FUNDAMENTALS OF NANOTONALITY
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    This is my personal definition of nanotones.
    Pieter Suurmond, december 20, 2002.


    1)  BEYOND MICROTONES

        Nanotonality goes beyond microtonality.
        In nanotonal music, physical wavelengts can be 
        controlled with extreme accuracy. An octave (ratio 1:2) 
        may be divided by biljons of nano-intervals instead 
        of the commonly known division of 12 or 24 tones per
        octave.
        (Of coarse, real sounding music, especially when played 
        by humans, always contains microtonal modulations like 
        vibrato, tremelo, pitch-bends, etc).
        What I am talking about here is a very precise and 
        planned way of controlling frequency in massive 
        additive synthesis.
        Most audiosoftware in the year 2002 uses less than 
        32 bits in linear frequency and phase numbers 
        ('floats' in C/C++), which may not always be enough.


    2)  RHYTHMS CONTROLLED FROM THE FREQUENCY DOMAIN
    
        As a consequence, when thousands of different sinoids are 
        added together, complex beatings may arise.
        These 'rythms' may exhibit a very long cycle and/or 
        a very complex pattern, so the listener must be 
        exposed to it long enough.
        This kind of music is thus, by definition, very slow 
        and takes long time.
        Rythms are thus generated from the frequency-domain instead 
        of the (more usual) time-domain: Yes, I am a lousy and lazy 
        composer: just listen to the cloud of sound and our ear 
        will automatically draw attention to certain repetitions in 
        time, just because nothing else happens and our minds want
        to have something to do. :-)
        Sadly, listening to too much nanotonal sound may become 
        boring. Nanotonal counterpoint must yet be developed to 
        avoid this.


    3)  SPECTROSCOPY
        
        I study a special case of nanotonality, which is
        spectroscopy.
        I actually sonify atoms and ions, which can  
        be regarded as (complicated) oscillating systems. 
        I transpose downwards exactly 39 or 40 octaves, 
        nothing else (yet).

        For ages people made music based on the harmonic 
        series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, (7),... 
        Based on harmonic spectra generated by (idealized)
        1-dimensional oscilating systems: basically string-
        instruments and wind-instruments, but also sawtooth 
        and blockwaves from electronic musical instruments.
        
        Let's go forward and listen to more complicated 
        oscillating systems in nature, as natural as the 
        harmonic series are: ATOMS !
        Let's immerse ourselves in quentummechanics and 
        let us discover it's tonality!
        
        In my search for nano-counterpoint, I study the use 
        of other quantum-numbers, states, energy-levels, 
        amplitude-values, and such to control structuring 
        in time. (The difference between a spectral line's 
        2 energy-levels already controls audio-frequency.)
        
        
    4)  PICOTONALITY
    
        As spectroscopy advances to higher resolutions 
        (hyperfine splittings and such), we could 
        move on towards 'picotonality', which, I suggest, 
        should use 128 or 256 bits for frequency-resolution.
        Picotonal music however may be too long for the 
        lifetime of humans to listen to.


    5)  ALCHEMY

        Chemical elements may be applied as alchemistic 
        symbols in musical composition: Fe for masculine;
        Cu for feminine; Pb for time and saturn,... It may be 
        connected to astrology this way.
        When talking about numerology in (musical) compostion, 
        I experience using 40000 lines of the iron-spectrum much 
        more exciting than playing around with only simple numbers 
        like 1,2 and 3.