Jeffrey Holmes’ Inventive Approach to Microtonality

courtesy of MicroFest Records

Those who have been following this site for some time probably know by now of my interest in albums released by MicroFest Records that explore compositions and performances based on the use of just intonation. Tomorrow, MicroFest will release a new album that takes a distinctively different approach to microtonality. May the Bridges I Burn Light My Way is a two-CD survey of compositions by Jeffrey Holmes, whose interests have more to do with his Nordic descent than with the sorts of influences that inspired, for example, Lou Harrison’s approach to just intonation. The first of the CDs consists of chamber music works composed between 2006 and 2014; and, where microtones are involved at all, they serve to contrast the equal-tempered tuning of a piano with the more fluid pitch orientations of the other instruments. The second CD consists of chamber music for guitar; but Holmes does not write for the Just National Steel Guitar, which had been designed with just intonation in mind. Instead, he tends to write for two guitars tuned to different pitch standards. As usual, Amazon.com has already created a Web page, which is processing pre-orders as I write this.

The Just National instrument tends to be used to enable “integer-based” approaches to both the perfect fifth (the 3:2 ratio) and the major third (the 5:4 ratio). Holmes, on the other hand, is more interested in the seventh harmonic. The 7:4 ratio is 31.2% of a semitone lower than the minor seventh. Some have argued that the 7:4 interval is the “blue” seventh; but I have yet to encounter laboratory results based on recordings by early blues singers to support this hypothesis. For those not familiar with the harmonic series, that 7:4 interval sounds decidedly weird. The way Holmes works with his interval is to score his music for two guitars with separate tunings, one of which is tuned around the natural interval of the seventh harmonic.

This definitely makes for sonorities that are distinctively different from those who confine themselves to working primarily with “natural” perfect fifths and major thirds. However, to paraphrase the Rumpelstiltskin character from Once Upon a Time, difference comes with a price. More often than not, Holmes tends to work with his microtones horizontally, rather than vertically. The result is an abundance of melodic lines or motifs that are subject to what my counterpoint teacher used to call “slimy chromaticism.” While he was clearly using that phrase pejoratively, it can definitely have a spooky effect when used sparingly. Unfortunately, Holmes tends not to be sparing; meaning that, in any given composition in which the seventh harmonic is used, it usually overstays its welcome sooner, rather than later.

Nevertheless, I suspect that I shall be revisiting this album from time to time. For one thing, I like many of his approaches to instrumentation, particularly when he can take a more specific approach to intonation than one encounters in most compositions. Also, I am just beginning to get used to his influences from Nordic mythology; and, given that my only alternative sources for that domain are Richard Wagner and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I figure that I owe myself a more “realistic” perspective on that particular genre of traditional music.