Category: microtonality

• The 4 valve microtonal trumpet

  I have described in the blog, Developing the Microtonal Trumpet and its Pedagogy how The Microtonal Trumpet project developed from an exploration of a three-valve instrument using ‘natural’ deviations of pitch from the 12-div equal tempered standard.  The first 5 to 10 of the 24 Microtonal Studies for trumpet were written with the idea that – more or…

  scaltoft

  August 22, 2015

  microtonality

  microtonal trumpet

• 24 Microtonal Studies for Trumpet

  24 Microtonal Studies for trumpet were written as first material for the replaceable valve mechanism microtonal trumpets developed by Stephen Altoft (although the first five to ten studies can be played on a standard trumpet as is described in the blog Developing the Microtonal Trumpet and its Pedagogy). They are pedagogical studies in that they: demand…

  scaltoft

  August 11, 2015

  microtonality

  24 Microtonal Studies, contemporary trumpet, microtonal trumpet

• Developing the Microtonal Trumpet and its Pedagogy

  The trumpet is microtonal by its very nature because different pitches, which are made by overblowing a length of brass tubing, produce a harmonic series and are therefore not equally tempered: In the example, pitches are shown as sounding in open position on a C trumpet. Open position refers to there being no valves depressed: the trumpet player…

  scaltoft

  August 5, 2015

  microtonality

  harmonic series, microtonal trumpet, quarter-tone trumpet, trumpet valves

• A Journey of Nineteen

  19-division tuning  I’ve been interested in tuning since I was a student in the late 70s, early 80s, when I encountered very sporadic examples of quarter-tones in music by Penderecki and others.  More than the music itself, or the use of the quarter-tones, it was the idea that the 12 division octave could be expanded by acoustic…

  scaltoft

  June 12, 2015

  microtonality

  19-divisions of the octave; microtonal trumpet; microtonality;