Xenharmonic music is music that uses a tuning system that is unlike the

12-tone equal temperament 12 equal temperament (12-ET) is the musical system that divides the octave into 12 parts, all of which are Equal temperament, equally tempered (equally spaced) on a logarithmic scale, with a ratio equal to the Twelfth root of two, 12th root of 2 ...

scale. It was named by Ivor Darreg, from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

'' xenos'' (

ξένος) meaning both ''foreign'' and ''hospitable''. He stated that it was "intended to include

just intonation In music, just intonation or pure intonation is a musical tuning, tuning system in which the space between notes' frequency, frequencies (called interval (music), intervals) is a natural number, whole number ratio, ratio. Intervals spaced in thi ...

and such temperaments as the 5-, 7-, and 11-tone, along with the higher-numbered really-

microtonal Microtonality is the use in music of microtones — intervals smaller than a semitone, also called "microintervals". It may also be extended to include any music using intervals not found in the customary Western tuning of twelve equal interv ...

systems as far as one wishes to go." John Chalmers, author of ''Divisions of the Tetrachord'', wrote, "The converse of this definition is that music which can be performed in 12-tone equal temperament without significant loss of its identity is not truly ''microtonal''." Thus xenharmonic music may be distinguished from twelve-tone equal temperament, as well as use of intonation and equal temperaments, by the use of unfamiliar intervals, harmonies, and

timbre In music, timbre (), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound of a musical note, sound or tone. Timbre distinguishes sounds according to their source, such as choir voices and musical instrument ...

s. Theorists other than Chalmers consider xenharmonic and non-xenharmonic to be subjective. Edward Foote, in his program notes for ''6 degrees of tonality'', refers to the differences in his response to the tunings he uses, such as Kirnberger and DeMorgan, from "shocking," to "too subtle to immediately notice," saying that " mperaments are new territory for 20th-century ears. The first-time listener may find it shocking to hear the harmony change 'color' during modulations or too subtle to immediately notice."

Diatonic xenharmonic music

Music also can share much of the familiar territory of twelve-tone music yet also contain xenharmonic features. For example, Easley Blackwood, author of ''The Structure of Recognizable Diatonic Tunings'' (1985), wrote many etudes in equal temperament systems ranging from 12 to 24 tones. These etudes bring out connections and resemblances to twelve-tone music as well as various xenharmonic characteristics, reflected in '' Twelve Microtonal Etudes for Electronic Music Media''. About his 16-tone etude, Blackwood wrote: Darreg explains: "I devised the term 'xenharmonic' to refer to everything that does not sound like 12-tone equal temperament."

Tunings, instruments, and composers

Music using scales or tuning other than 12-tone equal temperament can be classified as xenharmonic music. This includes other equal divisions of the octave and scales based on extended just intonation. Tunings derived from the partials or overtones of physical objects with an inharmonic spectrum or

overtone series The harmonic series (also overtone series) is the sequence of harmonics, musical tones, or pure tones whose frequency is an integer multiple of a ''fundamental frequency''. Pitched musical instruments are often based on an acoustic resonator s ...

such as rods, prongs, plates, discs, spheroids and rocks occasionally are the basis of xenharmonic exploration. William Colvig, who worked with the composer

Lou Harrison Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 – February 2, 2003) was an American composer, music critic, music theorist, painter, and creator of unique musical instruments. Harrison initially wrote in a dissonant, ultramodernist style similar to his for ...

created the ''tubulong'', a set of xenharmonic tubes.

Electronic music Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music ...

composed with arbitrarily chosen xenharmonic scales was explored on the album ''Radionics Radio: An Album of Musical Radionic Thought Frequencies'' (2016) by British composer Daniel Wilson, who composed with frequency-runs submitted by users of a

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is created with web technologies and runs via a web browser. Web applications emerged during the late 1990s and allowed for the server to dynamically build a response to the request, ...

that replicated radionics-based electronic soundmaking equipment used by Oxford's De La Warr Laboratories in the late 1940s. Elaine Walker (composer) is an electronic musician who writes xenharmonic music by building new types of music keyboards. The Non-Pythagorean scale utilized by

Robert Schneider Robert Peter Schneider (born March 9, 1971) is an American musician and mathematician. He is the lead singer, songwriter, guitarist and producer of rock/pop band the Apples in Stereo and has produced and performed on albums by Neutral Milk ...

The Apples in Stereo The Apples in Stereo are an American indie rock band associated with The Elephant 6 Recording Company, Elephant 6 Collective. The band is largely the project of lead vocalist/guitarist/producer Robert Schneider, who writes the majority of the ba ...

, based on a sequence of

logarithms In mathematics, the logarithm of a number is the exponent by which another fixed value, the base, must be raised to produce that number. For example, the logarithm of to base is , because is to the rd power: . More generally, if , the ...

, may be considered xenharmonic, as well as Annie Gosfield's purposefully "out of tune" sampler-based music using non systematic tunings and the work of other composers including Elodie Lauten,

Wendy Carlos Wendy Carlos (born Walter Carlos; November 14, 1939) is an American musician and composer known for electronic music and film scores. Born and raised in Rhode Island, Carlos studied physics and music at Brown University before moving to New Y ...

, Ivor Darreg, and Paul Erlich.

References

External links

Microtonality - Web

Homepage for William SetharesThe Xenharmonic Wiki
formerly at Wikispaces
Xenharmonic Alliance
* Barbieri, Patrizio

(2008) Latina, Il Levante Libreria Editrice
Blackwood Microtonal Compositions Easley Blackwood & Jeffrey Kust, on iTunes
Includes ''Fanfare in 19-EDO''. Also includes the ''16 notes Andantino'' as the first of the twelve etudes in that collection.
microtonal piano work of Noah Jordan
{{Microtonal music Microtonality

Diatonic xenharmonic music

Tunings, instruments, and composers

See also

References

Further reading

External links