Maksymilian Modzelewski

If you have ever listened to King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard (big suggestion on my part – editor’s note), you may have noticed that some parts of their songs are partially played on bizarre-sounding instruments do not sound exactly in tune. You will probably be shocked after reading this, but it is actually made so on purpose, and their guitarist is aware of the existence of the tuning process! Then, where do these sounds come from? The answer is microtonalities.

While studying the theory of music, someone will likely be taught that the smallest distance between two sounds is a semitone. Looking at a piano keyboard, for example, we would come to the same conclusion. This is indeed true, but only partially because this knowledge concerns European music. If we delve a little deeper into the subject, we will find out that many years ago, Eastern or African music used instruments that were able to generate sounds between semitones, the so-called microtonalities.

There is a unit measure for the ratio between two frequencies, which is called a cent. 100 cents are one semitone. Normally, we use intervals (the distances between sounds), which are multiples of 100 cents. Microtones are smaller than a semitone, so any sound below 100 cents will be called this way.

One of the more popular examples of an instrument meant for playing microtonal music is the traditional Indo-Persian sitar. It is an amazing plucked stringed instrument, similar in appearance to a guitar. It is built with a long neck, a pear-shaped convex soundbox, usually six to eight melodic strings, and a dozen or so bourdon strings. The bourdon strings are tuned to the key of the song, and although they cannot be played, they resonate with each other and the melodic strings. George Harrison popularized the sitar around the world in the 60s after he traveled to India seeking inspiration for new ‘Beatles’ projects. They were not, however, technically gifted musicians. Ravi Shankar, Harrison’s sitar teacher, recalled as politely as he could that the learning process went quite clumsily.

Nevertheless, you don’t really need a special instrument to hear a microtone. Detuning your guitar by just a little will create one! Congratulations! On a more serious note, if you compose in your spare time, this is an unusual and unique way of spicing up your music, so I would say it is definitely worth a try.