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The Manifesto

Welcome to the Xenharmonic Reference (XR), a place for documentation and sharing of xenharmonic music and theory, dedicated to the development of xenharmonic practice. As a result of being focused on compositional theory, it aims to be accessible to the interested beginner while also containing niche theories that may become a new established compositional approach.

Xenharmony is the practice of tuning intervals significantly different from 12-tone equal temperament to create unusual sounds; not just out-of-tune, but arranged with care for various purposes. This could be to create new chords and melodies, have intervals with unique functions, improve existing approximations of frequency ratios, or approximate new ones.

This wiki views tuning as a means to an end. Xenharmonic theory should be just as much about finding the perfect set of notes as it is about how to easily use those notes in an artistically interesting way. In tuning systems with a sufficiently large number of notes, the most important distinction between them is how their strengths and underlying structures guide composition, not minor sonic differences that tend to get lost in a composition.

There are many different metrics that can be used to assess whether a tuning system or musical approach is "good." These may be objective or subjective, but choosing which metric to use is always subjective and depends heavily on bias. So are we just out of tune, or are we in tune with something else that may be an acquired taste? If it works for one person, it's good for something. This is the spirit of our xen philosophy.

The Xenharmonic Reference is maintained by users of the XenGrove Discord server.

For those starting with xenharmony: Category:Core knowledge

For those starting with editing: Xenharmonic Reference:Guidelines