Neutrallia (Remastered) by Brendan Byrnes

“Neutralia” was written and recorded in 2012. I was working part time as a piano tuner, and had bought an extremely clunky baby grand to experiment with microtonal tunings. I tried several different scales to find one that would be most compatible with the guitar, which has extra frets allowing you to play 7, 11, and 13 limit intervals. I settled on the piano tuning:

1:1, 25:24, 11:10, 7:6, 5:4, 4:3, 11:8, 3:2, 8:5, 13:8, 7:4, 11:6

I wrote the piece for my brilliant pianist friend, Emi Tamura, and I to perform at the house concerts that we were regularly putting on around that time. We premiered it at the Dogstar Orchestra Concert Series in September, and recorded it a few weeks later in my living room. We set up the guitar amp in a separate room to minimize the bleed into the piano mics. If I remember correctly, Emi and I were pretty well rehearsed, and this was maybe the 2nd or 3rd take. I used an Ebow for some of the melodic lines and a loop pedal to play a simple static tone during the guitar break.

mostly microtonal musician

music in various EDOs (equal divisions of the octave) and just intonation. some 12 EDO music as well.

also a member of ILEVENS and Birch

brendanbyrnes.com
ILEVENS
Birch