If you are interested in microtonal music, then you must know of the work done by Easley Blackwood, Julian Carrillo, Alois Haba, Ben Johnston, Harry Partch, and Ivan Wyschnegradsky: a (very small) renaissance for the last two composers has been happening in the last few years. If you do not know of their work, then I suggest becoming acquainted with it.
Best Wishes on your journey!
Hi! Thanks for the leads! I'm familiar with some but not all of those composers. Am listening! My interest is more in the spectral music direction, after Claude Vivier's microtonal innovations in pieces like Lonely Child and Trois Airs Pour un Opera Imaginaire. I was wondering specifically about the existing acoustic instruments - obviously the strings are fretless, trombones can do their slide thing, but woodwinds will be more finnicky. (I'm a flutist, there are things that can be done, especially in the third octave.) I'm just not satisfied with the sounds of synthesizers, unless they're for specific applications like some video game music.
An advantage of 36-TET is that each chromatic note has an inflection above and below, it's natural, up-natural, down-sharp, sharp, up-sharp, down-natural, natural to step through a whole tone (or the opposite direction with flats). That would let the player practice in regular tuning by ignoring the ups and downs and then add the inflections afterwards, my sense is that giving instructions closer to a tablature than to actual frequency information might make the task easier - and if it's just not working they could play the passage in 12-TET without doing too much damage to the music.
I guess I'm also just asking where the conversation is at these days, my school and my teacher were horrible for anyone who wanted to challenge things, so now I'm a bit of a musical orphan. I'm cluing in that composer podcasts are an important medium these days, but surely there's somewhere else online for a person looking for other innovators.
And also, hello Karl!