This huge episode features three vastly different conversations, each with prominent members of a respective microtonal music discord. (1) Xenharmonic Alliance (ground, anomaly, xenoindex, Frédéric Gagné, HEHEHE I AM A SUPAHSTAR SAGA) Hyperspace Odyssey [21edo] - from Adxenture EP Serendipitous Arrival [26edo] - from Adxenture EP Liminal City Escal…

Xenharmonic black metal project Melopœia consists of Brian Leong, Jon Lervold, and Dave Tremblay. Their albums are inspired by J.R.R. Tolkein, and features his direct text both sung, and by mapping the letters of the text to different notes of 26-tone equal temperament. Their latest album utilizing this is “Valaquenta,” be sure to catch the latest …

Chat about contemporary music, composition, and just intonation with us in this theoretically adventurous and wide ranging episode. Christopher Otto, composer and violinist, works with the JACK quartet, a group that has played the music of such individuals as John Zorn, Tristan Perich, Cenk Ergün, Tyshawn Sorey, Catherine Lamb, Georg Frederich Haas…

Take a magical tour with us through some of Noah Dean Jordan’s microtonal instruments (including the requinto), including improvised performances! Be sure to check out the “Noah Dean Jordan” account on Bandcamp as well as the “Nueva Armonica” account! Intro: I Was Once a River (Rock Creek II) Outro: I Was Once a River (Te Quiero Verde) Check out No…

Today’s episode celebrates the culmination of a years-long project with Matthew Sheeran, widely celebrated composer, orchestrator, and arranger. The album we’ve been working on is called “Acoustic Microtonal,” and it is a recording of Easley Blackwood’s Twelve Microtonal Etudes using acoustic instruments, playing monophonic lines in isolation and t…

In this episode, we discuss composition and performance with composer Saad Haddad. One prominent topic - the challenges involved working with orchestras and large ensembles playing microtonal music, and logistics of the industry. We also discuss ideas of east vs. west, style infiltration, using minimal sets of pitches, and maqam. Music: Vortex Temp…

After this episode, be sure to check out the new Sevish album, “Big Sway!” Myself, Sevish, and benyamind have a classic microtonal chat about all things fun and intervallic, covering topics such as intuitive tunings, voice manipulation (vocoding, autotuning, etc.), perfectionism, going gridless, expectations, and communication and accessibility wit…

In this brief but informative chat with Brock Benzel, we explore uncharted territory, with a firm commitment to being true to the self, taking on challenges, putting the music first, and breaking rules just the right way. Enjoy the comfort of alien intervals that Brock brings using the Lumatone keyboard instrument (our big topic). Music [Intro] Par…

An episode about synth and drums among other tidbits. Topics include names, aliases, Sevish himself, reverberance, randomness, evil, disguising tuning, non-octave tuning, flaws, beauty, the joy of doing creative work yourself, AI, picking your genres, the microtonal community, and art. Be sure to check out Steve’s work as “Pentachrist” on Bandcamp,…

In this episode, Denny Genovese recalls his history of creating and studying microtonal music, and his experience creating and performing in the impressive Exotic Music Ensemble. Join us as we become inspired through the brown note, Ivor Darreg’s secret math codes, the origins of Fractal Tune Smithy, the Moody Blues, FM synthesis, JI scales, and nu…

Check out Danny Playamaqui’s electronic music, a hugely expansive discography using a staggering variety of techniques. Danny conducts by-ear-tuning editing, strategic de-tuning, varispeed tricks, and poly-systemic techniques in addition to starting out with xenharmonic tunings as templates. Luckily, 4 bars a day keeps the doctor away (or is it an …

Come join us for a pleasant studio chat with Bryan Deister, composer, multi-instrumentalist, and jazz pianist extraordinaire. Recently he has been exploring microtonal covers on the Lumatone, with massive success on TikTok. He has also written many albums featuring microtonal music in various tuning systems, generally equal divisions, the most rece…

Chris Bandy, a cappella maestro and creative polymath, joins us to discuss the microtonality of his spectacular arrangements on YouTube. He works in Logic Pro using FlexPitch. Most of his microtonal strategies involve tuning standard adjustments and drifts, or moving microtonal distances. His most xenharmonic sounding arrangement is likely “Where i…

Dave Keenan and Douglas Blumeyer have written an in-depth, specific guide about the mathematical principles of regular temperament theory that are groundbreaking in their consistency and explanatory power. We have them on to discuss how the exchanges evolved, de-mystify some theory concepts, and get spicy with terminology. Music [Intro] Dave Keenan…

Experimental bagpipe and bass legend Mat Muntz brings his Croatian folk music expertise to the table… a topic most would say he has matsered in depth. Check out his latest album “Phantom Island” on Bandcamp, which freely combines folk music and jazz idioms into a grand polysystemic masterpiece. A lot of our conversation revolves around the intrigui…

Check out this conversation with Aaron Myers-Brooks, Pittsburgh prog guitarist/composer extraordinaire. His latest album, “Oblique,” is a microtonal odyssey exploring various quirky polyrhythms, applications of 17-tone equal temperament, electronic sounds, and distortion flavors. We get an inside exclusive look at the scores to “Energy Shapes”, fig…

“One-Footed” is a piece written by Taylor Brook named after Harry Partch’s “The One-Footed Bride'' Just-Intonation diagram. We discuss the aforementioned piece with Taylor Brook and John Schneider, diving into the ins and outs of writing idiomatically for the Partch ensemble, using Partch as inspiration, notation, and extended techniques on these i…

Check out acreil’s music! Algorithmic albums appended with “a.” Keeper of obscure words in lists. Hardware enthusiast and certified synth geek. We have a delightful episode discussing how acreil works in Pure Data among other curiosities, such as how one navigates form to prevent boredom. Not only do we mess it up (or whatever), but we solve the pa…

Algorithmic August kicks off with Skueue, builder of the unnamed machine in Pure Data. This is an abstract, idea-filled episode packed to the brim with insights about the process. Our points of focus include a discussion of how writing affects software, uncommon disagreement about common practice, VST’s in PD, programming cadences, rootful resoluti…

Nicholas Denton Protsack’s music abounds with spectral delights of various kinds. Our talk today has a particular focus on notation, delving into the strategy behind its presentation. As we study tuning more and more, becoming less rigid with its implementation, it becomes helpful to focus on not just approximating some tunings with others, but als…

How on earth does one create a 1200-tone tone row? Or even a 372-tone row in Sibelius? Find out in this wacky episode featuring Aaron Breeze, the swingin’ licc master himself! The broader topics in this thrilling, conversational episode include silliness and perceived complexity, the connection between playing and speaking, red dress methodology, r…

In this colorful, rich episode, we take a look into the importance of visual and narrative elements in accompanying microtonal music and its ideas. Stephen James Taylor does this not only through writing music in film, but also through his own visual content, such as in “Surfing the Sonic Sky,” an important documentary about Erv Wilson. Among the t…

Anna-Maria Hefele, overtone singing sensation, has kindly graced us with her presence! Witness conversation about the tuning and construction of the intricate and aesthetically majestic Lambdoma project (built by Josef Baier). We also discuss how overtone singing intertwines with various musical ideas (production, style, classical technique, analyt…

A fascinating collaboration between Ben Spees, of The Mercury Tree, and Damon Waitkus, of Jack O’ the Clock. We take a look at the acoustic instruments used to create it (including non-Western ones), swap files, and talk about the challenges and inspirations behind the project. We also affirm quarter tones as part of the xenharmonic canon, nerd out…

“Visitors,” a lovely acoustic journey inspired by the visits of animals, is an album that leads to great conversation. Performed by Ben Hjertmann and Emmalee Hunnicutt, this masterpiece uses many different instruments which we discuss here. Fresh topics include: the act of rounding fretless tab, what a mentally ill Sufjan Stevens would sound like, …

We chat with Rami Olsen and Freddi Sturm, the brains behind “Hear Between the Lines,” about all things microtonal arranging/content! Topics touched upon include contrived wet food analogies, channel ideas, the story of Rami’s cool guitars, fooling the ear by drifting, comparing different tuning systems’ whole tone scales, piano pedal shredding, and…

Sevish and I chat about software, instruments, and philosophical questions. We are both excited to continually witness more and more people become interested in microtonality! Web-based browsers such as Scale Workshop, Xenpaper, and Leimma have made it even easier for people to play microtones without downloading synthesizers - all you need is an I…

Check out our latest conversation with the brilliant guitarist Tolgahan Çoğulu, inventor of the LEGO microtonal guitar and automatic microtonal guitar. We dive into how these guitars work, how they could be useful for playing microtones, the inspiration behind these incredible ideas, and the geometry of making frets tune accurately on a LEGO grid! …

Hey all! Since Now&Xen is on hiatus, I wanted to give you some content anyway, so here's the last episode we had on as a Patreon exclusive! I may be releasing select Patreon-exclusive episodes during hiatus sometimes. This wonderful conversation features Subhraag and I talking about Infinitone DMT, an extremely exciting software that acts as the fi…

We dissect makam scales with Dr. Eric Ederer, using his fantastic instruments and deep knowledge of theory & praxis. Makam music uses a lot of different parameters to identify itself to its listeners, such as direction (seyir) and where the melody starts. There is a lot of analysis work that can be done in this field, especially in describing histo…

We discuss the origin and style of the polystylistic jazz band Dsilton, as well as the 36-note keyboard that Georg Vogel often plays and the tuning setups. Be sure to look out for Dsilton’s first studio album out sometime in spring or summer 2021! They play a lot of music live that you can see on their YouTube channels. Music Intro: Iwan Baanas - D…

Join us for a conversation with Robin Meiksins, flute performer extraordinaire! She plays lots of new music, and as such is familiar with many contemporary techniques. We discuss favorite tuning systems to play in, ways to achieve microtones on the flute, and how notation can be viewed as “representative” of particular schools of thought. Music (al…

Composer Taylor Brook regularly works with Just Intonation, string players, and piano timbres. We discuss some of the notational and compositional challenges of working with Just Intonation, the JACK quartet, comma drift, secrets for hiding dissonance, and writing with microtones. Music Intro: Virtutes Occultae (16: Cloud Pastoral) - Taylor Brook D…

Composer-performer Erica dal Bassa is an innovator in electronic and vocal music. We explore varied experimental topics such as bytebeat, singing techniques, narratives, and microtonal effects. One way to explore possibilities of the voice in music is to use resonance to make one’s voice sound either masculine or feminine, which soprano sfogato use…

Composer Michael Harrison and I talk about his deep interests in Indian classical music (solfege, tuning, raga, and practice) as well as Just Intonation (septimal intervals). His latest piece, “Just Constellations,” is an a cappella piece sung/commissioned by the iconic Roomful of Teeth ensemble. Topics include improvisation, commatic intervals in …

A stimulating conversation about content creation, electronics, and microtonal controllers! Gustavo is the original creator of the XT Synth, and his channel has classes on how to make DIY human-computer interfaces. We discuss how we would create a microtonal fretless controller type that no one has ever seen before, and compare it to other interfac…

Vivian and I chat about microtonal tuning systems, building instruments, playing guitar, and metal! Her Bandcamp name is Victory Over the Sun. You should be extremely excited about her upcoming microtonal metal album in 17-tone equal temperament! We go over a few of the demos for this album, and play intervals back and forth on keyboards and guitar…

Join esteemed Canadian composer Paul Dolden and I for a delightful romp through xenharmonic music that sounds alive and exciting. We rewrite the music curriculum, win the candy, gab about psychoacoustics and instrumental technique, and discuss compositional philosophy and craftsmanship. As of right now, nobody is writing with microtonality like Pau…

Voice expert Amelia Huff and I talk about the harmonic series in an in-depth way! Memes, witchcraft, acoustics, production, human-voice aesthetics, and novendecimal scales are just some of the many topics we cover in this exciting conversation! In her music, Amelia uses the harmonic series in macro-harmonic systems whose notes’ frequency ratios sha…

Sintel is a biologist, visual artist, game creator, and multi-instrumentalist who uses a variety of tuning systems in his work. Our stimulating conversation covers topics such as music theory, software friction/workflow, improvisation/self-teaching, psychoacoustics, and the human genome. Sintel is creating several useful kinds of software for creat…

Hidekazu Wakabayashi is a multi-instrumentalist who puts his works on YouTube with lots of incredible visual content! We talk about traditional music, cover songs, brown notes, recycling, the legendary “Iceface tuning” from his dreams, and other instruments. Among those discussed include Tolgahan Çoğulu’s microtonal guitar frets, the fluid piano, n…

Sevish and Jacob Barton interview Stephen Weigel about his new absurdist postmodern EDM album, one that pushes the envelope with regards to how complexity is perceived and how tuning systems are defined and used. Topics include speaking vs. writing, xenrhythm, the Bandcamp scene, imaginary divisions of the octave, dog vs. cat people, workflow, expl…

We talk about the microtonal pop duo Syzygys and how they play with Harry Partch’s 43-tone Genesis scale. How do you make music sound interesting when your keyboard has less range than an ocarina? How do you tune a reed organ to 11-limit JI without a computer? Why did György Ligeti almost buy Syzygys’s microtonal keyboard? Find out in this episode!…

Joe Monzo and I talk about lots of tuning theory and memories of events past. Comparisons are made between 37edo (alas! The episode is only 1 away!) and 22edo, as he recently completed a wildly chromatic score of a 37edo piece called “The Kog Sisters.” Joe Monzo came up with many important concepts and has gathered a lot of historical and mathemati…

On this episode of Now&Xen, we talk with electronic guru Isaac Schankler about his relationship with microtonality as a composer, reasons to use just intonation or equal temperament, and creative ways to re-tune instruments during performance to mess with expectation. His piece “Alien Warp Etude,” performed by Aaron Kallay, creatively chunks out th…

With James Mulvale, we discuss what it’s like to be new to microtonality, working in a DAW and with instruments. We also talk about microtonality in pop music and in the media, creative ideas, and how recent music has been trending towards becoming more microtonal on a variety of levels. James has a new microtonal radio show - be sure to check it o…

In this episode, we talk about the instruments of the Shadow Theatre, Anaphoria, and the mysterious Clocks & Clouds. Soar through the sonic sky with us through adventures of storytelling, shadow puppets, standing waves, meta-slendro, metal, wood, sequences, and visual corporeality. Music Intro: To Search For a Trace - Clocks and Clouds US Highball …

We talk with multimedia composer Hunter Ewen about what it’s like to be alive in the 21st century. Microtonality has lots of potential to be used as a temporal flag, to highlight a sense of off-ness, and to expand the sonic world which we inhabit. We also answer questions such as: how does the presentation of music, and/or extra-musical factors, af…

Join us for an exciting episode with the founder of UnTwelve, Aaron Krister Johnson! We talk about why Facebook sucks, early music, methods of music composition, and computers/artificial intelligence. We also figure out Aaron’s secret identity in ambient music… Join the UnTwelve tuning list for great conversations about microtonality away from Face…

Microtonal choral music is exciting and intense! Robert Lopez-Hanshaw premiered a piece in 72-tone equal temperament featuring the Tucson Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, “vokas animo,” which we talk about here! We explore techniques to train the average choir in singing microtones, out of contexts that use guide-tracks or expert performers. Discover…