User:Hkm/Intro page: Difference between revisions

If you’ve recently heard about xenharmonic music (or “xen”, or “microtonal”, which means roughly the same thing) and want to learn more about it, this is the place to start. “Xenharmonic music” (or “xen music”) is music that sounds like it was tuned differently than most Western music. (Xenharmonic music is entirely separate from the 432Hz movement.)

Xenharmonic music usually sounds “off” to most listeners at first. This subsides eventually, and most people gradually find that xenharmonic music sounds more expressive and varied than music in 12edo.  

Here’s what you can find on this page—read the section that is most relevant to you.

Most xenharmonic works (especially on YouTube, where the most xenharmonic music is found) are usually marked with their tuning system in the title, which is usually n-edo (or n-tet or n-ed2, which mean roughly the same thing—that the octave is divided into n equal pieces).  

Here’s a list of xenharmonic music by genre: (TODO: include https://en.xen.wiki/w/Whynotnotmicrotonality)

Another classic. There are two versions; one (Blackwood’s original) is entirely synth-based; the other (the version edited by Matthew Sheeran) is produced through Melodyne on a small orchestra. Both are worth a listen.

Another classic by one of the most well-known just intonation composers.

Anything by Brendan Byrnes. (22 or 27edo)

Anything by Sevish (various systems)

Anything by Stephen Weigel

Xenharmonic music is more interesting to make than music in 12edo because there are significant amounts of unexplored territory. (No one’s written a metal song in 18edo, for example.) Some xenharmonic tunings are also easier to work with than 12edo (although most are more difficult).

You can play around with tunings in Scale Workshop before you use them. Larger tunings are more difficult to work with. You might have read that some tuning system is optimal in some way; such claims mean very little and usually come attached to tuning systems that are too unwieldy (>24 notes) to start with. If you want to work within these tuning systems anyway, you might want to work with a small subset of the notes available (which is what most xenharmonic composers do)

TODO: scale workshop links

10edo is probably the easiest edo to start with. Smaller edos can feel limiting, and larger edos can feel overwhelming.

14edo is similar to 10edo and a good choice if you found 10edo to be great-sounding but a little too small for your taste.

Ringer 14, which is a 14-note subset of just intonation (JI), where the frequency values of any two notes are in the ratio a:b where a and b are integers. Integer ratios (especially when a and b are small) tend to sound the most relaxed and consonant, but just intonation scales look very different depending which note you start on, which can be compositionally frustrating.

Zil-14, which is a “maximum variety 3” (or MV3) scale, which means that n steps upwards will always get you one of a set three inteervals.

Bicycle, a 12-note JI scale that can be mapped onto a piano.

Superpyth[17], an MV2 scale which will appeal to people who enjoy 22edo and 27edo.

Mavila[7], a small MV2 scale with an interesting mix of familiar and alien harmonies.

Barbados[9], another MV2 scale.

Physical instruments to use

Here are a few physical instruments that can play xen music, sorted by price. The two cheapest options are good enough for most purposes.

Number of keys