At the upcoming @CTMFestival 19 Jan—14 Feb 2021, @ctpt_studio ( @teropa & @samueldiggins) and I will launch a major collaboration titled #Apotome + its sister project #Leimma.

It's complex, so, a LONG thread on #TUNING, #CULTURALBIAS, #MUSICTECHNOLOGY & #REPRESSEDPPOSSIBILITIES

For many years, I have felt frustrated and sidelined by modern music making tools in my practice—and creative desires—because of my interest in non-western musical cultures, specifically the Middle Eastern Maqām. I know there are many musicians across cultures who feel the same.

Anything that helps us make music is essentially a tool, whether it's an instrument, a device, a software etc… Today we are more reliant than ever on digital tools and their ability to play back our ideas, to make music - regardless of genre.

Any and all tools influence their results: the weight of a hammer, the shape of a pen, the resonance of an acoustic instrument, the quality of a sample library etc…

Whether we are composing using notation software, or programming midi, performing with synths or even recording and manipulating audio - we consistently rely on hearing what we’re doing as we go along.

#Tuning is the most fundamental element of music making. It’s also the subject that is least taught, least understood and most veiled. Do musicians know what notes they are actually playing and why they sound that way?

One of the major individual and cultural identifiers of Music is tuning and intonation. And even though it is more relevant to "Non-Western” music cultures, it doesn't only apply only to them. It applies to all music.

But, due to the hegemony of “Western” 12-tone Equal Temperament - the system exclusively used by 99% of modern music software and hardware - the possibilities of exploring other systems have been #repressed. This is a result of innate #inherited #bias stemming from #supremacy.

Over the last two years, the amazing @philewell highlighted a major related problem that he termed the White Racial Frame of Music Theory - the supremacist hegemony of 18th century European music theory as "Music Theory" (see here: …https://musictheoryswhiteracialframe.wordpress.com/ )

In his work, he shows us how 18th c. European music is used as the reference and sole representative of “Music” in modern music education, and how this comes from #racism and #supremacist ideology.

I would add and argue that 12-tone equal temperament and its imposition on all modern music making tools used by musicians worldwide, is a remnant of that ideology which is inherited and maintained by designers, coders and manufacturers of music technology, affecting all users.

In addition, #microtonality as a subject is equally rife with supremacist bias, choosing to focus on the Ancient Greek contribution to tuning and music theory, the cradle of Western civilisation, whilst sidelining ancient Mesopotamian and Chinese histories amongst others.

Or choosing to only focus on Just Intonation or the Harmonic Series—deemed universal because of their innate relationship to physics and mathematics, hence “science" not "culture”.

Not to mention the veiling of #microtonality in so much inaccessible scientific and academic language whilst providing little opportunity for those interested to HEAR it.

I’m not saying those who work in music tech are doing it on purpose… but whether by ignorance or innocence, the damage done to that actual music and to audience’s ears/listening, across the world is truly enormous.

It's equivalent to forcing the world to speak the same language (12 tone) with the same accent (equal temperament) albeit with different dialects (melodies).

No wonder people keep complaining that most music “sounds the same”, tuning correction & autotune is doing exactly that!

Whilst we music makers are caught up in finding “new sounds” as a result of European post-tonal reactionism, our individual “voices” are tempered by 12-tone equal temperament… and without most of us ever realising.

It’s also worth pointing out that the problem here does not lie with MIDI nor the 12-tone piano keyboard. The problem is to do with implementation.

Microtonality has existed within MIDI @midiassociation since 1991. It just has been rarely implemented, or implemented tokenistically, or from an anglo-european perspective, or with limited sonic capabilities, or with incredibly complex and uninspiring interfaces

MOST IMPORTANTLY, it has only ever been implemented in ways that impede music makers from having the freedom of a “blank slate”, the space to experiment with no idea what might result. Here lie the #RepressedPossibilities

I wrote about my struggle in an article for @CTMFestival magazine in 2019 when I was working on a Max4Live solution - things have changed since, but the issues remain the same: https://www.ctm-festival.de/magazine/microtonality-and-the-struggle-for-fretlessness-in-the-digital-age

So… rather than being an “angry Arab” who just complains on social media, or publish in closed-circuit academia… I decided to do a practice based PhD at @BirmCons/ @Midlands4Cities with @seanlclancy to make something accessible, and audible, to help re-balance this asymmetry.

This is where #Leimma and #Apotome come in. They are two non-commercial tools that run in a web-browser, using novel Web Midi and Web Audio. This was a political choice: the widest accessibility possible. No installing, no compatibility issues. Minimal writing. Instant access.

#Leimma is a tool for exploring tuning systems and their subsets (modes/scales), or creating your own. #Apotome is a tool for generative composition using them.

They both output MIDI and can be used with any software or hardware.

More about the launch: https://www.ctm-festival.de/festival-2021/programme/features/apotome

I’m out of space in this thread so I will post more soon, as things start to lock in place.

You can sign up to my newsletter for updates: http://bit.ly/khyamallamilist 

For now… stay safe, be well and enjoy whatever you can of the holidays

Found more room via iOS, so a short list of gratitude to: my PhD co-supervisor Scott Wilson @muellmusik, Jan Rohlf at CTM for supporting and giving me a platform to share my work, @teropa & @samueldiggins for their incredible work on this project, Marc Sabat for the knowledge...

@Shzree and @LMGM for their tireless and inspiring efforts highlighting related problems, and last but not least my loving wife @YaldaYounes for putting up with my microtonal ramblings and her unending support!