XenFont VSTi | Stats

XenFont Stats Report

 SF2 SoundFonts alive and well after xenharmonic reanimation

Of potential interest to visitors and users of Xen-Arts VSTi...

Since its public release on February 3, 2013 - in just a mere three month period - there have been 6,818 downloads of the XenFont VSTi, making it, by far, the most popular of all the Xen-Arts instruments.

Perhaps the most surprising part of seeing this level of enthusiasm, is a previously held preconception, that the SF2 SoundFont format was basically obsolete, and for this reason, there would likely be very little interest in a fully microtonal SF2 VSTi, however, this has proven to be entirely incorrect.

As well as the uniformly positive feedback from computer musicians and composers around the world, it has also been an honor to have the instrument featured on a variety of great music technology websites such as:

Synthtopia
Free XenFont Microtonal Hybrid Synth VSTi For Windows

MusicRadar
Free music software round-up: Week 121 Freeware synths and effects

Dubbism
Xen-Arts releases XenFont: Xenharmonic SoundFont VSTi

KVR Audio
Xen-Arts releases XenFont: Microtonal SoundFont & Subtractive Synthesis VSTi for Windows

Sonic State
Hybrid Soundfont And Subtractive SynthXen-Arts introduces the fully-microtonlal XenFont VSTi for Windows

Bedroom Producers Blog
XenFont – Free Microtonal SF2 Player And Synthesizer By Xen-Arts


It's been thrilling to see this truly astonishing level of interest, in this, and the other Xen-Arts VSTi, and as always, if you create xenharmonic and microtonal music with these instruments, get in touch to let us know about it, as the ultimate goal of this effort is to inspire computer musicians and composers to explore the vast expressive possibilities of composing and performing with alternative intonation systems.

To all of the friendly people who have posted comments, shared music and written privately, it's been great to hear from you and learn about your interest in xenharmonic and microtonal music.

Ella Fitzgerald - Midnight Sun (1957)

Google reminds us that today is Ella Fitzgerald's 96th birthday, and what better occasion to listen to perhaps the most memorably beautiful version of the below standard...

Ella Fitzgerald - Midnight Sun (1957)

I've long loved this tune for it's lovely harmonies and melodic chromaticism.

In today's robotic vocal Autotuned world, one can only stand in awe of the incredible artistry of masters like Ella, whose exquisite and rare virtuoso talent was embodied in stepping-up-to-the-mic as they say. Such as...

Perfection!

And...
Ella Fitzgerarld - Midnight Sun - Live Cannes Festival 1958

I recall reading somewhere in the past that she also had the gift of perfect pitch and instrumentalists could actually tune to her voice.

I love Ella!

Jeffrey Plaide | Two New Videos Featuring Xen-Arts Xenharmonic FMTS

Visitors may recall a past post about about video artist/composer Jeffrey Plaide, who has been featured twice on one of my personal favorite new-media sites, Triangulation Blog.

Access these articles here:

Jeffrey Plaide |  07 February 2012
Jeffrey Plaide |  26 November 2012

As previously mentioned, the artist occasionally uses the Xen-Arts, Xenharmonic FMTS VSTi in his work, as is the case with the below two recent video works:

The Fear of Webs and Other Faceless Anomalies

Haunted Moon Ancient Humana

Very impressive video art. Check it out!

[For those interested in such matters, at some point, hopefully before this year is out, an update to Xen-FMTS, will become available. When completed and tested, this new iteration to version 2 will take the instrument to completely new levels of possibility for microtonal and xenharmonic sound-design and spectral-microtuning. In the meanwhile, I'm actively focused on both solo and collaborative recording projects which will also be available in upcoming months. Stay microtuned to Xen-Arts for all of these potentially exciting developments.]

Album Release | Iquaxaphaezi: Passage (2003)

This is a piece written during May 2003 (re-mastered on 4/14/2013) and is dedicated to the memory of Gianluigi Gasparetti (1958–2013), who tragically passed away this week; far too early in his quite young creative life. He was also widely known around the world as the Italian Ambient/Soundcape artist Oöphoi.

Oöphoi was among my favorite artists from any genre or style and one who has created a vast discography of some of the most beautiful and organic minimalist soundscape and drone music of anyone working in this field of artistic endeavor. Although it was never explicitly stated that he systematically worked with alternative intonation systems, even a cursory listen to his output will reveal that the music is often working with textures, drones and melodic materials that are far from the pitch-grid of the familiar Western 12-tone-equal-temperament. It is clear by inference and association that he was aware of just intonation, from both his interaction with Robert Rich (just intonation composer and co-inventor of the MIDI Tuning Standard) and that he published a widely distributed Ambient music journal called Deep Listenings, from a phrase coined by American New Music and just intonation composer Pauline Oliveros.

Although this amazing artist was taken from us far to early in his creative life, we are fortunate that he leaves us with a vast catalog of records to explore in the future; a worthy pursuit for anyone curious about one of the seminal figures in the field of drone-based minimalism of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

This composition; a small gesture of remembrance and thanks to an artist who has been an occasional inspiration to my own work since I first learned of his amazing artistry in the early 2000s, is an excerpt from the longer version of the piece that is, in its entirety, 23:26 long, and is created using a heptatonic 23 limit just intonation microtuning.

Download the full length composition using the below links:

ALAC
[92 MB]

FLAC
[89 MB]

MP3 (320 kps stereo)
[54 MB]

Many kind thanks for taking the time to listen,

j:l

RIP | Oöphoi | Gianluigi Gasparetti (1958–2013)

I've just heard the devastating news, that one of my all time favorite artists - Gianluigi Gasparetti - aka - Oöphoi - has passed away after a long period of illness.

For visitors unfamiliar with the music of  Oöphoi, he was a prolific creator of many exquisitely beautiful albums and was among the towering figures in the Italian ambient/soundscape scene.

So many perfectly beautiful compositions...

He will be sorely missed for his rare sonic vision and vast contribution to the audio arts. From a personal perspective, what makes his catalog such a treasure for the future, is its ability to endure repeated listenings down through the years, and every time I return to his albums, they remain fresh to my ears and reveal ever greater depths of detail on each new hearing. As anyone can that composes music can relate to, it is extremely difficult to attain this kind of quality, but it is a thread consistently woven throughout the fabric of his vast discography.

Speechless right now and will be listening shortly to one of my favorite Oöphoi albums: Hymns To A Silent Sky (2005).

 Oöphoi - Fragile Beauty


This entire album is wonderful and I've always loved the long-form composition The Unbearable Sadness Of Memories...

Oöphoi - The Unbearable Sadness Of Memories (Hymns To A Silent Sky)

I have personally long regarded this as a composition of perfected beauty among many, many others by Oöphoi.

More Oöphoi on YouTube

Just intonation composer, Robert Rich, has a nice dedication on his site:
For Gianluigi Gasparetti, “Oöphoi”

Hypnos label owner, Mike Griffin has a tribute here:
Oöphoi (Gianluigi Gasparetti) Has Passed Away

An Oöphoi Wikipedia article and discography:
Oöphoi


Update: 2013-04-19

For what it may be worth, in celebration of the life and creative work of this wonderful artist, this past week I've returned to my private Oöphoi archive with new ears, and renewed interest, to do more Deep Listenings of the following timeless and amazingly beautiful records:

Oöphoi - Static Soundscapes - Three Lights at the End of the World (Hic Sunt Leones, 1996)
Oöphoi - The Spirals of Time (Limited Deluxe Edition - 1998)
Oöphoi - Mare Vaporum (2000)
Oöphoi - Athlit (2002)
Oöphoi - Bardo (2002)
Oöphoi - Mare Imbrium (2003)
Oöphoi - Mare Tranquilitatis (2004)
Oöphoi - The Dreaming Of Shells (2004)
Oöphoi & Tau Ceti - Archaic Oceans (2004)
Oöphoi - Hymns to a Silent Sky (2005)
Oöphoi - Awakening The Nagas (Penumbra, 2005)
Oöphoi - The Rustling Of Leaves (2005)
Oöphoi - Time Fragments Vols. 1-6 (2001-2005)
Oöphoi & Tau Ceti - Celestial Geometries (The Complete Recordings - 2006)
Oöphoi - Dreams, Parts 1-3 (2006)
Oöphoi - Arpe Di Sabbia (2007)
Oöphoi & Faryus - Forgotten Rituals (2007)

These I would have to rank as among my top favorite Oöphoi records, although there are many more available to consider. Highly recommended if you have a way to obtain them.

Sean Archibald • day​:​dot EP

Xenharmonic composer and Split Notes label owner, Sean Archibald, has released a fantastic sounding new record on Faturenet Recordings, entitled, day​:​dot EP.

Excellent compositions, sound-designs and engineering all around, and in particular I've been very impressed by the track created in collaboration with Bristletone, Solid Smoke.

For visitors and musicians interested in the technical details, the music is composed within the Ableton Live DAW, the bass and lead on track 2, Asha, features the Xen-Arts Ivor VSTi, and track 3, Longer Than String, features several instances of Ivor, one of Xenharmonic-FMTS, and also prominently features the u-he ACE VSTi, while the timbres on Solid Smoke showcase the popular NI Massive VSTi.

Check out these great tracks from one of the most talented audio artists working in the field of xenharmonic and microtonal music composition.

XenFont | Microtonal SoundFont & Subtractive Synthesis VSTi

New VSTi Announcement

XenFont

A HYBRID SOUNDFONT & SUBTRACTIVE SYNTHESIS VSTI

FOR THE CREATION OF MICROTONAL AND XENHARMONIC MUSIC

By Xen-Arts 

XenFont is a two oscillator, hybrid SF2 SoundFont & Subtractive Synthesis VSTi that features full-controller MIDI Pitch Microtuning using the MTS (MIDI Tuning Standard) format, where any MIDI Note Number can be freely microtuned to any desired pitch across the MIDI range, enabling computer musicians and composers to explore the vast expressive possibilities of composing music with alternative intonation systems.

XenFont is a microtonal sound-designer's SF2 sample-based synthesizer, with a carefully designed ergonomic workflow for quickly creating powerful sounding and musical useful timbres. The instrument enables users to load their own SF2 SoundFont files and thereby any special timbres required of the music at hand, from classical acoustic instruments, to synthesized ones. Routing the SF2 SoundFont Oscillators through the internal synthesis functions of the VSTi, provides a way to radically transform the original sounds and create new synthesized timbres.

Sleepwalking

A highly microtonal inflected classic...

Santo & Johnny - Sleep Walk 1959

The definitive original.

The Ventures - Sleepwalk

One of my personal favorite renditions; perfection.
Amazing bass, snare and guitar sound.

Santo & Johnny

ZynAddSubFX | Microtuning Features Updated

ZynAddSubFX | Windows VSTi | Microtuning Features Updated

For Windows and Linux based computer musicians who may be new to exploring alternative intonation systems (aka microtuning, xenharmonics) and composing microtonal music with virtual instruments, an important development along the way has been, and what we may now consider to be one of the great cult classic VSTi, ZynAddSubFX, first introduced in 2002 by visionary developer Paul Nasca (also the developer of the amazing Paulstretch); a fully microtonal and multitimbral virtual instrument plugin, which, in its current iteration is comprised of three unique and powerful synthesis engines, and especially noteworthy among them, the PadSynth, being capable of making some truly exquisite and expressive timbres for microtonal and xenharmonic music composition. At some point in recent years, Paul Nasca appears to have stepped away from the ZynAddSubFX project, and current development of this open-source microtonal synthesizer has been assumed by other programmers.

As anyone who has tried to use the Windows version of ZynAddSubFX in their microtonal music will be aware, there have always been problems with the microtuning functions. Going back to my own earliest work with this instrument – if memory serves – sometime around 2005, it has never been able to correctly save and restore the microtuning settings from within a host DAW. The only way to save and restore the Scale settings in the earliest versions of the plugin was by saving a scale settings file, then reloading that manually when opening a project. In later iterations of ZynAddSubFX, microtuning settings had to be made manually each time a DAW project was loaded with an instance of the plugin, due to its inability to accurately save and restore the scales settings.

I’m extremely pleased to announce, that as of today, all this has changed, and these problems have been fixed by one of the current programmers, VDX (aka jackoo on KVR Audio), who was kind enough to update the microtuning code for ZynAddSubFX. Now the plugin will faithfully save and restore the microtunings within the host applications, which has been tested primarily in Cubase and Reaper.

Read about and download the release here:

Latest ZynAddSubFX VST version

ZynAddSubFX VST v2.4.1.496beta

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=268277&start=255

It has long been my feeling that ZynAddSubFX has the most elegant – and logical – implementation of using the Scala SCL and KBM format I’ve seen on any microtonal VSTi that uses it, so it is a truly momentous event for microtuning enthusiasts to have this working properly in this particular instrument.

Sonic Imprints

There is a sort of perceptual gestalt – an imprint or impression – that happens while listening to music, as the memory registers the various pitch heights of an given intonation system. It happens as the pitch material is presented sequentially – as in melody – and in harmony as well…

But there is a third type of event that perhaps gets discussed less: the overlapping of natural (or otherwise electronically extended) decay stages of musical instrument timbres, as well as from their propagation in reverberant spaces as the music progresses through time. This is – for instance – at the core of a portion of Kraig Grady’s microtonal and just intonation sound: amazing sounding, shimmering, acoustic affects as the decays of the instruments overlap; often showcasing exquisite sonic interactions between the underlying intonation system being used and the timbre of the instruments.

But it’s also the number one dead giveaway that music is in 12 equal, as in Steve Roach’s new album (available for streaming in its entirety):

Steve Roach - Soul Tones (2012)

http://steveroach.bandcamp.com/album/soul-tones

The composite that is created in the listener’s memory from the sum of musical pitch events happening over time, gives one that impression about the intonational quality. Music in 12 has a certain unique kind of gong-like nonharmonic resonant quality in this regard; a distinct sonic signature that is unmistakable. Nothing wrong with it really, and indeed this is a wonderfully beautiful sounding record, but notice, if you listen, to this quality in the overlapping of the sounds. The imprint on the memory, and the impression of the intonation, is unquestionably that of 12 equal.

This is among the reasons why it can be so rewarding to compose with alternative intonations as a matter of routine musical practice; one has access to – and experience with using – myriad other kinds of sonic signatures, qualities and imprints on the listener’s memory; whole new orders of acoustic – and psychoacoustic – phenomenon and expressive musical color become a part of the composer’s vocabulary.

12 equal is beautiful really, but as we can well appreciate, it’s merely one member of huge a continuum of possibilities.

j:l

Disclaimer: I’m actually a fairly huge fan of Steve Roach, 12-ED2 or not. :)