2010 Split Notes Compilation Project
Split Notes is releasing a compilation album in 2010. This project is a collection of microtonal pieces by various artists. Submission is now closed because the deadline has passed. This page will remain online as a reference until the compilation has been released.
Style guidelines: The guideline for this compilation is music in contemporary, popular styles (in other words, microtonal with a beat). Split Notes is a world apart from avant garde, academic and art music, and hopes that more microtonal music can be made which appeals to general music lovers. We aim to be as inclusive of the tastes of contributors as possible as long as it falls within that guideline. That being said, you may find this example list of appropriate styles useful:
- Rock, blues, heavy metal, punk, etc.
- Jazz.
- Reggae, dub, dancehall.
- Hip hop, grime.
- Electronic dance music, chiptune.
It would be ideal for this compilation to contain many varied styles of music, so feel free to expand to genres outside of the above list as long as they count as a popular genre.
Composition guidelines: The duration of your work should be at a very minimum 1 minute long, and at maximum 7 minutes long. The work you submit must be microtonal. Examples of scales which meet this criteria are:
- Just intonation.
- Equal divisions of the octave (such as 5, 7, 13, 19, 22, 23, and the rest) or other intervals (such as Bohlen-Pierce, Wendy Carlos' Alpha, Beta and Gamma, nonoctave scales).
- Non-just non-equal scales (maths-based scales, empirical scales etc).
- Everything sufficiently interesting and untwelvelike, both familiar and xenharmonic sounds.
Please avoid:
- 12-tone equal temperament.
- Well-temperament and other twelvelike scales.
How the project will be compiled: When the submission deadline of 30/Apr/2010 has passed, all submissions will be reviewed and a selection of them will be put together by a small panel of judges and myself (Sean A).
The title of the compilation will be "Crack My Pitch Up" - thanks to Cameron Bobro for that one.
If a large amount of composers are interested and enough submissions are received by us, this project may split into two seperate releases. If there are few submissions received then up to two tracks per composer may be included in the compilation (so feel free to submit as many as you like). Hopefully we can be as inclusive as possible for everybody!
Distribution: This album will be made available online for download and streaming, for all to enjoy. It will be available from the Split Notes website, archive.org, last.fm and some other websites too, ensuring that a lot of people will hear the work. Making this an online digital release is the best way to distribute for a tiny, niche netlabel like us. Free streaming and download of the work is a risk-free activity for the curious new listeners and will be good news for microtonal fans also.
Licensing: The compilation will be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported license. It means your composition's copyright is protected, but listeners are free to play and share the work as long as it's unedited and not used commercially. By clicking the link you can read the legal code (and plain-English translation) of the license.
Submission
Deadline: 30/Apr/2010
Please upload a recording of your work in FLAC, WAV or high-quality mp3 format to a media hosting service, e.g. MediaFire. Then send an email to 
including the web address which links to your uploaded recording. Please use the word "compilation" in the email subject.
If you could include information about your composition such as the tuning used and your thoughts on it, or anything about yourself then please do so, because it will be a fascinating read for the listeners! Your comments will be included in the liner notes.
Although we would prefer new work, you may submit work that has previously been made publicly available. Also you may make as many submissions as you like.
Many thanks to all those who have contributed to the release. Questions about comments should be sent to . I'll happily reply to them asap.
Sean Archibald