The microtonal power of therapeutic art
by Steve Xoh

IWhen I was a kid, I remember seeing an interview with Paul McCartney where he was sitting at a piano and said something like, “All the songs ever written, and that will ever be written, are hidden in these keys.” It blew my mind to think that such variety could emerge from just 88 black and white keys. I (mis)quoted McCartney many times over the years in various workshops and conversations, until I realised that what he said isn’t quite true. Or at least, it isn’t true once we look beyond a Western perspective of what music actually is.

Western music notation has its roots in ancient Greece, where letter names were first used to describe pitches. This approach was developed and formalised further in medieval Europe by the monk Guido of Arezzo around the year 1000 AD. The seven-note diatonic scale became widely adopted through monasteries, the church and early systems of musical education. Over time, Western instruments and tuning systems evolved around this framework, eventually settling into the twelve-note system we now take for granted, with the familiar A–G forming its backbone. These notes underpin the vast majority of music created and consumed in the West.

But other musical systems developed independently of this Western framework. Indian classical music uses the raga system, which is based on a far more nuanced understanding of pitch, often described as containing 22 microtonal divisions (known as shrutis) within an octave, an idea that predates Guido of Arezzo by well over a thousand years. Arabic maqam music uses notes that fall between standard Western pitches, and Indonesian gamelan and Chinese pentatonic scales adopt entirely different ways of organising sound. This helps explain why those of us conditioned to Western music often find other systems strange or unsettling. Our ears have been trained to expect a particular set of intervals, patterns of tension and release, and forms of musical resolution. When we encounter something different, it can feel recognisable enough to be music, but unfamiliar enough to feel slightly “wrong”. (Even though I am a fan of Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica album, this explains why it is also often painful to listen to)

But all of these systems, no matter how many notes they divide an octave into, are ultimately simplifications of something far more continuous. In reality, pitch is not made up of discrete notes at all, but of a continuous flow of frequencies with no fixed boundaries between them. The scales we use are simply grids that we overlay to help us understand, interpret and create music. But no matter how fine that grid becomes, there is always something happening in between. (I did a bit of digging and found that if you divided an octave into the smallest pitch differences most humans can detect, you’d end up with somewhere in the region of 120–240 distinguishable steps.)

This idea of musical scales as an over-simplification of something much more nuanced helped me understand why I find therapeutic art so powerful. Language works in a similar way to musical notation. It’s an incredibly useful system that allows us to communicate and express ourselves, but it is also a kind of grid, a simplification of something far more complex. In the same way that there are always frequencies between the notes in music, there is always meaning in the spaces between words. Non-verbal forms of creative expression, such as drawing, painting, movement or sculpting, can give us access to that meaning in a way that language alone cannot.

Even though I enjoy writing and have found ways to weave intricate and interesting stories, I have always struggled to find words that satisfactorily describe my inner experience. That’s not to say I don’t know what I feel, just that no words seem to match my experience with the precision I’d like. I often think of those children’s toys with differently shaped blocks and corresponding holes. It feels like I can sense the exact shape of the hole, but can’t find the right shaped words to fit it. The words lack the precision to fully match the feeling. They become an oversimplified grid laid over something far more nuanced, in much the same way that musical scales sit over an infinite range of tones.

I have found making to be a much more profound way of making sense of my internal world and processing difficult thoughts, feelings or experiences. Back in 2018, I experienced a mild form of PTSD after being a first responder at a road traffic accident. (I’ll spare the details here, but if you’d like to hear the full story, I talk about it with Johnnie Moore on his Unhurried Moments podcast.) Even though I was able to mentally process what had happened, my body remained in a state of hyper-vigilance for weeks afterwards. It was only when I made two drawings of images that seemed to be seared into my brain that my nervous system began to calm and re-regulate. Those drawings didn’t lead to any obvious insights or “aha” moments, but the act of creating them resolved something within me. That process of making seemed to find the precise shape to fit the precise hole.

This is just one of many examples where the power of analogue making has helped me process, resolve or integrate something where words lack the precision needed. In our “Playing at the Edge” workshop, gestalt psychotherapist Simon Cavvichia and I encourage participants to use paints, pens, clay and other creative practices to get to know their inner critics. By working in a non-verbal way, freed from the pressure of finding words to match something that may lie beyond language, people often discover new ways of relating to their super-ego, or at the very least, feel less constrained by it, even if they can’t quite put into words exactly why.

I find it sad and somewhat frustrating how society has been conditioned to perceive art, and this begins in school. I’ve long thought that art education should be split in a similar way to how English is divided into English Language and English Literature. “Art Technique” would teach students the skills needed to create technically accomplished work and potentially pursue art professionally. But “Artful Practice” would focus on the therapeutic power of creativity and on developing personal practices that support young people throughout their lives.

Artful Practice would teach children from an early age that the primary purpose of making is not simply to produce something impressive, but to explore, make sense of and help regulate our inner world. Sadly, my experience at school, and the experience of many others, was that art was treated as something only a talented few were capable of succeeding in and that, if you weren’t one of those people, it should be consigned to being a hobby indulged in only once the “important” work was done.