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My favourite aspect of long-form improvised musical works is hearing how different performances compare; what forms remain the same between performances and which are open to in-the-moment reinterpretation.
When I worked on my own long-form improvised work Murmurations (for monophonic analog synthesiser over a drone) I played a few practice takes, two of which are now available as bonus tracks for you to enjoy!
If you have already bought Murmurations over on Bandcamp then return to the album page to check out the new bonus material. If you don’t have it yet, it’s chill and it’s £2!
A long-form melodic improvisation over a drone.
Murmurations is a deep exploration of the 2)5 1-3-5-7-9 dekany where each section uses a different 6-note (hexany) subset.
Performed on a Korg Monologue.
The Catalogue of Xenharmonic Releases aims to be a comprehensive, neutral archive of xenharmonic releases, free from editorial gatekeeping. It is a living work in progress. Submissions are welcome.
Browse through and discover some music! If you wish to sort the database by artist, date, category etc., first go to Data > Create Filter View, and this will enable the filter icon for each column header.
Having spent tens of hours building this foundation (currently tracking over 500 releases), I’m opening the catalogue for community collaboration:
Haven’t posted other people’s music on here for a long while! Check out and support some of these microtonal/xenharmonic releases, recommended for listeners of Sevish:
New Brendan Byrnes record
Atmospheric jungle
Alternative electronic music in various tunings
This one has been doing the rounds this week. They seem to be using a 24edo guitar.
Acid disco
Life’s getting busier (in a good way), and holding everything back for one big album isn’t going to work anymore. I’ve always loved the challenge of making monolithic projects, which I’ve done year after year, but now I’m going to release singles.
Actually hyped to return to a time when I used to upload tracks one by one as soon as they were fresh!
This all came about after I released One With the Fractal in January and I asked myself: do I really need to make album number 14? Is it going to be the one? Probably nah.
So please come and listen to my new single Reckoner! Xenharmonic electro (8edo)
Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple
I’ve been developing my virtablism – turntablism but entirely done virtually with samplers in the DAW. You’ll hear that on Reckoner, but I’m still improving my tech quickly so I’m hoping next time you hear my scratching it will be better.
Beatmonger is the drum machine VST I made using Plugdata/Heavy. It’s an 808 soundalike with some changes and I also gave it a quijada sound like the one from the MiniPops. The VST exposes all kinds of parameters to tweak the sound of each drum in a way you can’t do with sampled drum sounds. Each drum sits on its own audio output so I can easily apply different processing to each sound in the DAW. Why did I spend every evening one week in December 2024 to make this drum machine VST? Because I wanted something I could reuse again and again, in the spirit of oldskool drum machines, but with my own sonic stamp on it. Beatmonger is not publicly available but there are plenty resources online to DIY your own stuff in Plugdata!
Make some music, it will keep you out of trouble!
This is my first ever finished track with the 8edo tuning. I always found it really tough to make it work. The trick here was not to think harmonically, but pure melody and rhythm.
You’ll also hear that I’m using timbres that feature overtones that are aligned to 8edo. This is one way to smooth over the sound when you’re using a tuning that doesn’t align well with the harmonic series. I actually produced loads of these timbres as loopable wav files that I could easily load into a sampler, for various different edos. Each wav is a pseudo-harmonic series but the partials are aligned to an edo. But 0 of you may ask, how did you make them loopable, as edos are inharmonic and thus the sum of overtones would be aperiodic? I actually approximated those inharmonic overtones using harmonics of a very low fundamental frequency that is tied to the duration of the wav file. In this way, I’m using harmonics that approximate inharmonics that approximate harmonics. It works ok enough. Again, Plugdata was used here, mainly to automate the setup and recording of these loopable wav files for each edo. I spent an evening going from idea to complete sample pack. I’m willing to make these public, but I don’t know if anybody really wants to mess with them. They’re slightly unpleasant with a “bell organ” kinda quality, so you actually need to incorporate them into a sound design – they’re not good standalone sounds.
Crucial tech used on Reckoner: TAL Sampler, TAL Bassline-101, Dexed, Airwindows ToTape6, TAL Dub-X, Beatmonger v2, Linux, Bitwig Studio etc.
Thank you massively for the continued support!
My new album Morphable will be available on 5th August 2022. Nine new electronic microtonal beats from the harmony hacker.
If you want to hear one of the tracks today then you can! Yeah Groove can be played on youtube:
I started a small project where I take existing Sevish tracks and adapt them to different musical tuning systems. It is called Re-Tuned and is available from my Bandcamp page to stream or as a free download. In this project, you’ll hear many tracks with altered tunings. Many of these are originally written as microtonal pieces that are re-tuned to standard 12 equal!
Why have I done this‽ The project originally started out as trolling youtube videos which rendered familiar microtonal tunes in 12edo. It turned out to be an effective demonstration that 12edo is just another tuning with its own character, and that this kind of retuning subtly or dramatically altered the feeling of the music. I then started to produce microtonal retunings, for example Desert Island Rain (originally in 313edo) is rendered in 24edo, 19edo, 14edo and 9edo.
My musical philosophy is that music is a fun craft to be involved with and I’m glad it exists. When expressing yourself through music there are various tools in the toolbox – for example dynamics, timbre, tempo, tuning – though tuning is often forgotten about. I hope Re-Tuned makes the case that deliberate use of tuning is one more powerfully expressive and aesthetic parameter that musicians can use to hone their craft further.
Cover artwork by Juha Penttinen.
A new original Sevish album is coming out next month…
Eight mostly loop-based compositions for a Yamaha DX7ii FD synthesizer that was re-tuned to a microtonal scale. Released February 5, 2021.
Marcus Satellite’s new album uses tunings based on Erv Wilson’s work.
Terra Octava is a collaboration album from the collective at STAFFcirc.
Sounds of digital fusion, chiptune, jazz and electronic music in a variety of equal tempered tunings.
Featuring Cryptovolans, Reuben Gingrich, Jaq, Chimeratio, petet, manfish, STC_1001, STC_1002, STC_1003, STC_1004, Vince Kaichan, Hunter Van Brocklin, Tancla, Emelia K., Abd al-Mahdi, Themnotyou, Sintel, 0x70457465, limeboiler, clown core, b-knox, amimifafa, ordinate and Sevish.
The microtonal tunings include 34edo, 22edo, 19edo, 16edo, 10edo and others – but also the tiny ones like 6edo, 4edo, 3edo, 2edo, 1edo, 0edo!
My track Fuschiamarine in 7edo is on there.
I’m actually blown away by what everybody was able to achieve here. They’re all deep into their musical craft – and some of them are pros at tuning already – some are trying microtones for the first time. Hope you’ll enjoy the listen!
Here is some new microtonal music I heard recently.