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The Grand Unified Theory of Music

Version 1.0

53logoCopyright © 2019 by Christopher Mohr

A free introduction to what The Grand Unified Theory of Music offers is on this website and includes both text and a few musical examples from each webpage. It’s surprisingly easy to understand the basic concepts of the Grand Unified Theory of Music!  If you would like to learn more about this chapter and the full contents of this entire e-book, you can buy The Grand Unified Theory of Music for $25, with hundreds of embedded musical examples of scales and chords from all over the world — and ideas for how to set up your computer system —

HERE.

You’ll get a personalized password you can use to see the entire e-book. Inside the full book, you will also get a link to the complete pdf file of this e-book, which you can read on your Kindle or similar device. The links to the hundreds of mp3 sound files – the same ones you can hear on the website — will also be included. This is “Version 1.0” of The Grand Unified Theory of Music. Because it is an e-book, additions, corrections and improvements in the sound may be added at any time. The Grand Unified Theory of Music is Copyright © 2019 by Christopher Mohr. All rights reserved.

One person per password. Sharing this password with others is a violation of copyright. Do not allow others to use your password or link to the pdf file!

This is an e-book in website and pdf format only, because there are over a hundred mp3 files you listen to. In this electronic-only format, you can hear the 53-note-to-the-octave tuning. An introduction to what this book offers is here on this website and includes both text and a few examples. If you wish to read and hear the entire e-textbook, please click above  to purchase the book for $25. You will get a password that will give you permanent entry into this e-book, both on this website and as a pdf file for Kindle etc. One person per password. Sharing this password with others is a violation of copyright.

This is “Version 1.0” of The Grand Unified Theory of Music. Because it is an e-book, additions, corrections and improvements in the sound may be added at any time.

Click HERE to gain access to the entire world of 53-eq music!

Chapter One
The Mother Lode of Music

What “The World Wide Musical Web” Can Do for You:
The Infinite Musical Possibilities of 53-equal Tuning

*Simple*

“My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us; the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require. “ –Edward Elgar

Do you share Elgar’s view? For the last 110 years, composers have drawn musical inspiration from all over the world. And yet, many composers feel boxed in, and are wishing that someone, somehow, could open a new door through which fresh inspiration and true sonic exploration could flow. If you are looking for a musical path which has barely been explored, and which offers incredible vistas of fresh and ancient realms of beauty, then this book may be for you. And if you are sensitive to the subtleties of pitch, the 53-equal tuning template may well mean that music will sound in tune for the first time in your life. While not a true “Grand Unified Theory” covering all of music,  I still call this “the mother lode of music”! This is a “how to” book for people interested in actually composing and performing music employing 53 notes to the octave, so there’s an abundance of detailed technical information. But, if you just want a general understanding of the deeper principle that unites much of ancient music and want to hear what hundreds of ancient scales sound like when they are played in tune, you may enjoy this book as well. Feel free to skim over the detailed charts and numbers, and just enjoy the narrative and hear the sounds of scales as our distant ancestors heard them. In this “book,” you’ll find a lot of information about the ancient cultures of the world, their musical and spiritual traditions, and how they all fit together into a single meta-theory of music. That’s because the natural harmonics are the same everywhere. At the very least, that is the “music in the air” Elgar talks about, from which many ancient cultures took as much as they required.

As a classical radio announcer and magazine publisher, I have interviewed many of the world’s most celebrated composers: Krzysztof Penderecki, Arvo Pärt, John Corigliano, John Adams and countless others. Sometimes I ask what they think of the music of our time, of the disconnect between composers and audience, and where they think we are going. Several have said that we’re in a period of transition where no one seems to have a sense of a strong new direction for music. In the meantime, composers dabble with combining music styles from around the world: Balinese monkey chant with jazz chords structured in sonata-allegro form, etc. Some beethovencomposers reject tonality and beauty—and audiences reject their music. Others return to music somehow based on Western tonal principles, and their music travels through territory pioneered by composers 120 years ago. It’s not that the music itself is stale; it’s that few composers are exploring truly new sonic territory while also writing music that captures the imagination of the audience. “We’re waiting for another Beethoven to come along,” more than one composer has admitted to me.

In Lives of the Great Composers, author and critic Harold C. Schonberg ends his biographical march from Monteverdi to Bartok with these discouraging words about modern music: “By the end of the 1970s, the public – and the professionals, too – were waiting for the new leader to arrive, a genius on the order of a Berlioz or a Wagner who could put it all together. It had been an interesting, a wild, a highly productive thirty-five years – but it had gone up a dead end. Whatever the complex of reasons, the period after the end of World War II and the following decades saw a hiatus in the mighty line of powerful, individualistic composers.”

This book, The Grand Unified Theory of Music, is an explanation of my path to my own musical Renaissance, the “beauty so ancient, so new,” a musical template that can revive the ancient beauty of music and propel us into a world so new that none of us can fully imagine its potential. In Chapter 14 alone, traditional tonality is radically expanded into The New Consonance, exploring uncharted harmonic beauty and expanding the traditional tonal vocabulary more than it has expanded in over 100 years. Many composers have left traditional tonality altogether; this chapter shows a way to radically expand that language instead. If you want to learn more about the contents of this book, feel free to explore the various pages here for free. You’ll be able to hear a few musical examples and get an idea of what each chapter of this book is about. Or, you may purchase the full pdf version and web version of the book. It’s a level of harmoniousness and rich complexity not possible in our current tuning system.

There is a whole microtonal music world out there with countless different tunings to choose from. I’ll talk about a few of these in a future chapter, and explain why I like mine the most.

A free introduction to what The Grand Unified Theory of Music offers is on this website and includes both text and a few musical examples from each webpage. If you would like to learn more about this chapter and the full contents of this entire e-book, you can buy The Grand Unified Theory of Music for $25, with hundreds of embedded musical examples of scales and chords from all over the world — and ideas for how to set up your computer system —

HERE.

You’ll get a personalized password you can use to see the entire e-book. Inside the full book, you will also get a link to the complete pdf file of this e-book, which you can read on your Kindle or similar device. The links to the hundreds of mp3 sound files – the same ones you can hear on the website — will also be included. This is “Version 1.0” of The Grand Unified Theory of Music. Because it is an e-book, additions, corrections and improvements in the sound may be added at any time. The Grand Unified Theory of Music is Copyright © 2018 by Christopher Mohr. All rights reserved.

One person per password. Sharing this password with others is a violation of copyright. Do not allow others to use your password or link to the pdf file!

Next Page: 1/2 – Complexity Vs Beauty