The masses don't buy this and microtonality would be lost on them. It
wouldn't sound good to their ear, after all that is what's being Autotuned.
Besides that, I know of absolutely no bamboo flute music being Autotuned :-)


These guys (several different unrelated artists!) were doing
outrageous things. They'd do overblowing stuff creating great chuffs of
noise, imitating deer. They'd be playing notes, and would lean
ruthlessly on the note, making it a freaking quarter-tone sharp, or just
explore all microtonally, with no fear at all of breaking equal
temperament, and it worked, it really worked. Just monophonic bamboo
flute notes, but the freedom was infinite.

I ended up saluting this by taking a sine-wave synthesizer tone, and
improvising a pentatonic lead over my Japanese-themed track, all the
while leaning on the pitch bender whenever I wanted, and continually
playing with where the pitch 'sat' in relation to the other music- it
was great, really liberating. I still like that tune.

If you understand the gestalt of the performance so little that
you're not asking, "WHY is the note that seems a little off, also the
note that I want to keep and use for the final result? WHY is it the
once in a lifetime guitar solo that features the melodic phrase that
struggles wrenchingly to hit the intended pitch?"... then maybe you
should just keep doing what you're doing. But it might be hurting your
art.


Chris Johnson