Khyam talks about the boundaries of Western Tuning, creating a software that allows for more possibilities. Khyam also highlights the lack of non-western sound within western culture and curriculum which I think formed the basic idea of the lecture. Khyam puts emphasis on the idea of ‘tuning’ which is something im not too familiar with, so i did some research and found A = 440Hz, which is a standard reference pitch
mentions how it relates to bias, supremacy and exclusion from other musical cultures from the tools used to make music. Khyam talks about subconscious bias that is instilled in the very instrumentation used to create the music – feeling as if using those instruments and softwares was driving him in a creative direction that he didn’t intend to follow originally. I find this idea very interesting – people usually don’t question using certain DAW’s made by certain people and the cultural limitations of those DAWS because of the general availability of them – those are the only ones available for us to use.
equal temperament refers to the western system for dividing the octave into twelve equal steps, which is the default tuning system thats used in all the softwares and hardware synthesisers used today. Popular digital audio workstations like Ableton, FL Studio, Logic, and Cubase were built primarily to facilitate music-making in a Western mode, according to the principles of European classical music. If an artist wants to compose with the common features of music from Africa, Asia, or Latin America, they have to almost fight against the software and rely on complex workarounds and different ideas.
Leimma and Apotome:
Using Leimma was completely new to me, first I had no idea what I was doing, probably needing to do more research on tuning and micro tonalities – however i did appreciate it being something that allows creation of music beyond the norm. New use of experimentation.
When using it we were asked to use measurements from our body and input them into Leimma – i used my fingers, creating a very interesting buzzy tone. I found this was a really unique way to make yourself a part of the creation. Leimma offers an intuitive, tactile introduction for anyone. Even if you know nothing about the musical systems of Indonesia, Japan, or Iran, you can jump in and hear the tonality differences immediately.