Doctor of Philosophy Tuhkanen Timo

Microtonal Music Studios: Music outside of keys and cultures

Taiteellinen työ / siihen pohjautuva työ | Kolmivuotinen

Microtonal Music Studios is a relational art project with an aim to create a community and place around musical instruments. It takes the form of an educational, non-national, post-genre, and decolonized musical space for experienced musicians as well as beginners to experiment in. It is a physical space in which the whole process of musical production is included: from the conception, design and making of musical instruments, through the practice, playing, composition and interpretation of music, to the recording and the physical as well as digital distribution and promotion of instrument designs, concerts and albums, to the listening, hearing experience, and discourse of music. This all encompassing thinking-through-making is what gives the project a specific aim of directly addressing directly structural issues of diversity and canon within the music establishment. This relational practice investigates what could be achieved if the whole of musical production (from conceiving and building instruments, to choosing tonalities, to playing and listening to music) would be actively included in the future aesthetics of music. What kind of cultural formations happen when musical sounds are not controlled by any dominant idiom? How can the general audience be made more aware that musical tones, intervals, and pitches, are culturally constructed and held up by vested interests and structural norms?