Jacob Barton's News Updates

Xenharmonic Music Bulletin* - March 2025:

Compiled by Jacob Barton

My View from Here 

Every day I am humbled by my smallness and relative irrelevance in the multiverse of microtonality. There are so many interesting things going on that I can't keep up, and this is truly a blessed problem to have. This is my view from here. -Jacob Barton

Beyond 2025

Music on the Edge in Pittsburgh, PA presented a 5-day festival of microtonal music last month. Did you go? Let's hear how it was for you. Peruse the program here View Website

Microtonal Instruments Competing for the Guthman Prize View Website

The Guthman Prize is a yearly cash prize for new musical instruments. I thought I would offer a brief description of the microtonal capabilities of the ten finalist instruments. My own Udderbot is microtonal in the glissando sense. Nic Bras's Hacked Double Trumpet is tuned to the overtone series of whatever lengths of tube you put in, so inherently xenharmonic even if the fundamentals 12-tuned. Mulatar boasts moveable bridges. Sophtar and 3-Axis MIDI Guitar look to be fretted in 12, but theoretically refrettable without much modification to their design. The Petika is an explicitly microtonal keyboard project, as is the ModμMIDI. Chromaplane, Living Strings, and Dinosaur Choir rely on advanced digital audio synthesis. So, all in all, the future looks pretty microtonal. Cool! 

The 9th International Microtonal Guitar Competition is underway, with entries due on May 27, 2025. Instruments are being offered as prizes. View Website

Tuning of the Moment

A Tuning of the Year club is forming on the Xenharmonic Alliance Discord server. Internal voting has determined 22-EDO as the chosen tuning, but a contingent will also be at work on 23-EDO, the chosen "weird" tuning. Tuning of the Year club is an opportunity to dive deep into one tuning, collaborate on the collection of resources supporting work in that tuning, support one another in meeting goals by juggling roles.

Meanwhile, two Tuning of the Month clubs soldier on: Discord has just wrapped up Valentine temperament (basically, the system generated by 2\31,) for February, and the candidates for March's tuning, which concluded on March 1, 2025 at 7:07 AM, included 15edo, 7-tone Persian, Penslen, Chair lattices, 39edt, Fendo, Miracle, Pajara, 28ed3, Sensi temperament, 35edo, 23edo, Straw, and the Union of all other nominations.  View

Meanwhile, the Facebook Group "XA - Monthly Tunings" is now voting neck-and-neck between an extension of this month's 55-EDO, or 56-EDO. Voting will stay open until March 4th 20:00 UTC+1 for the Facebook group. So, wherever you like to hang out, get in there, vote for your fave, and nerd out every month.

You may ask, where are the fruits of the labors of these Tuning of the Month clubs? Where can one go to listen to the music? You do have to search for it. Efforts have been made on the Xenharmonic Wiki to catalogue these month-long projects, yet some tracks are directly uploaded to Facebook videos, and to Discord. So don't be afraid to join, spelunk down the rabbit hole, there is actually an intricate network of caves down here and it is quite cozy.

Now and Xen Podcast Cont'd

The Now and Xen Podcast is a podcast about contemporary microtonal and xenharmonic music, launched by Sevish and led by Stephen Weigel. It is released sporadically (least until its subscriber base reaches a threshold of 60 patrons—join now!) and Stephen has just last week released two new episodes (83 & 84) featuring Richie Green and Subhraag Singh!    Listen

*Xenharmonic Bulletin was the name of Ivor Darreg's newsletter and the Xenharmonic Alliance was the term he used for his group of correspondents. This monthly column by Jacob Barton uses the term to honor and continue Ivor's effort to facilitate communication among Microtonalists and to announce events and resources.