miCROfest@biennale2023

miCROfest is an international festival of microtonal music.

 

The content of miCROfest is microtonal music that uses intonation systems that we rarely hear within today's dominant way of tuning instruments. The goal is to familiarize the audience with microtonal instruments, compositions, microtonal music theory and the microtonal aspect of both Croatian and foreign traditional music. The richness and characteristics of different cultural narratives are equally evident, both in the way of life, customs and culture, as well as in traditional music and the sound it encompasses.

 

On the basis of the internationally recognized quality of the program, as one of the selected events in the field of microtonal music, miCROfest achieved a partnership and was conducted throughout European countries as an integral part of the EUROMicroFest 2017.

 

Book presentation The Art of Spectral Groups by Zoran Šćekić

The Art of Spectral Groups

 

Musical harmony, as we know today draws its roots from 3 basic major triads – tonic, subdominant and dominant. This structure of musical harmony is not invented by a man but discovered by a man because it simply comes from the physical structure of the ton itself (“Harmony I”; Fran Lhotka). The ton that we here speak about is a ton with integer harmonics, which means that the harmonics are integer multiples of the lowest frequency in the ton spectra, also called the root frequency. This kind of the ton, with integer harmonics is produced by any vibrating bodies with fixed points on both of their ends (vocal cords, line of air in the tube or any type of string). Vibrating bodies with one or no fixed points produces tones with irrational harmonics (all types of percussive instruments including bells, bowls, cymbals etc.).  

If the harmonic structure of these instruments is too far away from the tuning system of those with integer harmonics, they are mostly used as dissonant effects like tubular bells are used in orchestral scores for example. Or a completely new kind of music is produced by the use of instruments with irrational harmonics where the main subject is not the harmony but rhythmic, like in traditional music of some parts of Indonesia called Gamelan for example.

 

But is there a completely new type of musical harmony based on irrational harmonics...?!

 

This lecture is a presentation of the book “The Art of Spectral Groups - Irrational random intervals harmony doctrine - 9 steps before composing”. The book describes in detail an exhaustive study that I did in order to create a practical method for writing microtonal consonant (in broader sense) music for specially selected 36 Tibetan singing bowls. The method consists of 9 steps and it can be applied to absolutely any type of sound but I created it especially for tones with random irrational harmonics.