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If aliens exist, they will love quarter tone music. =D

Why couldn't we just link to this dead thread in the OP of a new thread? Anyways, we've had discussions about tonal center and atonality before on YC. They generally don't end well (meaning they more or less reduce down to arguments over semantics and mud-throwing contests). But since we're on the topic anyway, I'll throw it out there. In the traditional sense, tonal centers are generally identified by a harmonic relationship between the Dominant 7th Chord (specifically the tritone interval that forms between the third and seventh of the V7) and its tonic. The tritone collapses (sometimes expands, depending on the voicing), the third resolves up a half step to the tonic pitch while the seventh resolves down to either the major or minor third above the tonic, implying the mode. Tonal centers are perceived as more convincing in cadential figures, and traditional form relies on tonal centers for finality and, more importantly, delaying resolution to the tonal center. When we speak of tonal center, we're speaking in a context of traditional, common practice music. Expanding this concept to other methods/styles has the tendency to skew the purpose of even calling some kind of central pitch or sonority a "tonal center." So it's important to be specific with the context we use for this terminology. As for atonality, this is really an awful word that misconstrues most 20th Century music after Romanticism. Schoenberg criticizes the use of this word to describe music that doesn't adhere to structured, prescriptive hierarchies of sonorities leading to one "central" sonority - this music still uses tones, central ideas are still applicable even if the music doesn't prescribe to traditional norms of the traditional tonal hierarchy. What I find even more ironic is the idea that in listening to music, our minds attempt to order what we hear in various levels of "expected" values. This might be a rhythm or pitch, anything the mind holds on to in the listening experience. So, whether there is a tonal center or not, our minds may end up perceiving it without the composer ever intending it. Atonality doesn't actually eliminate this idea of "centrality" at all. It merely avoids or disregards traditional structures and prescriptions applicable to pitch and sonority. More notably, you can still find tertian structures in Atonal music, even implications of tonality and the establishment of keys, but to call these events "tonal centers" without considering the absence of a context supporting it is a mistake. So, let's be clear that Atonal music doesn't necessarily define itself as a "lack of tonal center" in a general sense. Very specifically, "atonality" is a style of music that reduces all elements of music (pitch, rhythm, dynamics, etc.) to granular elements of equal importance - at least this is as far as we've gotten up to Milton Babbitt and the evolution of atonal processes into Serialism. Even within the very broadest context of "atonality", which is comprised of hundreds (maybe even thousands) of different styles, you're still going to find events in this style that might centralize a pitch or pattern through repetition, or by constructing a relationship between at least two different sonorities that evokes a "tonal center." But this is not a tonal center. If anything, we might call it "centrality." With all this said, we're all bound to wind up arguing over whether we can apply "tonal center" to anything outside the common practice or that we can define atonality in the way I describe above. These are all just words until you apply meaning to them. It's better not to pin our understandings to words and instead understand the meanings behind them.