Genoël von Lilienstern Could you talk a bit about your own path as a composer and how you discovered microtonality and equal temperaments?
Stephen Weigel Well, I still consider myself a composer, but lately I haven’t been very active. I’ll definitely get back to composing more soon! I think I’ve got about seven great albums in my head that don’t exist yet — or at least I hope so!
My attitude as a composer has fundamentally changed over the past six years. Over time, it’s become more satisfying for me to create everything myself. As you know, quantizing pitches can be quite tricky if you use the wrong equal temperament. Something like a 16-tone, 19-tone, 24-tone, or even a 22-tone equal temperament isn’t too challenging for most people, but I wouldn’t ask anyone to process 37-EDO unless I were absolutely sure of their ability and determination.
One of the most fulfilling experiences I’ve ever had was creating the Smiley Album — or whatever you want to call it. It goes by many names: Top Secret, Emoji Album. The title is simply a list of emojis, the first one being the headphone emoji. It’s a bit of a sacrilege, but I don’t know the emoji order by heart. I never memorized them.
GvL Can you explain how this growing interest in xenharmonics and equal temperaments came about — something that, in my view, really emerged in the mid-2010s? Was there a specific trigger, perhaps something that inspired an EDM musician like Sevish to work with EDOs?
SW Well, I know that Sevish was inspired by Randy Winchester’s music — and also by gamelan. As for the newer scene, there’s actually a fairly long tradition of microtonalists online who’ve shared their ideas in order to develop EDO theory mathematically. In the early, somewhat rough days of the internet, it was more of a Gen X thing. There was the Mills College tuning list and later the Yahoo tuning lists, where people communicated the way we did on Facebook ten or fifteen years ago.
The places where this activity happens change constantly. When I first started, I didn’t even know other people were talking about this. Then Aaron Hunt invited me to a Facebook group, and I met Paul Erlich and many others. Facebook was already active at that time, but over the years Discord became the place to be. You just go on Discord, and people are talking there all the time.
I don’t have a single event-based explanation for why there was such a boom in xenharmonic music, but I think a big part of it is that YouTube became a place where people get their music education. Despite its potential, microtonality was mentioned only marginally in traditional theory. I’d say that when Jacob Collier began using microtonality in his early arrangements, that brought the topic into the YouTube music-theory conversation and caused quite a stir. Everyone had to take him seriously. An unexpected outlier was Rick Beato, who featured the composer Dolores Catherino on his channel.
On the practical side, there are now microtonal online players you can use directly in your browser. Have you heard of Scale Workshop, Lemma, or Xenpaper? They all appeared around 2020. For me that was a sign that we’d entered the era of “Oh, anyone can type microtones into their browser and play them!” I think that was a true turning point — before that, you couldn’t just Google “microtones” and instantly make sound.
GvL When I look at the emergence of many YouTube videos, for example by Sevish, it seems that around 2016 there was a real boom in xenharmonic experiments across different genres.
SW 2016, yes! A lot of that had to do with Jacob Collier, because music-theory nerds suddenly thought, “Wait a second, we’ve completely ignored microtonality.” He somehow managed to make music that was popular enough to count as pop, yet it contained microtonality. I don’t know exactly how he did it — maybe just the perfect marketing. Musically, he’s on another planet; he was singing Bach chorales before dinner as a teenager — that does something to you! He was really a major catalyst for a lot of people.
Sevish was another one, because for a long time there was this stigma that microtonality had to be academic. Many people subconsciously thought that microtonal music was somehow “wrong.” Sevish proved them wrong at every turn, with a vast and impressive catalog.
Another thing was that in the 2010s, suddenly there was underground microtonal EDM, made by people who were just starting out, just learning how to use a computer — completely unburdened.
GvL Even in the 1990s, there was electronic music that escaped the 12-EDO grid — Mouse on Mars from Germany, for example, worked with detuned pitch grids, or Boards of Canada. In general, for someone who programs music as code, the barrier to using microtonality is much lower — you just type different numbers and get different pitch ratios. That’s of course much simpler than trying to notate it. In Ableton there were already scale-mapping and tuning tools in the early 2010s, and later software synthesizers like SurgeXT, where you can just open the tuning editor, set the octave to 23 divisions, connect your MIDI controller, and explore the system.
SW Funny story: when I first started, writing Tenacious Chorale in college — one of my first microtonal pieces — I wasn’t even aware of the concept of tuning files. The first synthesizer I tuned to a 9-tone equal temperament, I entered and calculated all the frequencies by hand — which was really tedious. Then I found a trick to change tuning without using a file, and I posted it on my YouTube channel. But now, of course, everyone knows about tuning files.
GvL I’ve noticed that there seem to be certain categories of musicians who practice microtonal music. I’d say: Lumatone players and other users of complex controllers; then instrument builders and academic composers; and then EDM, pop, folk, or metal projects — and finally musicians from cultures where non-12-EDO tuning is already common. Do you find these distinctions accurate?
SW I’d say that’s roughly true, though I’d rather draw a line between musicians who play live and those who make music in their bedrooms, building everything themselves — the DIY aspect definitely belongs to microtonality.
One of the few people I know who performs xenharmonic EDM live is Guy Peletier — and maybe me and a few others. It’s not very common for musicians to perform their microtonal music live. I’d even group Lumatone players and complex controller users together with EDM artists, because their method is similar: they create in their bedrooms. Some EDM artists like Sevish work completely on the computer. Others who use controllers have a performative aspect — but one that’s mostly presented online.
I wonder which categories overlap the most. Probably the instrument builders and complex-controller people — they seem to gravitate toward the same area. There’s also Ocean Tardigrade, a great example — he’s deeply interested in building entirely acoustic instruments by hand.
GvL I also wanted to mention Amelia Huff, a.k.a. Zhea Erose, whom you interviewed on your podcast. She’s one of the more prominent names and has a very deep, sophisticated understanding of Just Intonation. Would you say there’s a difference in mindset — maybe even mentality — between people who work with JI and those who work with EDOs?
SW Yes, I’d say so. In my experience, JI people value precision — they strive for sounds that match certain ratios exactly, what we call concordance. I’m a big fan of concordance too, but I’m less interested in precision. Not only because musicians usually don’t think that way, but also because I find it fascinating to hear something and be able to say approximately what kind of interval or chord it is. That makes it easier for me to navigate microtonal music.
GvL Do you think we might be on the verge of a microtonal revolution — that microtonality could soon become something normal in mainstream pop music?
SW That’s really a great question. As far as microtonal pop goes, I’m not sure whether we’re before or after the revolution. I suspect it’ll become more integrated into pop, but we’ll probably not see it on the same level as the 12-tone system for quite a while.
It might sound silly, but I think nothing will really change until a famous artist does it. The cards are stacked against us — but you can still write music that includes clearly audible microtones and remains accessible. Many songs already use blue notes. I once saw a YouTube video where a singer performed American Woman. He resolves a fourth downward, and the third he lands on is exactly between major and minor. But because he doesn’t push the dissonance, it still sounds fine.
Microtonalists love thinking outside the box. But when something flies under the radar and becomes popular, the fact that it might be microtonal won’t matter to most listeners. So why even bother explaining it?
Another thing to consider is whether musicians should tell audiences that their music is microtonal. It’s also a topic on the Now and Xen podcast — for example, in the episode with The Mercury Tree. I’ve always been torn about this. I find it a bit odd when people announce the tuning of every piece — although I wouldn’t complain either. It depends on the audience. I mean, take the Minuet in G — that’s labeled with a key, too!
At a jazz festival or with a musician audience, people will recognize certain patterns and won’t accuse you of playing without intention just because they hear something slightly new. In such contexts, you might skip the explanation. But ironically, those are exactly the places where people most want to hear one.
I’ve played microtonal music for listeners who thought they had zero interest in such chords or melodies. The way I explained it was simple: “This music uses microtonal tuning. Some tones might sound off at first because you can’t play them on a piano. But if you listen for a while, you get used to it.” That’s probably the kindest way to explain it — one that doesn’t kill the theory behind it.
GvL There’s also a question of self-identification here. Personally, I wouldn’t call myself a microtonalist. I’m interested in the phenomenon and I love working with it — it’s just good material. But I notice it’s changing my perception. Yesterday I was at a concert here in Berlin — a 50-minute electronic piece that wanted to sound very contemporary, with echoes of club music, experimental vocals, and spatial effects. And yet there was no microtonality in it. After a while, it felt downright strange. Once you realize the option exists, it feels odd when this parameter of harmony isn’t being shaped at all.
I can imagine that what I’m feeling might soon be something others experience too — and that, maybe not in mainstream radio pop, but in EDM or other already experimental genres, it’ll become quite normal to work microtonally.
SW The fact that you find it strange when microtonality isn’t used or varied — that’s exactly why I’ve historically identified as a microtonalist. I think I’m a bit paranoid. Sometimes I think: if I stop doing microtonality, the system wins — people become numb, and in the end only 12-TET remains, and no one can stand anything experimental anymore. Of course that’ll never happen, because people are too curious and alive. But I still have this little fear that if I don’t resist — if I don’t keep making it — others might forget that something’s missing.
GvL So you’re on a mission — a microtonal mission. Xen comes from the Greek meaning strange or foreign. As you explain in the pilot episode of your podcast Now & Xen, the term comes from composer Ivor Darreg (1917–1994). But as I understand it, he mainly established the terminology. Today’s xenharmonic musicians don’t necessarily reference his work directly, right?
SW Some microtonalists reference him more than others. I’ve definitely read his writings, and it fascinates me that someone could discover so many things about xenharmonic tunings so early on. When I read Darreg, I often think: “Oh right, that took me six years to figure out,” and he just came to it casually in the 1950s!
Of course, there are also many people who don’t know anything about Darreg and use “xenharmonic” simply because they want to make something that doesn’t sound like 12-tone equal temperament. But I think that’s the essence of the idea: making something that doesn’t submit to a standardized, imposed system — that’s the key point.
GvL I wonder if that might be a generational trait. The name that immediately comes to mind is Harry Partch. In your pilot episode, you said that people need to realize there were — and still are — many little Harry Partches in the U.S. Looking at their biographies, I see patterns: some were academically trained, others autodidacts; some even had a kind of “hobo” phase in their lives. Would you say that early xenharmonic generation was, in a sense, the Beat Generation of experimental music?
SW Yes, that’s quite plausible. Most microtonalists are open to different value systems in music — so it fits, because many of those instrument builders either have a sort of inner faith or a contrarian attitude toward society’s values. Harry Partch was probably one of the greatest contrarians ever, because everything he wrote went completely against the grain of Western musical education — yet it was immensely valuable. He’s almost an archetype for that kind of person. Others come to mind too — of course Ivor Darreg, Kraig Grady, Chris Foster, maybe even Bart Hopkin. They all had different goals, but what unites them is a clear rejection of mainstream culture.
Of course, there are also microtonalists who explicitly want to influence the mainstream — because we see microtonal tuning’s vast potential as something misunderstood, something to be redeemed.
An interesting point about Darreg’s definition of xenharmonic music is that he described it as “music that doesn’t sound like it’s in 12-tone equal temperament.” That can mean very different things to different people — accordingly, there are many interpretations.
Some people take a strict, almost objective approach. The strictest definition would probably be: only what cannot be translated into 12-EDO counts as xen. On the other hand, some say: any music that simply sounds unfamiliar — even tonal but unexpected — can be xen.
Interestingly, I’ve noticed that some seasoned xenharmonic experts now even call 12-EDO xen in certain contexts. It sounds paradoxical, but it makes sense if you treat it as a relational concept — as a comparison between systems.
What they mean is: once you’ve spent enough time with another temperament — say, 22-EDO — and then return to 12, the categories and expectations of 12 can feel completely different.
For me personally, 12-EDO is so deeply ingrained that it will probably never feel foreign or nonstandard — unless I completely abandoned it for years and immersed myself in another system. So much depends on one’s flexibility, ear training, and willingness to engage deeply with a new tuning.
The term “xenharmonic” already does a lot of work. I think the best litmus test for how xen two tunings are relative to each other is simply: “Can the xenharmonic tuning be meaningfully translated into standard tuning?”
GvL I’d also say that naming the different EDO tunings provides a linguistic tool that makes exchange much easier. The great thing is that you can express enthusiasm that way: “Have you tried 73 EDO?” “You should really get to know 11 EDO!” It’s a bit like a wine tasting, where amateurs can give opinions, yet you can also rationalize the experience mathematically on a high level.
Through this kind of verbalized, accessible method — “the octave is divided into so many steps” — this microtonal conception can spread widely, making something possible I’ve always wished for: communication across genres. In your case, it’s become reality! Would you say that you’re currently at the epicenter of xenharmonic music and theory?
SW That’s very flattering — but no, who could be? People often tell me I’m a connecting thread, that I know everyone — maybe that’s important. If things feel central, maybe it’s because of my range.
The more society punishes me for liking microtonality, the more passionate I become about it. And that passion is essential for the Now and Xen podcast. If someone else were doing it, I’d fear it would focus only on a few genres. I’ve said this before, but I’ll put it differently: I find something to appreciate in almost every musical style, even those I don’t personally like. And microtonality can potentially enrich all of them.
I see the media landscape as a space where a variety of ideas can coexist — and I want every valuable idea to have at least some representation.
Those three things — covers, transcriptions, and podcasting — I do them in a way no one else quite does. There’s also the XenderGarden podcast, but that’s a much more experimental platform. I think Now and Xen has unintentionally turned me into a kind of curator. Covering and transcribing feed into that as well. Luckily, I’m obsessed with microtonal music — and I trust people to tell me if I miss something important.
Maybe that doesn’t make me the center—but it gives me a unique role. And as for the podcast: Sevish had the original idea. He contacted me and said, “Let’s do it.” And I thought: “Great idea!” Without him I probably never would have started, because I had absolutely no idea about the podcast scene or that ecosystem. It was his idea, he set everything up—and I’ll always be grateful to him for that. Because it set me on this crazy path which, by now, is as much leisure and pleasure for me as transcriptions and covers.
GvL Besides you, who are the important figures or hubs in this xenharmonic scene? In Germany I know a composer named Paul Hermansen who told me he had taken courses at Johnny Reinhardt’s Microtonal University.
SW Oh, I know both of them very well. Of course Johnny Reinhardt runs his online university, which is great. I think a really major figure is the microtonal guitarist Tolgahan Çoğulu, simply because he’s influenced so many musicians and done so much for the guitar. He’s been at it for so long and keeps innovating. I think he’s built an entire cultural scene around what he does and around ways of playing traditional music.
Naturally there are many other big personalities: David Fiuczynski is also a really major figure. I had him on the podcast recently. Kyle Gann is likewise very important. When it comes to groups interested in xen, two come to mind that are very strong for me: one is Untwelve. That’s a group of composers in the U.S. who meet once a year, alternating between a cabin in the woods and the Western Washington University, where Dr. Bruce Hamilton teaches microtonality and electronic music composition. Another group is Pärnu, based in the city of Pärnu in Estonia. It’s led by Hans-Gunter and Gerhard Lock. They organize workshops and in particular explore the resources of the 22-tone equal temperament.
And there are many microtonal developments in Helsinki. Juhani Nourvala is a very important part of that scene. In EDM, Sevish is definitely there and has been very active for many years. On YouTube I’d also mention Levi McClain, who, in my view, has taken on the role I once wished Adam Neely would play. But of course Adam performs live with his band and therefore doesn’t have much time to talk about microtonality. Levi is very interested in the 31-tone equal temperament, yet explains things in a way someone like Adam Neely would, which is quite exciting.
And of course one should keep an eye on people working with Lumatone or other controllers. For example Richie Greene—this is already material from a podcast episode—but he built 3D-printed keyboards you can plug into a mini controller. Manufacturing costs about $100. And one of the most important figures is Easley Blackwood—and how Matthew Sheeran and I translated his music acoustically.
GvL And within formats like Discord channels and podcasts—what else do you find interesting?
SW As for other podcasts, I think Adjective New Music did some episodes on microtonality. I also heard episodes there about lexical tones. Recently I listened to a podcast episode about a composer who used software to do vocoding microtonally—that sounded really interesting. There’s a music festival I go to regularly called Big Ears in Tennessee. A relatively large number of the musicians there use microtonality. A band like Horse Lords makes minimalist microtonal music, and it would be super exciting to learn more about their approach.
Another musician is Steve Lehman, the jazz saxophonist from New York. I saw him live. He wrote an insane spectral jazz album called Ex Machina. He retuned everything with a big band orchestra and some technology from IRCAM. That kind of large-scale project reminds me of Christian Klinkenberg’s opera The Glacier – Opera 2.0. And Bill Alves has done a lot in that direction as well. I think I’ve now mentioned many of the active people. Being active is certainly an important trait. Another very active person is Bryan Deister, a brilliant pianist who went viral on TikTok for playing microtonal versions of well-known songs on the Lumatone.
I keep thinking of so many names—we could talk about this forever…
GvL Dear Stephen, thank you for the fascinating conversation.
Stephen Weigel is a U.S. composer and multi-instrumentalist specializing in microtonal music, alternative tuning systems, and transcription. His academic work connects music-theoretical models such as All-Scalar Set Theory with the work of Easley Blackwood, and later led to a collaboration with Matthew Sheeran on Acoustic Microtonal. He is also a contributor to the microtonal podcast Now and Xen and has released original works in numerous tempered and pure tunings, including The Emoji Album.
