Name: Vicente Hansen Atria
Nationality: Chilean
Occupation: Composer, drummer, bandleader
Current Release: Vicente Hansen Atria's Orlando Furioso is out via Aguirre.

If you enjoyed this interview with Vicente Hansen Atria and would like to know more, visit his official website. He is also on Instagram, and Soundcloud.



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

I think my first conscious appreciation for microtonal music came through the work of one of my mentors, Georg Friedrich Haas. But once I became aware of it, I started hearing the microtonal aspects of much of the music that I love that is not ‘about’ microtonality, like the blues, jazz, or different folk traditions.

I remember hearing balkan guslar around that time, and was fascinated by the way they sing in all kinds of microtonal seconds, in a beautiful heterophonic way.

Eventually this became the inspiration for Beauchamp-Feuillet N.2, a microtonal piece in just intonation for solo cello (written for Jay Campbell).

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

I’d say my first striking encounters with microtonality were Nicola Vicentino, Ivan Wyschnegradsky, and Ben Johnston’s string quartets.

Working with a different tuning system can be a very incisive transition. Aside from musical considerations, there can also be personal motivations for looking for alternatives. Was this the case for you, and if so, in which way?

For me, as for many people, realizing the amount of expressive potential in tuning was something of a paradigm shift. I also have a relatively obsessive personality, and enjoy challenging myself to continue to grow as a musician. Microtonality, then, kind of ended up being the perfect playground for my obsessiveness.

I also fell in love with the possibility of writing strange, uncanny versions of already-existing music, which was the main inspiration behind Orlando Furioso, my debut album as a bandleader.

How would you describe the shift of moving from one tuning system to another?

It’s always the most exciting part of composing for me. I find it to be similar to traveling to a new country. Things that used to work no longer work in the same way, and things that never seemed possible become possible.

I was fascinated with the harmonic possibilities of 22edo and so wrote a piece for Yarn/Wire featuring this tuning, where I pitch it against the regular tuning of the piano.

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?

I think the spectrum of consonance and dissonance is particularly at home in the tonal system of functional harmony, but it glosses over many other ways of organizing pitch space, including some very old ones (such as all modal music!).

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

I’d say the most challenging aspect of learning an alternative tuning system is finding a way to become familiar with its acoustic sonority.

One of the things my mentor Georg Haas instilled in me is realizing the importance of performing and hearing this intervals interact in a space. While I think it is important for any composer (not just those working in microtonality) to develop some kind of immediate practice with sound, it is especially important in microtonality because these intervals interact with timbre and rhythm in unusual ways.

I spent many nights in professor Haas’s studio at Columbia University, where he has two pianos tuned a quarter tone apart, and another piano tuned in just intonation, where I started to develop a sense of how microtonality works and sounds.

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

I would love to spend more time writing in 22edo, where the syntonic comma is not only not tempered out (as in 12edo), but expanded. This creates really interesting comma pump effects with conventional progressions, a phenomenon that I would love to explore more in depth.

In how far has working with alternative tuning systems changed your collaborative practise?

Alternative tuning systems are very resource intensive! Performing microtonal music requires performers with the aural skills to recognize and tune to very high levels of precision.

More importantly, however, tuning is an ensemble skill, and so requires a group of performers to know each other and potentially spend more time learning how to tune these harmonies together.

I was lucky to find a group of musicians that were very generous with their time while putting together Orlando Furioso, and can’t imagine how we would have pulled it off otherwise.

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

I do! There are so many advantages to it. It’s phenomenal for writing fast music, for instance.

Perhaps one of the most surprising aspects of writing microtonal music for me is re-discovering the possibilities and joys of writing in 12edo, which I do with the collaborative trio I contribute to called Family Plan (whose debut record came out almost exactly a year ago via Endectomorph Records).



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?

I had a similar experience when I wrote poco a poco, a piece for viola da gamba quartet written in 48edo, where I really focused on the interval of the eighth tone rather than in vertical harmonies.

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?

My interest in electronic music exists somewhat independently from my interest in microtonality — I enjoy doing hardware live patching with modular or semi-modular synthesizers, which I do with my duo Tronador.



I usually don’t use a pitch quantizer, so this environment usually results in microtonal music, but it’s a more fast-and-loose approach.

Some artists approach tuning systems from a strongly scientific angle. In case you're interested in this, what do you feel 'research' could potentially uncover and provide in terms of tuning systems? Where do you see the biggest potential for exploration at the moment?

I think the biggest potential lies in developing and deepening a practice of performing microtonal music.

I also have hopes for instrument builders and designers to continue to think about ways to create sound that are not tied to 12tet, such as Tolgahan Çoğulu’s adjustable microtonal guitar.