Name: Siavash Amini
Occupation: Sound artist, composer
Nationality: Iranian
Recent release: Siavash Amini's Eidolon is out via Room40.
Recommendations on the topic of alternative tuning systems: The Modal System of Arab and Persian Music A.D. 1250-1300 by Owen Wright
Arithmetic of Listening by Kyle Gann
The Science of Harmonics in Classical Greece by Andrew Barker

If you enjoyed these thoughts by Siavash Amini and would like to find out more about his work, visit his official website. He is also on Facebook, Soundcloud, and twitter. 

For more on the topic of sound, head over to our earlier Siavash Amini interview. Over the course of his career, Siavash Amini has collaborated with various artists, including Matt Finney, Heinali and Rafael Anton Irisarri.

[Read our Heinali interview]
[Read our Rafael Anton Irisarri interview]



When did you first start getting interested in the world of alternative tuning systems?  

Around year 3 of high school (2003-2004), when my cousin (who played the Tar) and I wanted to jam together was when I started to realize how different our instruments were fretted and tuned.

I remember wanting to get a fretless guitar so I could play the Radif like he did, there was this store I passed by in Jomhouri St. in Tehran who had a Godin fretless that I really wanted but was way out my price range (still is!).

More than just tuning I was very interested in Iranian and Arabic historical systems of composition and improvisation, so I started reading everything I could get my hands on including issues of Mahoor journal which extensively covered both topics. I think it was there where I first read about Urmavi.

I was hoping to make a metal-fused Iranian music form, but it was very naive, misguided and it failed in every aspect. I gave up on playing metal soon after but kept reading and following the Mahoor journal.

Which artists, approaches, albums or performances using alternative tuning systems captured your imagination in the beginning?

Just as I was starting to learn to make electronic music around 2006, I listened to Shur op.15 by Alireza Mashayekhi which came out that year as a part of a huge 3CD compilation of his electro-acoustic and electronic work (distributed a few years later internationally).



I remember I was so excited I started walking around the room when the album got to that part, my head was exploding with possibilities.

Terms like consonant and dissonant are used in school, but mostly with very limited understanding of what they mean. How has your own idea of these terms changed over time and how do you see them today?

It has changed vastly for me since I first encountered them in the context of 18th and 19 century music theory. Lately I’m a bit hesitant to use such sharp generalized distinctions in regards to aesthetics because I do not believe that these are scientific facts per se; I think they are very much related to culture around and context of the sounds.

Plus I think these types of definitions ie. conventional Western music theory fail to taken into account the effects of temporality, duration and timbre which play a crucial role to our understanding of these terms

What was your own learning curve / creative development like when it comes to alternative tuning systems - what were challenges and breakthroughs?

My first attempts were to explore the relations between medieval sources of musical theory and Dastgahi music. A track called “Corners” from the album Spotty Surfaces (released as a CD only album in Iran in 2010, and digital in 2012 internationally) is a good example of that.



The first challenges were that of analyzing recordings of Dastgahi music, to get to a coherent tuning system and then trying to find matching or similar historic tunings. It was an almost impossible task with my knowledge and abilities at that time so I gave up after a couple of tracks that almost got there.I wasn’t convinced that the music sounded good since I had to resort to sampling a very short excerpt of a qajar era singer from a 78 recording to demonstrate what I actually was doing (something that bothers me to this day).

I didn’t make a track or at least complete one with a medieval persian or arabic tuning until early 2019 when I started my series focusing on modern Persian literature which is still ongoing - for example “Pundara” which is based on a short story by Ghazaleh Alizadeh.



These small pieces were real breakthroughs for me; I was able to use tuning as a basis for a completely new work without resorting to historical quotation, the tuning was what led the harmonies and the melodic motifs, everything generated by the relationships that was inherent in it intervals to my ears and sensibilities.

There was no attempt to figure out how these intervals were perceived at their own time or how they relate to Dastgahi music of the qajar era. I felt liberated. Soon after I started working on A Trail Of Laughters.



Do you still use equal temperament? What are some of the aspects and goals for which you find it suitable?

Things have greatly changed for me. I could not find a satisfying way forward with just tonal harmonies or post-tonal strategies that employed equal-temperament, I just couldn’t imagine music solely in those systems anymore. I needed something more.

Although I still use equal temperament in conjunction with other tunings in some pieces specially in my project with Eugene Thacker, I’m not at all a purist and I believe I should use everything at my disposal.

[Read our Eugene Thacker interview]

I don’t think any of these tunings is superior as many just intonation fanatics claim, I don’t have anything against any system, I find them equally interesting but not useful for every situation.

What were some of the most interesting tuning systems you tried out and what are their respective qualities?

The most interesting to date is the Urmavi’s system of pythagorean tuning which he derives his 17 tone scale from.

It has a very simple and elegant but strange way of dividing the whole tone which I find both mathematically and sonically fascinating; although the whole scale is deemed theoretical and adjusted to have a symbolic and extra musical mathematical beauty by musicians and scholars I still find sonically magnificent, that’s why most my pieces in “Eidolon” us this scale.

A thorough discussion of how to arrive at the scale is brilliantly written by Owen Wright in his book The Modal System of Arab and Persian Music A.D. 1250-1300.  

So far, the focus with regards to alternative tuning systems has mainly been on harmony. But melody is affected, too. How do you personally understand melody and what changes when it becomes part of a new pitch environment?

More and more I find harmony and melody are very dependent on timbre and texture so I don’t see them as just two complimentary things but elements in a intertwined system that includes timbre as well.

My aim recently has been to come up with a coherent system for connecting them in my own work. I’m skeptical of seeing pitch as a pure entity when talking about my music so almost always the question for me is not what pitches in what succession; but what intervals, with which timbre, in what succession.

Same goes for any two simultaneous sounds or harmonies; they too are dependent on timbre and very importantly, duration.

With electronic tools, playing and composing in just intonation has become a whole lot easier. Do you find this interesting? What are some of the  technologies, controllers and instruments you use for your own practise?

Up until a couple of months ago I only used Scala to do everything related to tuning, from making tuning or scales for use in max and reaktor, or scl files for VSTs, to relaying midi in real time.

Recently I have started using MTS-ESP as well which I find very convenient for very quick editing of a tuning file and having it relayed to any line of midi that I want to. But I find the UI not ideal for very detailed work, that part is still handled by Scala.