serchumfuggler​ submitted:

((Archive note: This is a follow up to this post))



as someone has pointed out (http://dmc4everucci.tumblr.com); i made a very large mistake! i spent barely half a paragraph on the actual topic of quarter tones, and then went straight to rambling like an idiot about eighth/sixteenth notes, time signatures, and trying to explain why they sound so unique with quarter tones. i definitely misled a few people, and i strongly apologize. if you’d allow me, i’d like to remedy my mistake, and talk about the actual topic!

semitones and quartertones, although they sound really complex and scary, are actually rather simple. on a normal piano scale, for every octave, there are six main notes, or six tones: A, B, C, D, E, F, G. These notes are situated on the white keys.

between the fat, long, white keys, there are the unmistakable thinner, shorter, black keys. these are for flats and sharps, which can be considered notes ‘in between’ these main white keys.

why is this relevant? a semitone is simply the smallest possible step one can make on a standard piano while moving from one note to another. say, you are playing two notes in a chord: C and G. moving a semitone from C to G would merely be playing the black key on the right side of C; C sharp! another semitone upwards would move from C sharp to D, and then from D to D sharp, and then from D sharp to E, and then from E sharp to F, and then F to F sharp, and, finally, to G. you can hear how it sounds like in this video: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq8OccYocdA)

quarter tones are the notes *between* semitones. how is this possible? with the magic of lots of careful instrument tuning! musical notes are caused by the frequency at which a string vibrates, and the sound it creates from that. this is why people need to occasionally tune guitars; sometimes, a string’s frequency of vibration changes from multiple factors, like humidity, rusting, or simply the string coming a bit loose from use.

time for an example!



from a page on Michigan Tech’s physics portion of their website (http://www.phy.mtu.edu/~suits/notefreqs.html), we can see that the frequency at which an A4 note (an A note in the 4th octave,) vibrates is 440 hertz, and the frequency at which an A4# note (an A sharp note in the 4th octave) vibrates is 466.16 hertz.



if we find the average of the two, and tune a string to vibrate at this average, it would vibrate at around 453 hertz, which would create an A quarter-sharp note. this doesn’t have any symbol in unicode that i can find, but it looks roughly like this: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidental_(music)#/media/File:Arabic_music_notation_half_sharp.svg).

for reference and further study, you can find the hertz of normal notes and their quarter-sharp or quarter-flats here: (http://www.mortonunderwood.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Quarter-tone-frequencies.pdf)

so, a quarter tone is basically a measurement of the smallest step you can make between semitones. the reason we don’t hear them very often is because they usually involve a major re-tuning of an instrument, and because they’re rather difficult to sound pleasant with. due to this, i can’t find a video of a piano moving up by quartertones, but you can hear what they sound like here: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5sI-s4E9js).



thankfully, SGaP does not use them for such a sombering atmosphere, but i believe he still does use them rather commonly.

to specify my examples of quarter tones from my last post, i still believe that the beginning of of Dashy/Hearth’s Warming Eve is an example. and, although i was uncertain of the background piano at 1:30 in Night Glider, upon re-listening to it for this post, i’ve decided that it does indeed use quarter tones. in addition, of the outro for the song, starting roughly at 2:20, also uses quarter tones. ( with further listening, i honestly feel as if nearly the entirety of Night Glider is made out of quarter tones. this is, of course, untrue, but it still shows just how much he liked using them. )

in E40, in addition to the 1-2-3-4 pattern i pointed out last time, also uses quarter tones for the background piano in the transition at 0:50. ( also, after the transition finishes, it’s possible the bells in the background are also using quarter tones ) these are just a few examples; i feel as if a list of quarter tones in SGaP’s music would be a long list, indeed, especially when they’re quarter tones used for background instruments and for his harmony.

again, i do apologize for the mistake; feel free to point out if there’s anything else i messed up on, or if my examples are incorrect. the speakers i’m using right now aren’t very high quality, so i’m not about to pick out specific notes very well!