Quarter tone

A quarter tone  play , is a pitch halfway between the usual notes of a chromatic scale or an interval about half as wide (aurally, or logarithmically) as a semitone, which is half a whole tone.

Many composers are known for having written music including quarter tones or the quarter-tone scale (24 equal temperament), first proposed by 19th-century music theorist Mikha'il Mishaqah, and in 1823 by the German theorist Heinrich Richter, including: Pierre Boulez, Julián Carrillo, Mildred Couper, George Enescu, Alberto Ginastera, Gérard Grisey, Alois Hába, Ljubica Marić, Charles Ives, Tristan Murail, Krzysztof Penderecki, Giacinto Scelsi, Ammar El Sherei, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Tui St. George Tucker, Ivan Alexandrovich Wyschnegradsky, and Iannis Xenakis (see List of quarter tone pieces).

Types of quarter tones

The term quarter tone can refer to a number of different intervals, all very close in size. For example, some 17th- and 18th-century theorists used the term to describe the distance between a sharp and enharmonically distinct flat in mean-tone temperaments (e.g., D♯–E♭). In the quarter tone scale, also called 24 tone equal temperament (24-TET), the quarter tone is 50 cents, or a frequency ratio of 2^1/24 or approximately 1.0293, and divides the octave into 24 equal steps (equal temperament). In this scale the quarter tone is the smallest step. A semitone is thus made of two steps, and three steps make a three-quarter tone  play  or neutral second, half of a minor third.