Techniques of Polytempic Polymicrotonal Music Creation, part I

Although I have heretofore written two textbooks on this subject, I have yet to issue forth a methodology on writing Polytempic Polymicrotonal music.

Up until now, my approach to composing polytempic polymicrotonality has largely been intuitive. The impetus for this enterprise came from my drumming background, playing four meters at once on the drumset. This gave birth to later ideas as a composer for myriad ways to synchronize four-part writing in a deliberately syncopated way that would preclude predictable alignment of harmony. The words "verticalities" and "simultaneities" come to mind. 

The non-pitched inharmonically tuned drums have always been "microtonal"; the extension of this idea, for me, was to assemble an array of pitches that at first glance would have nothing in common, yet could be heard as an infinite set of tom-toms that could be represented by hundreds of microtonal pitches, other than the mere designation of high, medium, and low; like the tom-toms, microtonal pitches represented a way for me to escape the drag and necessity of common practice harmony and its over-arching paradigm, which seems to always want to crawl back into our ears, as represented by popular commercial music, Hollywood scores, et al. 

The route I have taken over the years shows a latent methodology in my writing that encompasses odd polyrhythmic-metric-tempic figuration employing micro-intervals from disparate microtonal systems, deliberately, for a fresh "hearing" of new intervallic structures. 

Rather than playing into the tuning and using standard intervals describing that microtonality, I have tried to use alternate combinations, by virtue of each polyphonic line holding a different microtonal tuning altogether. Even if the intervals are "off" by just a few cents, these differences still delineate a new set of intervallic structures that inevitably can create new chords when all four parts are verticalized. 

The note choice decisions are not algorithmic, nor systemic, but intuitively chosen by voice leading on the microtonal level, including disjunct motion and leaps. Systems are not excluded. In point of fact, I am trying to invent a system after having composed for a few years now. This is the reason for this blog. This blog will be a kind of public brainstorming about my "system" of polytempic polymicrotonal composition.