Sevish

Last updated

Sevish
GenresExperimental music
Years active2005-present
Website sevish.com

Sean Archibald (born 1988), also known as Sevish, is a British electronic music composer from London. Described by Aaron Krister Johnson as "a well-known creative force in the world of online microtonal music," he is most known for his compositions which combine aspects of electronic dance music with microtonality. [1] [2] As a child Archibald was inspired by music in video games such as Chrono Trigger, Streets of Rage, and Sonic the Hedgehog. He would then go on to discover microtonality as a teenager by listening to gamelan music and Aphex Twin. At age 16 he began officially releasing music online and released his first solo album at age 20. [3] [4] He first gained notoriety in the microtonal music scene with his 2010 release, Golden Hour. [4] [5] [6] Sevish's 2011 xenharmonic dance album, Subversio, created in collaboration with Tony Dubshot and Jacky Ligon was described by Andrew Hugill as "dub meets microtonal tunings." [7]

Contents

Since most instruments in the West are built to play the 12-tone equal tempered scale, Archibald turned to less common instruments and methods of composing microtonal music. He now uses an AXiS-49 hexagonal MIDI controller to play his microtonal music, along with various DAWs such as Ableton Live, Bitwig Studio (on a Linux system [8] ), and Max/MSP. [1] The tuning systems he uses to create his music include 22-EDO, 15-EDO, 10-EDO, 13 limit just intonation, the Bohlen-Pierce scale, Pelog tuning, and many others. [4] [9] Adam Hart of the University of Salford said that his compositions "do not indicate a desire to move away from the archetypes of established EDM genres, but rather to explore alternative tunings through familiar stylistic approaches". [4]

Archibald has expressed a desire to make microtonality more widely consumed by the public, creating multiple side projects to achieve this goal. He is the creator and host of Now&Xen, a podcast about microtonal music. In 2010 he founded his own record label, split-notes, which is focused on promoting music which uses microtonal scales, alternative tuning systems, and xenharmonics. [1] [4]

Discography

Solo Work

Collaborations

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Equal temperament</span> Musical tuning system with constant ratios between notes

An equal temperament is a musical temperament or tuning system that approximates just intervals by dividing an octave into steps such that the ratio of the frequencies of any adjacent pair of notes is the same. This system yields pitch steps perceived as equal in size, due to the logarithmic changes in pitch frequency.

Microtonal or microtonality is the use in music of microtones—intervals smaller than a semitone, also called "microintervals". It may also be extended to include any music using intervals not found in the customary Western tuning of twelve equal intervals per octave. In other words, a microtone may be thought of as a note that falls "between the keys" of a piano tuned in equal temperament.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xenharmonic music</span> Music that uses a tuning system outside of 12-TET

Xenharmonic music is music that uses a tuning system that is unlike the 12-tone equal temperament scale. It was named by Ivor Darreg, from the Greek Xenos meaning both foreign and hospitable. He stated that it was "intended to include just intonation and such temperaments as the 5-, 7-, and 11-tone, along with the higher-numbered really-microtonal systems as far as one wishes to go."

A schismatic temperament is a musical tuning system that results from tempering the schisma of 32805:32768 to a unison. It is also called the schismic temperament, Helmholtz temperament, or quasi-Pythagorean temperament.

Ivor Darreg was an American composer and leading proponent of microtonal or "xenharmonic" music. He also created a series of experimental musical instruments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quarter tone</span> Musical interval

A quarter tone is a pitch halfway between the usual notes of a chromatic scale or an interval about half as wide as a semitone, which itself is half a whole tone. Quarter tones divide the octave by 50 cents each, and have 24 different pitches.

TiMidity++, originally and still frequently informally called TiMidity, is a software synthesizer that can play MIDI files without a hardware synthesizer. It can either render to the sound card in real time, or it can save the result to a file, such as a PCM .wav file.

In music, 72 equal temperament, called twelfth-tone, 72-TET, 72-EDO, or 72-ET, is the tempered scale derived by dividing the octave into twelfth-tones, or in other words 72 equal steps. Each step represents a frequency ratio of 72√2, or 16+2⁄3 cents, which divides the 100 cent "halftone" into 6 equal parts and is thus a "twelfth-tone". Since 72 is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 18, 24, 36, and 72, 72-EDO includes all those equal temperaments. Since it contains so many temperaments, 72-EDO contains at the same time tempered semitones, third-tones, quartertones and sixth-tones, which makes it a very versatile temperament.

Easley Rutland Blackwood Jr. was an American professor of music, concert pianist, composer, and the author of books on music theory, including his research into the properties of microtonal tunings and traditional harmony.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">19 equal temperament</span>

In music, 19 equal temperament, called 19 TET, 19 EDO, 19-ED2 or 19 ET, is the tempered scale derived by dividing the octave into 19 equal steps. Each step represents a frequency ratio of 19√2, or 63.16 cents.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Regular diatonic tuning</span>

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Elaine Walker is a composer, electronic musician, mathematician, and author born in 1969. She wrote a physics/philosophy book, “Matter Over Mind: Cosmos, Chaos, and Curiosity” (2016). She specializes in microtonal music, including founding ZIA, an all electronic band, and performing with D.D.T. She has performed with Number Sine. She describes: "I compose microtonal music strictly by ear and leave it to others to analyze, so you won't find ratios or mathematics here."

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References

  1. 1 2 3 Johnson, Aaron. "Sevish Interview". untwelve.org. Retrieved 6 April 2020.
  2. ↑ "Biography - Sevish Music". sevish.com. Retrieved 6 April 2020.
  3. ↑ Wakabayashi, Hidekazu. "Sevish インタビュー Interview with Sevish". microtonaldiary.blog.fc2.com. Retrieved 6 April 2020.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Hart, Adam (6 September 2016). "Microtonal Tunings in Electronic Dance Music: A Survey of Precedent and Potential". Contemporary Music Review. 35 (2): 242–262. doi:10.1080/07494467.2016.1221635. S2CID   193673867.
  5. ↑ Tremblay, Dæv (5 May 2015). "Review: Sevish – Rhythm And Xen". Can This Even Be Called Music?. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
  6. ↑ Tremblay, Dæv (19 June 2017). "Sevish - Harmony Hacker". Can This Even Be Called Music?. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
  7. ↑ Hugill, Andrew (2018). The Digital Musician, p. 197. Routledge. ISBN   1351337386
  8. ↑ "Making microtonal music on Linux computers". sevish.com. 13 October 2019. Retrieved 7 June 2022.
  9. ↑ Tremblay, Dæv (11 July 2019). "Sevish, Glacier, Louis-Vincent Hamel, Zeitgeber, John Zorn, and Jack Quartet". Can This Even Be Called Music?. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
  10. ↑ "Various Artists - Crack My Pitch Up - Microtonal music at split-notes". split-notes.com. 11 July 2010. Retrieved 6 September 2021.
  11. ↑ "[FNet050] Various - 2MM2 : Faturenet Collective : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive". archive.org. 21 July 2013. Retrieved 17 September 2021.
  12. ↑ "Various Artists - Next Xen - Microtonal music at split-notes". split-notes.com. 6 February 2016. Retrieved 20 July 2021.
  13. ↑ "STAFFcirc vol. 7 - Terra Octava | STAFFcirc". bandcamp.com. Retrieved 23 July 2021.
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