonal sounds will be in music as additive features of music, sort of like a echo, a kind of accompaniment. If there are examples, never mind.

Wiĺ this kind of music be called tonal music. Can we identify theTonic or key of a composition by listening to this type of music?

where do you get this bananas synth? I want badly

I want to hear a fugue in that tuning 😁

My 12 tone ear is going to need some time to get used to this... Maybe with more theortical context it will grow on me

Why choose 106 notes in an octave?

This sounds good for experimental new age music (with the off tone sequences) not entirely crazy about it but I guess some might like it :)

I have a question of why 106 pitches per octave, the traditional octave being 12 semitones, or 1200 cents span is not evenly divisible by 106, and being that the smallest pitch difference that humans can hear is 5 cents should the number of notes per octaves be a more divisible number say 120 (ten cents per interval) or 240 (5 cents per interval) instead of 106 (11.3207... cents per interval)

Nice.

It honestly sounds really busy and clustered. I find it really hard to follow but there is something really interesting and grabbing about it.

this music sounds great! but i would like to hear microtonal music on a clear sound not that Sci-Fi sound that hide the pure tone of each step. Will be outstanding hear a microtonal piece with piano sound, fast arppegios and huge scales. Thank for sharing your work Dolores.

Is this just a different way of microtonal notation?

I wonder whether Wendy Carlos also obtained a really original result for the Tron movie score by relying on microtonality?

Which instrument is this?

porque nadie hace referencia a Julián Carrillo, músico mexicano, el dividió la octava musical en más de 96 sonidos, esto no es nada nuevo. Pero me asombra que incluso ya los sintetizadores pueden lograr los 16 avos de tono

11:20 Anyone have a tonal plexus I can buy? haha.

This is definitely (in terms of sound) what rhelm i want to be playing with. 106edo eh? Guess i gotta get programming

A thing I want to add: musical languaje is not defined by the number of sounds we have, but by the use and relation of those together, and it's evolution on time.

I think a big reason it sounds so weird is because of the fact it is so new. if you were born listening to it, imagine all of the nuances in feeling it could bring. Also, if the instrument was changed, layered, and chords were understood better.

What is that controller?

Those "ghost notes" are called heterodyne, I believe.

Ooh! I'm the 1,500th person who gave this video a "like."

I prefer the slide whistle.

If you ran a Jimi Hendrix improvisation through a pitch corrector it would take out about 90% of the content of the music. This is also true of most of the blues in general, its true of much of swing and jazz, especially the music of woodwind and horn ensembles. In addition the majority of traditional world music is not at all restricted to 12 equal. Very few singers confine themselves to 12 equal because that removes most of the expression, country singers typically deviate rather extremely from 12 equal. Most musicians do not use music notation and so are not limited by it, its only classical that insists on 12 equal only, there is no such prohibition in most other forms of music. Very few instruments can play chords, the keyboard and the guitar are pretty much it for popular solutions so the search is not for the microtonality that is already in use anyway, but for a better keyboard or guitar to allow individuals to better handle complex microtonality instead of just ensembles. Guitar strings can be tuned at will and they can be bent even if the frets are in 12 equal plus many synthesizers have pitch bend wheels. Most music is performed using voice and monophonic instruments are often the accompaniment, chords come in as part of the monophonic ensemble. Most monophonic instruments have microtonal capabilities so much ensemble work is quite microtonal No one speaks in 12 equal and unless a singer is classically trained singing is not usually restricted to 12 equal ether. Our ears are already quite accustom to the microtonal music that spontaneously comes form our throats from childhood on, it is the design of our chord playing instruments that is inadequate to the task of letting individuals play microtonal chord progressions. Microtonality should not be framed as the original providence of they who are bored with music who want "more", that is not the proper motivation or description, microtonality is already well established, not even a piano is in 12 equal because its stretch tuned. What is not well established is a means for individuals instead of ensembles to play and notate microtonal music, for example Duke Ellington had to rely on seat of the pants knowledge of performers to get the right tonal inflections into the ensamble work because such inflections were not written in the notation , we know because we have the scores and yet can hear constant deviant pitch inflections in the recordings.

Dolores, “The ghost notes...these new harmonics...we can hear in our ears... can’t be seen or measured with technology” - My spectrum analyzer, “Am I a joke to you?“

But It is still based on 12 tone scale. I think in order to take full potential of microtonal 'scale' or system or others even 19tet, one should completely break away from traditional 12tone based system

what film???

Beautiful words, unimpressive music. We already have instruments which are polychromatic in that sense (like violins and other string instruments). And we don't need a new transcription system to achieve the slide effect between notes during performance. And she didn't say anything about new chords which would be possible with 48 or whatever notes per octave. How many of them would actually sound good and would actually be new?

In terms of music theory, what exactly are pitch colors?

Music; the theory

Isn't there some kind of use of polychromatic in some other countries traditional music?

What is this song at 3:10?

Lisa Simpson in real life

Samplers and drum machines can not correctly emulate a real instrument. A real violin always sounds more dynamic and expressive than a sampled one. And the way that orchestral music meets in the air above the performers greatly affects it's sound.