To get those nuances is very difficult on a regular trumpet but you can get
quarter-tone trumpets which have an extra valve which allow you to play the
quarter-tones which are very characteristic of Arabic music.
I even commissioned a special instrument to be made by Leigh McKinney of Eclipse Trumpets, a
quarter-tone flugelhorn, which enables me to play Arabic scales more accurately.
7 was performed, the first written in the
quarter-tone system.
Here, required to deliver intentional
quarter-tone chaos, ABQ plays with exceptional independent strength, avoiding the mayhem that can befall lesser players and adding compelling conviction to Currier's extended and challenging soundscape.
Pioneered by Lebanese composers like Ziad Rahbani and Toufic Farroukh, "Oriental jazz" -- the melding of Western jazz instrumentation and modalities with the
quarter-tone scale of eastern music -- continues to be explored by younger performers like vocalist Rima Khcheich and contrabassist Tony Overwater, her principal instrumentalist.
Lehman's one-then-two- then-more arpeggios and
quarter-tone tremolos were the least of the mesmerizing effects flowing from his sax's bell.
But we have a confidence just in humanity.AoThe band has been continually filtering new sounds and instrumental textures from its travels:
Quarter-tone melodies from Indian classical music, South African dancers doing a dance-stomp in gumboots, Argentine tango, a Vietnamese harp-like implement.
The work uses two sections of string players, with one section's strings tuned a
quarter-tone apart from the other.
His works are certainly understood, particularly Ramifications for two groups of strings tuned a
quarter-tone apart - interesting how much of this year's Festival features string works - and Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet.
That's how we first heard the wedding songs sung in a unique
quarter-tone manner and the hair-raising ghost stories that inspired Yara's Circle in 2000--and how a wolf hunter introduced us to animal calls that gave rise to Howling in 2002.
In this system an octave is divided into 24 intervals of approximately a
quarter-tone (each about 50 cents)." (14)
Couper was noted for her
quarter-tone piano music in the 1930s.