Prelude in 18ET

vaisvil

This Prelude in 18ET comes from a challenge on the microtonal tuning list to write something in the whole tone scale that didn’t sound like Debussy or Satie. This prelude has decidedly Debussian whole tone passages. All 3 whole tone scales are used. Realized through Pianoteq 3.0, M-audio Keystation 88es

(The first response was a jazz-fusion piece called The Good Boundless that used 12ET – i.e. normal tuning)

My experience with 18ET was that the tuning was familiar and different at the same time. It was fairly easy to handle with a regular keyboard and the mental mapping of every third note being a whole step was easy to remember. As a result I was able to achieve reasonable melodic dexterity and performance speed. I plan to revisit 18ET in the future.