Parallel musical universes: 22-, 26-, and 31-edo have untapped potential for experimental electronic producers
There are parallel universes with other notes than the 12 we know — and you can use them in your music
This article is AI-generated
What if the 12 notes you’ve always known aren’t the only notes there are — just the ones your map happens to show? Buried in the mathematics of sound are entire parallel musical universes, each with their own unique sets of notes, intervals, and flavours that nobody has fully explored yet. This article is your invitation to step off the edge of the map. We’re diving into three alternative tuning systems — 22edo, 26edo, and 31edo — and why they might be the most powerful tools an experimental electronic producer has never heard of.
The Notes You Know Are Just One Universe Among Many
In nearly all Western music, and most of the world’s popular and commercial music today, we use a system called 12 equal divisions of the octave — 12edo for short, or sometimes called 12-TET. This gives us the 12 familiar notes of the piano keyboard: C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B — and then the octave repeats.
But here’s the thing: there is no law of physics that says music has to use exactly 12 notes per octave. That’s a historical and cultural choice, one that was locked in gradually over centuries of Western music. The universe doesn’t care how many notes you divide the octave into. You could use 7. You could use 19. You could use 53. Each of these choices creates a different musical universe — a different set of available pitches, different intervals, different emotional colours, different possibilities for harmony and melody.
The thread running through this entire article is simple: parallel musical universes exist, each with their own notes and their own sonic identities, and three of them in particular — 22edo, 26edo, and 31edo — are sitting right there waiting for electronic producers to move in and start building.
The Harmonic Series: The Blueprint of All Sound
Before we talk about which tuning systems unlock the most interesting new sounds, we need to talk about why tunings matter at all for timbre — the “vibe” or identity of a sound.
Every physical sound you’ve ever heard — a plucked guitar string, a blown flute, a struck piano key, or a synthesiser patch — is not actually a single pure tone. It’s a stack of tones called the harmonic series. When you play a note, you’re simultaneously producing the fundamental pitch plus a series of quieter overtones above it: the octave (2×), the perfect fifth above that (3×), another octave (4×), a major third (5×), another fifth (6×), a flat seventh (7×), another octave (8×), a major second (9×), and so on, each one quieter and higher than the last.
What makes a violin sound like a violin, and a trumpet sound like a trumpet, is not the fundamental note — it’s which harmonics are present, and how loud each one is. A flute has very few upper harmonics, giving it that clean, pure tone. A sawtooth synth wave has all the harmonics present at roughly equal strength, which is why it sounds so rich and cutting. A hollow, woody instrument like a clarinet emphasises the odd-numbered harmonics (1×, 3×, 5×, 7×…) while suppressing the even ones, producing that characteristic hollow warmth.
This is the foundation of timbre. And it’s also the secret to why tuning systems matter so much for electronic music in particular.
12edo: The Familiar Universe and Its Limitations
12edo works as well as it does because it very closely approximates the simplest prime harmonics: 2, 3, and 5.
- Prime 2 is the octave (2:1) — 12edo nails this perfectly, because that’s literally the definition of what an “edo” is: equal divisions of the octave.
- Prime 3 gives us the perfect fifth (3:2) — 12edo’s perfect fifth is only about 2 cents flat, barely perceptible.
- Prime 5 gives us the major third (5:4) — 12edo’s major third is about 14 cents sharp, which is actually somewhat audible if you listen carefully, but we’ve all spent our lives listening to it, so it sounds “normal.”
This means 12edo handles the basic harmonic building blocks — octaves, fifths, fourths, major and minor thirds — pretty well. It works for piano, guitar, orchestra, pop, jazz, classical. Most conventional instruments produce sound that’s dominated by harmonics 2, 3, and 5, so 12edo maps onto their natural resonance reasonably well.
But what happens when you want more?
Beyond 5-Limit: The Sounds Nobody Has Heard Yet
As you move up the harmonic series past the 5th harmonic, you encounter harmonics that 12edo handles very poorly. The 7th harmonic (7:4 — a flat, “blue” minor seventh) is about 31 cents away from 12edo’s closest note. The 11th harmonic (11:8 — a neutral-ish tritone) is about 49 cents from 12edo’s closest note. These are huge misses — basically, 12edo just doesn’t have these harmonics at all. They’re entirely absent from its palette.
This matters enormously for synthesis. If you design an additive or spectral synth patch with strong 7th and 11th harmonics — and then play it using 12edo pitches — you get a tonal clash. The notes you’re playing and the internal harmonic structure of your sound are fighting each other. The timbre is pulling in one direction, and the tuning is pulling in another.
But what if the tuning matched those harmonics instead of fighting them?
This is where the concept of prime limit becomes practically useful. A tuning system that approximates 7-limit harmony — meaning it has usable approximations of harmonics 2, 3, 5, and 7 — unlocks a whole new palette of intervals with a characteristic darker, more exotic, more “blue note” flavour. A tuning system that also approximates 11-limit harmony adds on top of that a set of neutral, ambiguous, hovering intervals — neither major nor minor, but something in between, something ancient-feeling and futuristic at the same time.
If you want to explore new types of sound identity that nobody has heard before — sounds that still feel like music rather than just chaotic noise — you want a tuning system that approximates all the prime harmonics up to 11. That way you still get the 2, 3, and 5 you’re comfortable with (your scales still feel somewhat familiar, your fifths still sound fifth-like), but you also get the new flavours that 7 and 11 bring to the table. This is the doorway to sounds that feel genuinely unprecedented.
And there are three tuning systems that do this especially well.
The Three Universes: 22edo, 26edo, and 31edo
22edo: The Bold and Uncompromising One
22edo divides the octave into 22 equal steps, each about 54.5 cents. It’s the smallest of the three systems we’re discussing, which makes it the most accessible in terms of mapping to physical instruments — you’re only dealing with 22 pitches per octave instead of 31.
The benefits: 22edo’s greatest strength is also something that might sound like a drawback at first: it has no meantone structure. In 12edo, all our familiar scales — major, minor, Dorian, Phrygian, you name it — are built on what’s called the meantone step pattern. Meantone tunings are built around making the major third a pure 5:4. But in 22edo, the meantone fifth is so far off that meantone doesn’t work, and the system forces you into different temperament families instead: primarily pajara, porcupine, or superpyth.
This is actually a feature, not a bug. These alternative scale structures have 7 and 11-limit harmony baked into their very DNA. Pajara, for example, naturally produces excellent approximations of harmonic seventh chords. Porcupine creates wonderfully strange, non-diatonic scales. Superpyth gives you fifths that are slightly sharp rather than flat, producing a tense, bright character unlike anything in Western classical music. By eliminating the meantone crutch, 22edo forces you to discover genuinely new territory.
The drawbacks: With fewer notes, 22edo’s approximations of some intervals are somewhat less accurate than the other two systems. The major third, in particular, is quite sharp — a different flavour, but not everyone’s taste. And because there’s no meantone structure to lean on, your existing music theory knowledge is less transferable here. Scales don’t behave the way they seem like they should — a “major scale” in 22edo feels different enough that it can be disorienting at first. This system rewards patience and open-mindedness.
Who’s exploring it: Brendan Byrnes and Sevish have both produced work in 22edo, ranging from ambient to progressive and experimental electronic.
26edo: The Familiar Gateway to the Strange
26edo divides the octave into 26 equal steps of about 46.2 cents each. It sits in a middle ground — more notes than 22edo, fewer than 31.
The benefits: 26edo’s killer feature is that it supports meantone temperament — meaning that your familiar Western music theory mostly transfers directly. A major scale in 26edo is still built the same way as in 12edo. Chord progressions follow familiar patterns. If you already know your theory, you can start writing music in 26edo almost immediately, using your existing vocabulary, and the new flavours come as a bonus rather than a requirement.
The number of notes is also still manageable. Guitar builders like those inspired by King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard or the Turkish microtonal guitar tradition have created instruments with 24 notes per octave — 26 is in a similar ballpark, and a 26-fret-per-octave guitar or a retuned synth keyboard is entirely plausible.
The drawbacks: 26edo’s perfect fifth is its weak point — it’s noticeably flatter than just (about 11.4 cents flat), which is significantly worse than 12edo’s already slightly flat fifth. This means big open chords and power chords won’t ring with the bold resonance you might be used to. They’ll feel a little softer, a little vaguer.
And 26edo’s thirds are interesting: they’re similar in accuracy to 12edo’s thirds, but the error goes in the opposite direction — where 12edo’s major third is slightly too sharp, 26edo’s is slightly too flat. This gives it a sweeter, more “just” quality in some ways, but for a listener used to 12edo, it can feel slightly off in an uncanny-valley way for the first few minutes. For a musician used to playing by feel, it might take a few hours before it stops feeling like something is slightly wrong. Push through — once it clicks, it clicks.
Who’s exploring it: Bryan Deister and Sevish have both released music in 26edo, showcasing its capacity for both familiar song structures and unusual harmonic colour.
31edo: The Master Key
31edo divides the octave into 31 equal steps of about 38.7 cents each. It has a long history — the Renaissance theorist Nicola Vicentino designed a 31-tone instrument in 1555, and the Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens advocated for it in the 17th century. But it has never been more accessible than it is right now, for electronic producers.
The benefits: 31edo is the most accurate of these three systems in terms of how closely it approximates the full harmonic series up to the 11th harmonic. Its minor seventh approximates the 7th harmonic to within about 1.1 cents — essentially perfect. Its approximation of the 11th harmonic is likewise excellent. This accuracy is what allows 31edo to really unlock the richness and sweetness of those new harmonic colours — rather than getting a rough approximation of a 7-limit chord, you get the genuine article, and the difference in resonance and beauty is striking.
It’s also the most compatible with existing 12-tone theory of the three systems. Most diatonic scales in 12edo behave in a recognisably similar way in 31edo. You can take a chord progression you already know and play it in 31edo and it will feel familiar — just slightly sweeter, slightly richer.
31edo also has surprisingly good compatibility with Arabic maqam music. The quarter tones used in maqam are usually approximated with 24edo, but 31edo actually tunes them more accurately in many cases, and the richer harmonic palette makes maqam-inspired passages sound particularly resonant and expressive.
Notation is also the most straightforward of the three: 31edo uses the same note names as 12edo, with the addition of a few extra accidentals (double sharps and double flats now have specific pitch meanings), making it possible to write and read 31edo music using a slightly extended version of standard notation.
And then there are the exclusive temperament families that 31edo unlocks with particular grace. Orwell[9] — a 9-note scale with a geometric, repeating quality somewhat like the whole tone scale or the augmented scale, but with rich 7- and 11-limit sonorities that give it an entirely alien character. Miracle[10] — one of the most mathematically elegant tuning systems ever devised, with a 10-note subset that packs an astonishing range of consonant harmony into a compact set of pitches. And the Erose–McClain double mode family — a set of scales being actively explored by modern composers, with a haunting, symmetric quality and a range of strange new interval colours that feel genuinely unlike anything in the existing musical canon. These aren’t just “weird scales.” They have a structural logic and an internal beauty that rewards deep exploration.
The drawback: 31 notes per octave is a lot. On a standard piano keyboard, you’d need more than two and a half octaves of keys to cover a single octave of 31edo pitches. This makes 31edo essentially impractical on conventional instruments without significant modification. In practice, 31edo is most comfortable on an isomorphic keyboard — most famously the Lumatone, a large hexagonal MIDI controller that can map any tuning system elegantly. Alternatively, producers can split 31edo across multiple instruments or layers in a DAW, each tuned to a different subset of the full system, and use them in combination.
For electronic producers, this “drawback” is actually barely a drawback at all. In a DAW, you’re not physically pressing 31 different keys — you’re programming MIDI, automating pitch, and resampling. The full 31-note palette is available to you through a plugin like Surge XT, Vital, or any synth that accepts Scala tuning files, or through software like MTS-ESP. The Lumatone, meanwhile, is increasingly affordable and available, and a growing number of composers are investing in one specifically for systems like 31edo.
Who’s exploring it: Levi McClain and Zhea Erose are among the most prominent contemporary composers producing music specifically designed to showcase 31edo’s unique capacities — McClain in particular has developed scales and compositional techniques that are becoming part of the emerging 31edo canon.
Additive Synthesis: The Perfect Match
Here’s something that will change how you think about synth design: additive synthesis is uniquely, almost magically well-suited to these new tuning systems.
Additive synthesis works by combining pure sine waves — each one corresponding to a specific harmonic — and adjusting the volume of each harmonic independently to shape the timbre. This means you can literally dial in exactly how strong the 7th harmonic is, exactly how prominent the 11th harmonic is, and build an instrument sound from the ground up that has those harmonics baked into its identity.
Now play that sound in 22edo, 26edo, or 31edo — a tuning that actually approximates those harmonics accurately — and something extraordinary happens. The timbre of the sound and the tuning of the notes are aligned. The 7th harmonic in your synth patch resonates with the 7-limit intervals in your tuning. The 11th harmonic sits in sympathetic relationship with the 11-limit intervals you’re playing. The result is a kind of harmonic coherence that you simply cannot achieve with these harmonics in 12edo. The sound feels more alive, more resonant, more internally consistent — like the whole thing is singing with one voice instead of several voices arguing.
If you’re an electronic producer already comfortable with additive or spectral synthesis, this is your direct path into these new universes. Design a patch with deliberately strong 7th and 11th harmonics. Load up a 31edo tuning file. Play a harmonic seventh chord. Listen to what happens. That sound — that feeling — is something genuinely new.
There’s No Need to Choose Just One
22edo, 26edo, and 31edo each have their strengths and weaknesses, and none of them is the “right answer.” They’re tools. Different jobs call for different tools.
Want something that forces you out of your comfort zone and into genuinely alien territory fast? 22edo. Want to apply your existing theory knowledge while still getting new harmonic colours with a manageable note set? 26edo. Want the richest, most accurate, most historically grounded, and most compatible option, and you’re willing to invest in a Lumatone or work creatively with a DAW? 31edo.
Or use all three. There’s no law that says your album has to be in one tuning system. You might use 22edo for a track that needs to feel completely alien and disorienting, 26edo for a track that needs to feel familiar-but-wrong, and 31edo for a track where you want maximum harmonic richness. Electronic music has always been about using every tool available — these three tuning systems are just three more tools, and they’re remarkably powerful ones.
Where to Start
Listen first. Search for these producers on YouTube and SoundCloud and just listen before you try to understand anything technically:
- 22edo: Brendan Byrnes, Sevish
- 26edo: Bryan Deister, Sevish
- 31edo: Levi McClain, Zhea Erose
Let your ears acclimatise. The strangeness becomes familiar faster than you’d expect, and within a few listens you start hearing the internal logic of each universe.
Read the maps. The Xenharmonic Wiki contains detailed — if sometimes dense — technical information about each of these tuning systems, their associated temperaments, scale families, historical context, and musical examples. If the technical language is opaque at first, that’s okay. You don’t need to understand the math to use the tools.
Play by ear. If none of the theory makes sense yet, just open Scale Workshop in your browser. It’s free, it runs in a browser, and it lets you load any tuning system and play notes on your keyboard right now. Load up 31edo. Play around. Find something that sounds interesting. Trust your ears — they know more than the theory does.
If you have access to a Lumatone or an isomorphic keyboard, even better — the physical layout of an isomorphic keyboard makes navigation of these large tuning systems intuitive in a way that a standard piano keyboard never could.
Be an Explorer
The history of music is the history of people discovering new sonic territories and mapping them for everyone who comes after. The shift from Pythagorean tuning to meantone opened up new harmonic possibilities in the Renaissance. The adoption of equal temperament made modulation fluid and keyboard music as we know it possible. Every era has had its tuning revolution, and we are living in the beginning of another one.
The difference now is that electronic producers have unprecedented power to explore these new territories. You don’t need to build a custom instrument or convince an orchestra to retune. You need a DAW, a tuning-capable synth, and a tuning file. The barriers to entry have never been lower.
22edo, 26edo, and 31edo are three parallel musical universes, each with their own sonic laws, their own emotional colours, their own forms of beauty that no one has fully mapped yet. There are melodies in these systems that nobody has ever heard. There are chord progressions that will move people in ways that 12edo simply cannot. There are timbres — synth patches tuned to resonate with 7th and 11th harmonics — that will feel entirely new and yet somehow deeply right.
Go find them. Break new ground. Pave the way for the future of expressive music composition.
The map is waiting to be drawn.
Further reading: Xenharmonic Wiki | Scale Workshop
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