A little duet for my Xenharmonic instruments: My Axis-49 and an Irish Whistle I built and tuned to Superpyth temperament in 22edo. Superpyth temperament is like meantone but in the other direction - the fifths are wider such that tones 9:8 and 8:7 are equated, (instead of meantone's equating of 9:8 and 10:9), and two of these 'eventones' make a septimal supermajor third of 9:7, (rather than meantone's major third of 5:4). The diatonic semitones, at 55cents are much smaller than normal. 22 equal divisions of the octave supports this temperament very well. In the A section I use the 7 note superpyth diatonic and 12 note superpyth chromatic scales, retunings of the scales we know and love, and in the B section I use 22edo as an ultra-chromatic scale. The form is ABAB. The recording is a bit rough, the piece is to demonstrate the tuning, the temperament and the instruments. I hope it confuses you a little but not too much :)

Duet for Axis-49 and Superpyth Irish Whistle in 22edo.

Clarinet, sax, and keyboard player; singer, composer, and theorist.

Yes I made the fractal images too. Welcome to my wonderful assortment of strange sounds. Follow me to watch me slowly but surely progress to something that could possibly be called "music"

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.

xenharmonic bass music

Sevish (aka Sean Archibald) is an electronic musician from London, UK. His music is fast and atmospheric. The style mainly gravitates around drum & bass and other electronic dance music varieties, although even ambient and chilled works have been released under this moniker. Sevish sidesteps pop structures and familiar "EDM" tropes, instead trying to capture the essence of something flowing and meandering. It's the perfect music for blocking mind-altering radiation.

Since his album Golden Hour, Sevish's technique has included a dark art known as microtonality/xenharmonics. For short, we can call this xen. Simply put, the xen aesthetic tries to achieve new musical ideas by making things more or less in-tune than normal music. For something that is so easy to describe, you would think that every musician was doing it. Sadly, the technicalities of (ab)using musical tunings to create xen music are too much for most musicians to muster at this point in time. Perhaps 3D printing will change that in the future, allowing new instruments with crazy tunings to be developed quickly and cheaply. Until then, it's the domain of a few tinkerers and madmen scattered across the globe. One of those being Sevish, who blends xen with his own brand of experimental dance music.

The xen movement is still small but growing rapidly. It has a lively facebook group, its own wiki (deeply incomprehensible to all but the initiated), and about as many dedicated record labels as you could count on one hand.

In 2010, Sevish launched his own netlabel to get together the scattered artists composing xen music. Called split-notes, this label is known for its focus on xen-with-a-beat, and most of its releases are free to download with Creative Commons licensing. While the output of the label has slowed down due to other commitments, it's still alive with new releases showing up from time to time.

Sevish's music has been put out by the Dutch label Dubbhism Deluxe. In 2011, Sevish, Tony Dubshot and Jacky Ligon released an album called Subversio to online music shops and popular streaming services. This project lies somewhere between being a band album and being a compilation, as each of the 3 artists provided 3 solo tracks each. So it's more of a musical triptych than either of those things. Certainly a form of collaborative album that can (and will) be explored further. Each of the musicians on Subversio combine xen with beats and bass, but their individual styles contrast and compliment. Tony Dubshot excels at trippy electro dub with lots of analog processing. Jacky Ligon's style is often described as oceanic or panoramic, with fluid and rotating beats and deeply moving atmospheres and melodies. And Sevish's style... well, you already know by now.

In 2014 Sevish, Tony Dubshot and Jacky Ligon followed with 23, something of a mini-album in the same stylistic ballpark as 2011's Subversio. Numerology, conspiracy and ancient knowledge is something that the trio is attracted to, and 23 is inspired from that.

Duet for Axis-49 and Superpyth Irish Whistle in 22edo.

Lillian Hearne