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xenharmonic

xenharmonic adjective: not conforming to the common 12-tone equal temperament.

Adjective

xenharmonic (not comparable)

  1. Not conforming to the common 12-tone equal temperament.
    • The back cover lists "Materials and Services", including Xenharmonikon (cooperation prevails in the xenharmonic world), and persons cooperating in a tape exchange--meaning that if you send a tape of your music, to someone on the list, you get back a tape of their music.1978 September, Ivor Darreg, “A Xenharmonist's Message to the Computer Musicians”, in Computer Music Journal, volume 2, number 2, The MIT Press
    • Dissonance scores can also be applied in situations where no musical score exists, and two examples are given: a xenharmonic piece by Carlos, and a Balinese gamelan performance.2013, William A. Sethares, Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale, page 189
    Synonyms:
    microtonal

Synonyms of xenharmonic

Origin of xenharmonic

Coined by Ivor Darreg, from xen- + harmonic

Questions about xenharmonic

What does xenharmonic mean?
Xenharmonic means not conforming to the common 12-tone equal temperament.
What part of speech is xenharmonic?
Xenharmonic is an adjective.

Words near xenharmonic in the dictionary

  1. xenbucin
  2. xenelasia
  3. xenelasy
  4. xenematide
  5. xenematides
  6. xenharmonic
  7. xenharmonics
  8. xenharmony
  9. xenia
  10. xenial
  11. xenias

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: xenharmonic (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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