User:Unque
I am Uncreative Name, or Unque! I'm a music theorist, composer, performer, mathematician, worldbuilder, and linguist. Members of the community may know me as a vocal 15edo advocate, an exotempering troll, a spewer of recreational mathematics, or even the author of a tier list which was used in a Tumblr post teasing the xen wiki.
I learned of the Arabic Maqamat several years ago when I was studying non-Western music traditions, and I was especially intrigued by the presence of the neutral intervals in Jins Rast and other scales. This kickstarted a weird rabbit hole where I learned about the harmonic series, Just Intonation, and various Equal Divisions of the [your name here].
My favorite xen EDOs are 15, 17, 22, and 29; I also like experimenting with nonoctave tunings (24edt is a favorite of mine), and I use pure JI from time to time. My favorite abstract temperaments include Porcupine, Sohajira, Archy, Mavila, Squares, Orwell, Sensi, and anything with semifourths.
Music
Here are some of the pieces I've written:
- Spring (26-EDO): https://youtu.be/OjW8dgooG9Q_
- Isles of Despair (15-EDO): https://youtu.be/T49aXRutQxE
- Summer (17-EDO): https://youtu.be/UthDbDI31IY
- Nachtlandian Somersault (19-EDO): https://youtu.be/XZ3zB3EDKOM
- Bonetrousle Remix (22-EDO): https://youtu.be/wgyie6m7f5g
- Random Encounter Type Beat (2.3.7 JI): https://youtu.be/0OkCl2yfgBo
- Methane Lamentation (31-EDO): https://youtu.be/CBmYRoej2yQ
- Autumn (27-EDO): https://youtu.be/dcQe6ebpGFU
- Winter (37-EDO): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE9L56yZ1Kw
Main Space Contributions
Here are some of the contributions I've made to the wiki main space:
- The Octaphore comma and its related temperaments (I am sadly responsible for that name too)
- Tempering out the Octaphore provides a highly accurate temperament that cleaves 4/3 into eight equal parts.
- The 131072/130321 comma
- Tempering out this comma provides an interpretation of 4-EDO, much more accurate than Diminished.
- The Tesseract comma and its related temperaments
- Tempering out this comma provides cleaves 4/3 into four equal parts; it's not quite as accurate as the Octaphore, but it's supported by more ET sequences at lower complexity, and quite frankly has a much better name.
User Space Contributions
Here are some other contributions I've made to theory on my personal user space:
- A convention for describing 15-EDO Chords
- Dhembrwood Temperament
- Redeye Scale
- A study on Imaginary Harmonics
- Chord Interlace Scales
- A naming convention for MV3 ternary scales (which is currently undergoing serious reconstruction)
- A system of nineteen functions to describe xenmelody
- A study on tuning theory as applied to Barbershop music
- The Dietic Minor scale
I confine many of my pages to my user space to contain idiosyncrasies, jokes, niche topics, subpar writing quality, and other stuff that I don't believe deserves to be put on the main wiki space. Some of these pages may be moved over to main space pages if they are deemed to be well-written pages about legitimately applicable ideas, but for now they remain here.
Composition Theory
When I was first getting into xenharmony, I was surprised to find that there was very little in-depth composition theory regarding specific tuning systems in the way that modern Western music has intricate descriptions of just about anything that can be done with 12-EDO.
So, over the next several months, I will be spending some time detailing my experience with some of my personal favorite tuning systems, and laying out a framework for a distinct composition theory in each of those systems.
For EDOs:
For scales:
- 5L 3s (Under construction)
Worldbuilding Projects
I've also used my user space as a place to document the music theory associated with several of my worldbuilding projects:
- The "Gense" traditions, which use 17-EDO pentachords
- The "Plagal" traditions, which use 22-EDO MOS scales
Just like the theory pages, these worldbuilding pages are not intended to enter the main wiki space, for obvious reasons.