Johannes Werpup
Johannes Werpup ("John"), aka Xen-Gedankenwelt, is a xenharmonic theorist, composer and musician. He was born in 1982 near Cologne/Bonn in Germany.
Xenharmonic Instruments
- John owns a 31edo 8-string baritone electric guitar, which is based on an Ibanez RGA8, and has been refretted by luthier Nick Page.
- He intends to work more with the DAW Reaper, due to its microtonal capabilities and script support.
- He's also planning to use Vocaloid/IA to add pitch-perfect vocals to his songs.
Xenharmonic Interests
John is mainly interested in 31edo, and is familiar with many of the supported linear and planar temperaments. He spent a lot of time studying the support-relations between those temperaments, and uses bridge temperaments as a means to transition between scales of different temperaments in his approach to xenharmonic composition (e.g. orwell <-> zeus <-> valentine).
He uses mostly 7-limit intervals, which provide rich harmonic options. And there are easily accessible intervals like 35/32 (neutral second), 48/35 (superforth) or 105/64 (neutral sixth), that "mimic" 11- or 13-limit intervals, and provide interesting melodic options to spice things up. :)
Besides 31edo, he is also interested in other edos. For example:
- 94edo: A tuning that is consistent in the 23-limit, and is good to study higher prime limits.
- 22edo: A good all-round 11-limit tuning for its size, with many interesting supported temperaments.
- 11edo: Sounds very interesting in an "Oriental" but weird way - subset of 22edo.
- 15edo: Can be seen as an equal-tempering of Valentine[15] - not as accurate, but very easy to use. And it's probably fun to use a guitar tuning where there's a 5edo perfect fourth between subsequent strings. :)
Notation
John uses 12-note notations to modify existing guitar tabs in 12edo. The 12edo steps are reinterpreted as steps of an uneven 12-note MOS, and chroma accidentals are added to modify the scale.
He uses the same approach in Vocaloid, where he wrote a Job Plugin (script) to change all base notes to a maximally even 12-note scale for the selected edo. Accidentals can be embedded in the "song lyrics" to modify notes.
For 94edo, he proposes a notation based on Garibaldi[12] when working with tabulature for fretless instruments, since it allows to easily and relatively accurately notate 13-limit intervals. This notation can also be used in DAWs etc., to modify notes in a piano roll representation, by using scripts.
John plans to design an advanced notation that can be used for linear and planar temperaments in 31edo, using nominals that correspond to different MOS or planar MV3/4 scales.
Community Involvement
John has been active in the Yahoo tuning groups, and in Ron Sword's Microtonal Guitarist forum, which have been shut down.
He was also an active editor of the old Xenharmonic Wiki, and somewhat active in the Sagittal forum.
John never joined any of the facebook groups, because he doesn't want to support this social media platform.
He is occasionally active on the XA discord server.
John has coined the names for the following temperaments: Cuckoo, Oracle, and Necromanteion.
Inspiration
John has been inspired by German music theorist Martin Vogel, and his view on 7-limit JI, on harmonic dualism, and his concept of consonance vectors. He also learned from his books that 7/4 can be approximated by an augmented sixth 225/128 (-> marvel temperament).
Another huge inspiration was the regular mapping paradigm.
And thanks to musicians like Deja Igliashon, Ron Sword and Fabrizio Fiale and their approaches to 15- or 16edo, he learned to appreciate neutral seconds, zeus temperament(s), and small edos.
Music Genres
John is mostly interested in metal/rock, in electronic, video game / chiptune music, and in classical or non-Western music.
User Name (Xen-Gedankenwelt)
- "Xen" means strange, alien etc. John chose this prefix because he has some unusual interests, and likes to question certain established cultural norms. Of course it is also an abbreviation for "xenharmonic". ;)
- "Gedankenwelt" is a German word, and can be literally translated as "world of thought", or "world of the mind".
Put together, it is supposed to describe the (beautiful :) mind of an individual who has unusual interests (like xenharmonic music), and thinks for themselves.
Other Interests
Besides Xenharmonic music, John is interested in non-Euclidean (particularly hyperbolic) geometry, programming, the Japanese language and culture, vegan cooking, and board / video games.