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1/2: Complexity vs. Beauty

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The False Dichotomy of Musical Complexity and Beauty

This chapter is a brief history of musical tunings. From pure just intonation, music based on the natural harmonics, musicians kept making tuning compromises to accommodate greater complexity. Music had to be either very simple and in tune (like ancient music) or more complex and out of tune (like Bach). The 53-note-to-the-octave system allows traditional music to be almost perfectly in tune, and more complex than is possible in 12-equal. It’s a level of harmoniousness and rich complexity not possible in our current tuning system.

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 – 1/3: My 53-eq Journey