Hear what different types of microtones actually sound like with examples from actual pieces
This article is based on composer Budjarn Lambeth’s curated playlist of real pieces — not test tones, not demonstrations, but genuine music — one for each EDO from 10 to 36, plus a handful of bonus tunings that don’t fit neatly into the sequence.
Lambeth collated many different works by many different composers to offer a full tour of these musical worlds. I thought his playlist was worth featuring in a blog post.
Listen along here: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVHnByvMeRTpA7ssMn48WemxL4EQmnpdT&ra=m
7edo — Green Tea Spa
Artist: JUMBLE
We start with a bonus. 7edo divides the octave into seven equal steps, giving you intervals that don’t map cleanly onto anything in Western music. There’s no major third, no minor third — just seven evenly-spaced rungs on the ladder. The result tends to sound simultaneously ancient and alien, like music from a civilisation that took a completely different path. Green Tea Spa is a lush, meditative piece that shows how this spare tuning can still feel warm and alive.
10edo — Vidya
10edo is a tuning without a good perfect fifth — its best approximation is noticeably off — so composers who work in it tend to lean into its strangeness rather than fight it. Sevish leans into it hard, writing a chiptune in the style of a classic video game soundtrack. The retro aesthetic is a smart choice: the deliberately lo-fi timbre meets the deliberately alien intervals halfway, and the result is something that sounds like a JRPG from a parallel dimension. Sevish is one of the most prolific and accessible composers working in xenharmonic music, and this is a great first taste of their work.
11edo — Longwayaway People
Artist: Sevish
11edo is a famously slippery tuning. It has no good approximations of simple just intonation intervals — no good fifth, no good major third — so it resists being heard as “out of tune Western music” and instead forces you to hear it on its own terms. Longwayaway People has a dreamy, floating quality that captures that feeling well: the harmonies don’t resolve the way you expect them to, and yet they feel purposeful rather than random.
13edo — Ctun
Artist: Domin
13edo is another tuning that sits outside the gravitational pull of standard Western harmony, though it does have some interesting consonances of its own. This improvisation has a raw, exploratory energy to it — you can hear someone thinking in real time in a genuinely foreign musical language. At just over five and a half minutes, it gives you a real sense of what it feels like to inhabit 13edo rather than just visit.
14edo — Surprise Me
14edo contains a reasonable approximation of the perfect fifth and some usable thirds, which gives composers a bit more familiar harmonic vocabulary to work with — while still sounding distinctly non-standard. The electronic production here suits the tuning well: synthesis gives you precise control over every pitch, which matters a lot when you’re working with intervals that don’t exist on any standard instrument.
15edo — Dance of The Forest Lights
Artist: Xotla Music
15edo is a tuning with a strong character. It has a recognisable major scale shape, but the thirds are very flat compared to what Western ears expect, giving chords a particular shimmer. Dance of The Forest Lights is an atmospheric, textural piece that makes excellent use of that shimmer. The visual accompaniment of shifting lights suits it perfectly — this is music that feels genuinely spatial.
16edo — Flow Field
Artist: Elaine Walker
16edo is a tuning that has attracted serious composers because of its unusual harmonic properties. It contains good approximations of some higher-limit just intonation intervals even while its basic triads sound quite foreign. Elaine Walker is one of the pioneers of microtonal composition, and Flow Field shows her compositional maturity — this is structured, through-composed music, not just an experiment.
17edo — Cretaceous Cosmos
Artist: Xotla Music
17edo is historically significant: it was used in medieval Arabic and Persian music theory, and it’s one of the first non-standard tunings that many Western musicians encounter. It has a perfect fifth close to Pythagorean tuning, which means its fifths and fourths are very clean while its thirds are sharp and bright. Cretaceous Cosmos has a cinematic sweep that makes good use of those clean fifths — the piece feels ancient and vast, which suits the title well.
18edo — 18EDO Bailiff
Artist: Clark and Throttle Records
18edo is sometimes described as two interlocked 9edo scales. Its sound is distinctly dissonant by conventional standards, but Bailiff wears that dissonance as a feature rather than a bug — this is music with grit and attitude. The lo-fi production style fits the tuning’s rough edges beautifully.
19edo — Saccharine Song in 19edo
Artist: Bryan Deister
19edo is one of the most beloved tunings in the xenharmonic community for a reason: it has an excellent meantonestructure, with minor thirds that are sweeter than 12edo and major thirds that are remarkably close to the pure 5-limitideal. Triads in 19edo have a distinctive bloom to them. Saccharine Song lives up to its name — lush, sweet harmony with just enough strangeness to remind you you’re not in Kansas anymore. The score video is a nice bonus: you can watch the notation as you listen.
20edo — T w e n t y / T w e n t y
Artist: E8 Heterotic (Chris Simmons)
20edo contains a usable pentatonic structure and some interesting harmonic properties, though its triads are quite different from 12edo. The synthwave aesthetic is a perfect vehicle: the genre’s pulsing basslines and arpeggios let you really hear the intervals in isolation before they stack up into chords. By the time the full texture arrives, your ears have calibrated to the tuning and it starts to feel natural.
21edo — dissolving to death in the acid lake
Artist: The Evil Doings Of An Intergalactic Something
21edo is three interlocked 7edo scales, which gives it an unusual internal symmetry. The title of this piece is a statement of intent, and the music delivers: dense, dissonant, and deliberately uncomfortable. This is the xenharmonic equivalent of noise or industrial music — not for everyone, but a fascinating demonstration of how a tuning system can be used to generate a genuinely hostile sonic environment.
22edo — JETPACK TO JUPITER!
Artist: JUMBLE
22edo is a major landmark in xenharmonic theory. It’s the simplest equal temperament that supports Pajara temperament, which has a distinctive “symmetrical decatonic” scale structure unlike anything in Western music. Paul Erlich’s work on 22edo helped define a lot of modern microtonal thinking. JUMBLE’s piece here shows how that theoretical richness can translate into genuinely musical results.
23edo — Chattering Circuits
Artist: Sevish
23edo is a prime EDO — it has no useful subset structures — which gives it a particular flavour of foreignness. Sevish meets that foreignness head-on with a chattery, rhythmically intricate piece that keeps your attention moving fast enough that the unusual harmony feels natural rather than jarring. It’s a good demonstration of how rhythm and texture can help listeners acclimate to unfamiliar tunings.
24edo — Moon Shadow (月影)
Artist: StarNote Riste
24edo, also called quarter-tone tuning, is the most widely known non-standard equal temperament in the world — it’s central to Arabic maqam music and other traditions. It contains all of 12edo as a subset, meaning Western chords still work, but you also gain a set of “between” notes that allow for the characteristic melodic inflections of maqam. Moon Shadow is a beautiful, moonlit piece that uses those inflections with real delicacy.
26edo — Moondust
Artist: Abnormality
26edo contains a version of the meantone fifth and has some interesting 7-limit approximations. Moondust is atmospheric and patient — this is music that trusts you to sit with it and let the tuning gradually reveal itself. The name suits: something familiar but subtly, irrevocably off.
27edo — Sunspots
Artist: Brendan Byrnes
27edo is three interlocked 9edo scales. Brendan Byrnes is a guitarist who has devoted serious effort to microtonal music, and Sunspots showcases what happens when you bring real instrumental technique to bear on an unusual tuning. There’s a warmth and physicality to this that pure electronic microtonal music doesn’t always achieve — you can hear the strings.
28edo — Your Turn
28edo is a tuning with some interesting properties — it contains good approximations of 7-limit intervals and has a distinctive character. But in assembling this playlist, 28edo turned up empty. There are experiments and tests, but no finished, polished piece that does the tuning justice.
Which means the space is open.
If you’ve been looking for a reason to start a microtonal composition project, here’s a concrete one: make the first great piece in 28edo. The xenharmonic community will notice, and it might even end up in a playlist like this one.
29edo — Army Dreamers — Kate Bush (microtonal cover)
Artist: Bryan Deister
29edo has a very good meantone fifth and excellent harmonic seventh approximations. A cover of Kate Bush is a bold choice for a microtonal showcase — the source material is so familiar that the tuning difference is immediately, strikingly apparent. Bryan Deister pulls it off; the piece is recognisably Army Dreamers and yet completely transformed.
30edo — Bad Apple in 30edo
30edo is two interlocked 15edo scales, and has some interesting properties for both harmonic and melodic use. Bad Apple is a famous piece of internet music culture (originally from the Touhou game series), and hearing it rendered in 30edo is genuinely disorienting in the best way — the melody is familiar enough that you can track it, but everything around it sounds subtly wrong and fascinating.
31edo — “Scarborough Fair” (microtonal cover)
Artist: Lumatone Keyboard
31edo is arguably the most celebrated non-standard equal temperament for harmonic music. It has nearly pure 5-limitthirds, a very good harmonic seventh, and a rich, lush sound that makes chords bloom in a way 12edo simply can’t match. It was advocated for by Christiaan Huygens in the 17th century and has attracted serious composers ever since. Scarborough Fair on the Lumatone (a hexagonal isomorphic keyboard designed for microtonal playing) shows off 31edo’s harmonic richness beautifully. If you’re only going to listen to one track in this post, make it this one.
33edo — Enchanted Shopping Mall
Artist: Budjarn Lambeth
33edo has some useful 11-limit interval approximations and a character that’s hard to pin down — neither comfortably consonant nor aggressively dissonant. The title Enchanted Shopping Mall is pitch-perfect: familiar functional spaces made subtly uncanny. Budjarn Lambeth is an Australian composer working in this space, and their approach has a playful conceptual quality that suits the tuning’s in-between character well.
34edo — Dodecahedron
Artist: E8 Heterotic (Chris Simmons)
34edo is a meantone system with a very flat fifth — flatter even than 19edo — which gives it a lush, almost syrupy harmonic quality. The title Dodecahedron gestures at the geometric, structural quality of the tuning itself, and the piece lives up to that: complex, layered, with a sense of something vast and ordered underneath the surface.
35edo — Icebound Gallery of Refractions
Artist: dotuXil
35edo is five interlocked 7edo scales. Icebound Gallery of Refractions is the most evocative title in this playlist, and the music earns it: cool, crystalline, with a sense of light bending through multiple surfaces simultaneously. The tuning’s fractured internal structure suits the refraction metaphor perfectly.
36edo — Elements — Lightning
Artist: E8 Heterotic (Chris Simmons)
36edo contains 12edo as a subset, meaning it has 3 versions of each note — red (sharp), blue (flat), and regular. Chris Simmons uses this to dramatic effect in Lightning, which does exactly what the title promises: electric, kinetic, crackling with energy. A strong ending to the main sequence.
Bonus Tunings
45edo — Archipelago Arpeggio
Artist: JUMBLE
45edo is a high-complexity system with some excellent higher-limit approximations. Archipelago Arpeggio uses arpeggios to let you hear individual intervals in sequence before they stack — a smart compositional choice that gives your ears time to calibrate to an unusual harmonic world.
53edo — Droplet
Artist: Sevish
53edo is historically significant: it gives near-perfect approximations of 5-limit just intonation intervals and was noted by theorists from Mersenne onwards. In practice it sounds remarkably pure and consonant — almost indistinguishable from just intonation in many contexts. Droplet is a beautiful, shimmering piece that makes the most of that purity.
313edo — Desert Island Rain
Artist: Sevish
313edo is so fine-grained that individual steps are imperceptibly small — it’s practically indistinguishable from just intonation in most musical contexts. Sevish uses it not for its microtonal texture (you won’t hear the individual steps) but for its ability to hit precise harmonic targets. Desert Island Rain is one of Sevish’s most celebrated pieces: lush, melancholic, and a reminder that the most advanced tuning system can serve the most human musical emotions.
321edo — BLASTOFF!
Artist: JUMBLE
321edo at the synthwave aesthetic is a maximalist statement. Like 313edo, the individual steps are far below the threshold of perception — this is about harmonic precision, not audible microtonality. BLASTOFF! lives up to its name: this is big, colourful, confident music that’s pure fun.
12-NEJI — Spiritual Bells
Artist: Amelia Huff (Zhea Erose)
NEJI (Near-Equal Just Intonation) tunings are a different approach entirely: rather than dividing the octave into equal steps, they find a set of just-intonation pitches that approximate an equal scale. 12-NEJI keeps the familiar twelve-note structure while tuning each note to a pure ratio. The result, in Amelia Huff’s hands on the Lumatone, is something that sounds like a more resonant, more alive version of 12edo — like the same instrument after a very good tuning.
Balinese Gamelan Scale — Balinese Gamelan Music on Microtonal Guitar
Artist: Microtonal Guitar — Tolgahan Çoğulu
Gamelan tunings are a world unto themselves: each gamelan ensemble in Bali has its own unique tuning, passed down and refined over generations. Tolgahan Çoğulu is a Turkish guitarist who has developed a system of microtonal guitars with adjustable frets, and hearing him render Balinese gamelan music on guitar is a remarkable demonstration of both the tuning’s character and the instrument’s flexibility.
Harmonic Series — Waves
Artist: JUMBLE
The harmonic series is not an equal temperament at all — it’s the natural sequence of overtones produced by any vibrating string or column of air. Music built directly from the harmonic series has a remarkable acoustic purity: every interval is a simple whole-number ratio. Waves uses that purity to create something that feels simultaneously ancient and futuristic — the oldest intervals in the universe, arranged into something entirely new.
Bohlen-Pierce Scale — Synchrotronic
Artist: Elaine Walker
The Bohlen-Pierce scale doesn’t divide the octave at all — it divides the tritave (a ratio of 3:1, a perfect twelfth) into 13 equal steps. This means none of its intervals are octave-equivalent to Western intervals, and music written in it inhabits a completely different harmonic universe. Elaine Walker has been one of the leading composers in Bohlen-Pierce music for decades, and Synchrotronic is an exhilarating demonstration of what that universe sounds like at its best.
Where to Go Next
If any of these tunings caught your ear, the Xenharmonic Wiki is the best single resource for going deeper — it has pages on every tuning system, temperament, and composer mentioned here, plus thousands more. Sevish’s website has tutorials on getting started with microtonal music production. And the Xenharmonic Alliance on Facebook and various Discord communities are active spaces where composers and listeners share new work every day.
The playlist this post is based on is a good starting point, but it barely scratches the surface. There are pieces in every EDO from 1 to 1000 and beyond, approaches from every culture and tradition, and — as the gap at 28edo reminds us — plenty of space left for new music. The universe of tuning is, quite literally, infinite.
Start listening. Your ears will catch up.
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