Super Philosophical Quantum Music Theory Question

Yes, there are tones in between the recognised notes, but you can't use them, they are reserved for my singing and subject to several court injunctions................

Seriously, yes, there are tones, just have a peek at Asian music, for instance.

OK, so I've learned in another thread that there are other dimensions that we are unaware of. Which leads me to this question. Fair warning...I know nothing about music theory and I'm going to make up my own words here.

Actually, it isn't known yet that there are other dimensions only that they are required by the current leading theory for the unification of the forces (having all of the forces explained by one theory) - gravitation (keeps you and your guitar on earth), electro-magnetism (is the force behind your guitar's pickups), strong force (keeps the nuclei in the atoms in your guitar from flying apart), and the weak force (involved in radioactive beta decay which is behind the process that generates sunlight that grew the tree that provided the wood that your guitar is made from).
If that is true, then we are missing an entire realm of music. Another dimension if you will. Admittedly, I state this with tongue in cheek but it does kinda make me think though.

Exactly true. The Western 12 tone scale is a very much a western invention. The blues by way of African music uses tones that exist between the tones in the western scale. Apparently the Greeks did too and Indian music uses different divisions and so on. Gnease just bought a Godin Glissentar (fretless 11 string guitar) so he may be exploring micro-tonal music right now.

If that is true, then we are missing an entire realm of music. Another dimension if you will. Admittedly, I state this with tongue in cheek but it does kinda make me think though.

I don't really think so, that would be like saying you're missing out on a whole of verbal communication because there are many more combinations of letters possible we don't use. Music is communication and as long as you've got a system that's broad enough to allow you to express whatever you feel like expressing, and the system is accepted by your environment, there is little point in thinking about 'what else' could be. And just like language I think it only make sense to learn a new musical culture if you have an interest to communicate as directly as possible with people from that culture. For most of us that doesn't really apply. That's why I think that for 99% of us listening to traditional, non-westernized, music from radically different music cultures will be the musical equivalent of learning a few phrases in a dfiferent tongue when you go on vacation. It could be fun, you'll probably pick up some interesting ideas but before too long you'll go back home because that's where you can be yourself at your best.

As for multiple dimensions, I think quantum mechanics & quantum theory have provided us with enough riddles about our own universe and dimension (which is pretty ambigious term to start with!) that we might better consider all theories about other dimensions as entertaining instead of educational. Kinda like it makes no sense to try to factor in the impact of foreign economies if you don't have a near-perfect insight in your internal economy: everything you'll discover will be worthless everytime you're forced to re-evaluate the mechanics of the internal economy.

go fretless and all the notes between the intervals are there.

you all raise interesting points. the Littlest Prince once said that what is essential is often invisible.

We pick out sounds to make music because they sound good to our ears. What's good to our ears isn't what was good for the ear 500 years ago (or probably 500 years from now) - which makes this a little bit complicated.

What's an A note? Today we say it's a sound that vibrates at 440 cycles per second. But if you happen to be in France, they'll say it's 435 cycles, and in much of Eastern Europe it's 442 cycles. So A itself is a moving target... and it's moved a LOT over the years (by roughly half an octave from one place to another)

But let's say A is always 440. What's B? Palestrina (if he had the measurement tools) would have said about 495. Bach would have said 493.3. Today's pianos are tuned to 493.88. So the distance between the letters depends on your point in time - a complicated subject in itself called "temperament", the adjusting of pitches so they sound good when played together.

Given the range of pitches assigned to letters, and the range of spacing between letters that we've used, just about every possible pitch has been used at one time or another. The best analogy isn't to compare music to science - because science deals with ideas that are fixed (like pi), and the arts deal with expressions that aren't. So we talk in much more general terms... Bb is between A and B in the same way that purple is between red and blue. Neither "purple" nor "Bb" give you an exact description that's permanent, because they reference things that can change from one expression to the next. But at least the labels put you in the ballpark - Bb isn't G#, and purple isn't yellow.

CERN is actually working on the problem of micro tones right now.

I was curious to see what the mathematical relationship is between notes and their frequencies (tone or pitch).
If you multiply a notes frequency by the twelfth root of two (that's 2 raised to the 1/12 power or exponent) you get the next semitone. For example, the note A at a frequency of 440 is multiplied by 2 raised to 0.0833333 (the decimal equivalent of 1/12) you get 466 (and some change) which is A#. Keep multiplying by 2 raised to the 1/12 to go up the chromatic scale.
So in other dimensions, you could probably invent your own mathematical relationship between the notes.
For instance in the dimension I just got back from visiting, the notes were spaced apart by multiples of 100. This was known as the metric chromatic scale and the music was quite interesting.

KR2 (a resident of this dimension)

I covered exactly that in my article "Gin and Diatonic"

You can read it here:

https://www.guitarnoise.com/lessons/gin-and-diatonic/

Great article NIck.
You see, there are never dumb questions. I thought I would get laughed right off the forums for asking that question. I actually learned something today! Don't ask me to speak about it tomorrow though. I will have already forgotten it! 8)

Have you never bent a note a couple of semitones then slowly released it back to the original pitch, picking all the while? Example - the last few bars of the solo in "Smoke On The Water" just before it goes back to the main riff. Have you never played slide and used a little vibrato, ie waggling the slide back and forth around the target fret?

Plenty of microtones in either example.

:D :D :D

Vic

String theory would seem more apropos to guitars.

intervals, semitones and the tiniest bends. the nuanced change in pressure. the slide and bend.
those movements are essential to how I express feeling and opinion in my note playing.
a singer uses voice a poet uses words and
Spock uses

Einstein was wrong E=Fb

intervals, semitones and the tiniest bends. the nuanced change in pressure. the slide and bend.
those movements are essential to how I express feeling and opinion in my note playing.
a singer uses voice a poet uses words and
Spock uses

Cute girl