6 Levels of MICROTONES (in Video Game Music)

Patreon: Let’s talk about Microtonality, and the different interesting ways it has appeared in video game music! MUSIC THEORY 00:00-00:35 Intro 00:35-04:39 What is Microtonality? 04:39-07:24 Level 1 07:24-09:31 Level 2 09:31-13:05 Level 3 13:05-16:16 Level 4 16:16-22:19 Level 5 22:19-25:44 Level 6 25:44-26:07 ANNOUNCEMENT! 26:07-27:03 Outro HUGE MEGA THANKS to Alpha Something for the mini interview, go play Venba! Special thanks to mtt59 for Red Dead Redemption footage and June Lee for video brainstorming help in 2021. Also if you’re here about the * in the Just Intonation section, technically the 7:4 dominant 7 only appears in “7-limit“ Just Intonation, whereas the most common version that is used is “5-limit“. 5-limit refers to the fact that all of the ratios have only factors less than 5, which is why the dominant 7 chord in 5-limit just intonation is 9(3x3):5. The 7:4 dominant 7 chord sounds so cool because of the mathematically clean oscillations between the 4:5:6:7 and the precedent in the harmonic series; you can hear the ringing of the higher overtones. As for why 5-limit is common and not 7-limit, it’s probably because the cleaner factors creates cleaner nodes and avoids weird prime numbers. I have no idea to be honest, this stuff is getting to be way over my head. Anyways, it’s possible that Shoptimus Prime (the barbershop quartet) was not intending to hit the 4:5:6:7, but do take a listen to how flat the 7th in the “for“ chord is, it’s almost D at that point. Just some cool tuning. Obviously not perfectly perfectly in tune even if they were consciously trying to hit the 4:5:6:7, but still cool. Also fun fact that I didn’t have a chance to include in the video, the entire tune is ~40 cents flat from A=440! Try playing piano to the tune :) Also to the 14 people who read this gigantic nerd ahh paragraph, comment “yippee just intonation“ or something Tunes used: Bandcamp: Soundcloud: