If you’ve known me for any length of time, you will know that I’m unhealthily obsessed with 24-TET music. In fact, when people see me, they will often cross the street, thinking “Oh God, he’s going to talk to me for five hours about 24-TET music”, but it doesn’t work, because I simply cross the street after them and talk to them about 24-TET music, for even longer to make up for the lost time of them crossing the street. So, what is 24-TET, and why has it captured my imagination?
Tuning Systems
So, before I go any further, it should be explained that any music you commonly listen to, whether it be rock, jazz, hip hop, metal or whatever you are currently listening to right now, uses a specific tuning called 12-TET. The way I think of 12-TET is, think of the fact that we live on planet Earth. Your entire life is based on just one planet in the solar system, planet Earth itself, and you might go through an entire day without thinking about the volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io, the baking hellscape that is Venus, the gorgeous colours and fascinating landscape of Pluto or the red deserts of Mars. (Unless you’re me in which case you think about these things all the time!) So I think of 12-TET like that. Just because it’s possible to listen to 12-TET and nothing but 12-TET doesn’t change the fact that there are other things out there, such as the unbelievably precise just intonation tunings of synth genius Wendy Carlos, the 43 tone scales of Harry Partch, or the music of the Central African Republic, which until quite recently was dismissed by Western people as just “random notes” but actually follows a fairly complex tuning system. Here’s a video by David Bruce which really illustrates that 12-TET isn’t everything, but is merely one planet in an entire solar system:
Before I go any further, I should point out that none of this is an argument that 12-TET is bad. Most of my favourite music is 12-TET. But it can be limiting to people’s musical experience to think of it as the only thing out there.
So what’s 12-TET then?
One of the most fascinating aspects of studying music is learning that everything you’ve been taught, whether by listening to music or by playing a musical instrument, is inappropriate in another cultural musical context. The humble G major chord so many of us learn when we first pick up the guitar, might sound wrong in the context of Arabic or Indian traditional music, even though it sounds like it “goes with everything”. (This is not to say there can’t be music that fuses Arabic or Indian music with Western music, and a lot of that kind of stuff sounds really cool, but I was talking more in terms of traditional forms uninfluenced by Western music.) So why do we use the 12-TET system. Basically, at the risk of oversimplifying, and by oversimplifying I mean of course explaining the Theory Of Relativity by saying “It turns out clocks are weird or something”, 12-TET is good for two things, chords, and playing in different keys. This video by Casey Connor gives an excellent explanation of how a system with 12 tones gives the freedom to use chords (or harmony), very expressively, any less than 12 makes using chords too limiting, and any more than 12 makes it too complex and creates too many dissonances (unpleasant sounding tones, though with all of these things, subjectivity comes into play. I find the “consonant” or “nice sounding” perfect fourth interval to sound horrible in a lot of contexts!):
Many centuries ago a system called “just intonation” was what was commonly used. This system was more in tune than 12-TET. So why was this system, with few exceptions, largely abandoned in Western music? Because, while just intonation is in tune in one key, and using very simple chords, it becomes out of tune when you use several musical keys and more complex chords. The advantage of 12-TET is that all chords, and all keys, are only slightly out of tune, to a degree that can’t be perceived by most musical listeners. They’re not, and never will be, as in tune as a just intonation system, but if you want to make music with a lot of different keys and a lot of different chords, 12-TET can be a useful way to go. This video from David Bennett explains really well why the 12-TET system caught on:
But it’s not always true that we can’t always hear the out of tuneness of 12-TET. This caused John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers to retune his guitar to just intonation for Scar Tissue for certain sections, even though it’s a mostly 12-TET song. On a completely ridiculously unrelated note, I can’t spell “Frusciante”, for shit, and I simply copy and pasted in his name, so now you’ve gotten an interesting insight into one of the many ways I half ass the writing of this blog! Anyway, Paul Davids has an excellent video explaining the use of just intonation in Scar Tissue:
So Why Am I Obsessed With 24-TET in Particular?
People who know me may wonder why I spend so much time talking about the 24-TET tuning system, they may have asked why when they say, “Look, I’m very busy, I can only talk about 24-TET for three and a half hours today,” and I respond, “Unacceptable, we need to talk about it for five hours at a minimum.” Let’s get back to my solar system analogy. I usually stay on Earth (12 TET in this analogy), but when I travel the rest of the solar system, I usually only go to Mars (24-TET in this analogy), and not the other planets, moons, asteroids and comets in our wonderful solar system. So why is that? I think I can give you a visual aid, by showing my Turkish saz alongside one of my guitars.
My Epiphone Sheraton II. Look at them normal looking frets!
So this is my Epiphone Sheraton II, a regular 12-TET guitar. Look at how normal the frets are, you can’t move for how normal they are. If there was an instrument with normal looking frets competition this guitar would win top prize. Now let’s look at the frets on my saz (also called a baglama):
It’s Frettastic!
So you can see, we have strayed into a strange and wonderful territory with the saz. Look at them frets! Not content with playing an E, or an Eb, they play the note between an E and an Eb. It’s frickin spectacular, I love the saz!
So back to my solar system analogy. If you’re travelling to Mars, be prepared for the cold, to Venus, extreme heat, if you’re going to the moon, your parachutes are no good there’s no air there. So, each tuning system is different, and requires a different musical instrument. If you’ve played in a 4/4 time signature your whole life, you can just experiment with 5/4, 3/8, 13/4, whatever you like, on the same instrument, but with tuning systems things get a bit more complicated.
Fretless instruments such as violins and cellos can actually play every tuning system, but I gave up on the violin a long time ago because of the requirement to know exactly where to place your fingers without any kind of visual aid, and I think many people find fretless instruments to be too complicated for this very reason. So, unless you can play fretless, one instrument= one tuning system. I should state this isn’t strictly true, I have played 24-TET on a 12 TET guitar, but this was so confusing and baffling that while I could do this on a recording, I’m not sure I could ever do it live. Also, my saz has movable frets, however, I’m terrified that if I ever experimented with another tuning system such as just intonation, I wouldn’t be able to correctly get them back into 24-TET. So, to a large extent, one instrument means one tuning system. All of my instruments, my guitars, my keyboards, and my bass, are all in 12-TET. The one exception is the saz which is in 24-TET. So why have I chosen 24-TET as my home away from home from 12-TET?
24-TET Is Easier For People Who Are Used To 12-TET
With just intonation, I’d have a very difficult time adjusting to the limitations such as being limited in terms of what keys I play in. I’ve found 24-TET to be somewhat limiting in terms of what chords I play, but not to the same extent as just intonation where I’d have to worry about different notes clashing far more often. So, in a way, 24-TET offers a whole new adventure in terms of new notes to work with, and being able to do cool things like play scales that aren’t major or minor by Western standards, but without aspects that would be confusing for people who are used to 12-TET. Some 24-TET scales are simply 12-TET scales with one or two notes changed. It gives me a feeling of safety and familiarity, like, oh it’s very similar to 12 tone equal temperament in a lot of ways, that funnily enough gives me the freedom to experiment in a different musical world.
24-TET “plays nice” with 12 TET.
Are we about to enter shameless self promotion territory? Of course we are! No but seriously, I find it easier to use examples from my own music to illustrate the points I am about to make. I put out an album in 2021 called “Argentavis Magnificens”, where all instruments, bar drums, were my saz. So the bass is my saz through a pedal that lowers the pitch so that it’s at the same pitch as a bass, the synth is the saz through a pedal that makes any instrument sound like a synth, and so on and so forth in that fashion. This is the title track, where the whole song, except for the intro which is in kind of a grey area between 24 and 12, is in 24-TET.
But here’s a song later on the album called “Cappadocia”, the writing process of which gave me some problems:
My plan from the outset was to write the entire album in 24-TET, but I kept getting 12-TET ideas that worked quite well in the song, that I wasn’t willing to discard in order to stay true to the original plan for the album. So the song Cappadocia is kind of a hybrid, it’s got both 12 and 24 TET, and often it’s got these two tuning systems playing on top of each other without any problems, eg one line in 12-TET, and a line overdubbed on top of it in 24-TET. And this worked, but 12-TET on top of just intonation, it works sometimes, as with the Scar Tissue example, but not as often, the two tuning systems are mutually incompatible in a lot of ways. In fact, part of the reason 24-TET was popularized in the first place was because of a movement called “Anatolian Rock” in Turkey, where Turkish modes and scales were played on Western instruments, and Western instruments such as organs and guitars were often played alongside the Turkish saz. The just intonation scales of Turkish music often didn’t work with the Western instruments, but a mix of guitars or organs playing 12 and the saz playing 24-TET often worked beautifully. And this means I will some day probably be able to play my saz compositions live with a full band, because 24-TET instruments are scarce in Ireland, every other instrument other than my saz would have to be something using the 12-TET system, and I can make that work, while I couldn’t with any kind of just intonation system. (I haven’t even gotten into meantone temperament, the temperament that created more problems for every problem it solved!)
So Now Time For Some Listening!
So now I know what you’re thinking, my explanation of what 24-TET is has bored you beyond all conceivable reason, and all you want to do now is listen to the music instead of listening to me going on and on! Well okay, here are some of my favourites. I’ve reviewed King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard’s album Flying Microtonal Banana:
And here’s a song from the album being performed at KEXP, “Sleep Drifter”. While most of the songs here will by examples of “hybrids”, combined 12 and 24 TET songs, King Gizzard were very committed to writing and recording fully 24-TET songs, so every instrument here, guitars, bass, synth, and even harmonica (I have no idea how they managed that!) is 24-TET:
It doesn’t seem intuitively obvious that Turkish folk combined with funk would be a match made in heaven, but it really really is! The saz playing its Turkish scales combined with the hypnotic and groovy bassline is really something else! This is Altın Gün performing Tatlı Dile Güler Yüze on KEXP:
I don’t know much about this one because I only found it right this second (you tube algorithm knows I like my Turkish music!), but it’s quite funky and has some sweet saz solos, while retaining a Turkish folk flavour. This is Darıldım Darıldım (feat. Arif Sağ), the song is called Akbaba İkilisi:
This is Derya Yıldırım and Grup Şimşek. Derya Yıldırım is the singer and saz player for the group, the sheer technique of both her singing and playing is incredible, but the other musicians in the band are top notch aswell, always providing awesome synths and basslines.:
So I hope this has been an interesting introduction to new types of music you may not have been aware of. Finding new music previously unknown to me I think is one of the most satisfying experiences that life has to offer.
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