free resource — hungry listening guide

Buried
Possibilities

A listening guide for producers who want to hear music beyond Western defaults — and the tools to start doing it today.

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what's inside
0115-track playlist — Iran, Morocco, Ethiopia, Pakistan & beyond
02Tuning primer — Maqam, Raga, Gamelan, Just Intonation
033 critical frameworks — locus of enunciation, racial frame, decolonization as process
04Free browser tools — Leimma & Apotome
05Reading list — Mignolo, Fanon, Partch, Wendy Carlos
3 key concepts inside the guide
concept 01
The Modern Locus of Enunciation
How musical knowledge becomes authoritative — and who gets to define tuning, innovation, and legitimacy.
concept 02
The White Racial Frame & Musical Legitimacy
How recognition, value, and seriousness are unevenly distributed across musical cultures.
concept 03
Decolonization Is Not a Product
How defaults — MIDI grids, tuning systems, genre categories — shape what becomes audible and thinkable.
tool 01 — interactive
set your own reference pitch
The ratios are physics. The anchor is a choice.

A=440 Hz became the global standard only after an international conference in 1939 — a political decision, not an acoustic inevitability. Musical traditions across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East have always operated with their own reference points. Change yours.

432Hz
hear intervals above your reference
tool 02 — interval library
ten intervals from outside equal temperament
Each one has a name, a home, and a reason for existing.

None of them are wrong. They are someone else's music.

1 / 10
Arabic & Turkish music
Quarter Tone
The smallest named interval in Arabic and Turkish theory. Between the semitones of equal temperament. The foundation of much Middle Eastern melodic colour.
50 cents · ratio ≈ 1.029
tool 03 — perception test
drone drift
Press when something feels unstable.

A drone begins. At some point it slowly drifts in pitch. Press the button the moment something feels unstable. Equal temperament already compromises every interval by up to 16 cents — if your threshold is above that, those compromises were invisible to you.

Round 1 of 5
your detection threshold
—
tool 04 — perception test
in tune?
Does it sound in tune or out of tune?

Listen to each interval and decide. Then see where it comes from.

Interval 1 of 10
what you heard
The intervals you called "out of tune" are the ones systematically excluded from the Western canon. They are not mistakes. They are someone else's music.
buried possibilities — free download

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