A list of pleasant pentatonic and hexatonic scales with microtones
So you’ve heard that there’s a whole world of music beyond the 12 notes on a standard piano keyboard. And now you’re curious — but also a little intimidated. Words like “just intonation,” “equal temperament,” and “prime limit” sound like they belong in a physics textbook, not a music studio.
This article is for you. It’s a practical starting-point list of 14 scales — each of them containing five or six notes — that tend to sound beautiful, interesting, and emotionally resonant even on a first encounter. They were chosen specifically because they’re forgiving: you don’t need deep theoretical knowledge to make something that sounds good in them. You just need curiosity and something to play them on.
Each entry describes what the scale sounds like, explains the basic idea behind it in plain language, and gives you a recommendation for a larger tuning system to explore if you fall in love with the sound and want to go deeper.
A few words for the newcomer: what even is a microtonal scale?
Standard Western music uses 12 notes per octave, evenly spaced. This system — called 12-tone equal temperament, or 12edo — is the tuning you hear in virtually all pop, rock, jazz, and classical music today. It’s the tuning of every standard piano, every guitar, every synthesizer preset you’ve ever heard.
Microtonal music simply means music that uses a different tuning. That might mean fewer notes per octave (like 5 or 7), more notes (like 19, 22, or 31), or scales built from acoustically pure mathematical ratios rather than equal divisions. The word “microtonal” literally suggests “smaller than a semitone,” but in practice it’s used to mean any tuning that departs from the 12-note standard — even those with larger steps.
The world of microtonal tuning is vast, and much of it sounds genuinely alien or challenging at first. But there are corners of it that are immediately inviting. That’s where this list lives.
To try these scales for yourself, a good free tool is Scale Workshop, a browser-based app that lets you enter any scale and play it with your computer keyboard or a MIDI device. You can copy the scale definitions given here directly into it.
Part One: Tempered Scales
Tempered scales are built by dividing the octave (or some other interval) into equal steps, or by stacking a generator interval repeatedly. Like 12edo itself, they involve tiny compromises from pure mathematical ratios — but those compromises buy you consistency and the ability to transpose freely.
1. 5edo — The Neutral Pentatonic
Sounds like: Airy, spacious, suspended between major and minor
5edo is the simplest of all equal temperaments: the octave divided into five perfectly equal steps of 240 cents each. (For reference, a standard semitone is 100 cents.)
You might expect something this simple to sound crude or unfinished. Instead, 5edo has a hauntingly beautiful quality. Its single step size of 240 cents sits almost exactly halfway between a major second (200 cents) and a minor third (300 cents), which means the whole scale floats in a neutral zone — it doesn’t sound major, it doesn’t sound minor. It sounds like neither, or like both at once.
Think of the familiar major pentatonic (C–D–E–G–A) and the minor pentatonic (C–E♭–F–G–B♭). In 12edo, these are distinct scales with different emotional flavours. In 5edo, you get a scale that is the exact midpoint between them. The result is something airy and open, like a musical landscape that refuses to declare its mood. It sits suspended, which some listeners find deeply peaceful and others find quietly unsettling in the best way.
5edo is also one of the easiest microtonal scales to actually play, since there’s only one interval to worry about. Any sequence of notes sounds reasonably coherent.
Scale Workshop definition: 240.0 480.0 720.0 960.0 1200.0
If you love this, explore: Blackwood[10], which adds a second layer of 5edo stacked inside a chromatic framework, giving you a 10-note palette with all the colour of 5edo plus more harmonic options. Also worth trying: Oceanfront[12], which is a 12-note scale that contains 5edo-like intervals in a superpyth context.
2. The 33edo Equiheptatonic — The Warm Neutral Seventh
Sounds like: Sandy, rusted, warm — halfway between major and natural minor
Just as 5edo sits between the major and minor pentatonic scales, 33edo’s equiheptatonic (or “equal-step seven-note”) scale sits exactly between the major scale and the natural minor scale. Its seven notes are all roughly-equally spaced within the octave, each step being about 182 cents — slightly larger than a whole tone in 12edo (200 cents), but with no semitones at all.
The result has a very distinctive character. Without semitones, there are no traditional leading tones, no strong pulls toward resolution. The harmony feels open, non-urgent, almost ancient. The neutral thirds (neither major nor minor, sitting at about 364 cents) give it a warm, dusty, slightly Middle Eastern quality. Think of the colour of terracotta, or the sound of a distant instrument heard through an open window on a dry afternoon.
Unlike the more difficult equal-step seven-note scale (7edo, which many people find too strange too quickly), the 33edo equiheptatonic is slightly more forgiving because it tempers (smooths) the rough edges a bit.
Scale Workshop definition: 181.8 327.3 509.1 690.9 873.7 1018.2 1200.0
If you love this, explore: The full 33edo itself, which contains this scale as a subset plus many other interesting options. Also Dreamtone[12], a 12-note scale built in a related neutral-interval tuning that gives you more chordal options while keeping the warm, sandy quality.
3. Superpyth[6] — Ancient and Passionate
Sounds like: The minor hexatonic scale, but older and more intense
Superpyth is a temperament generated by a perfect fifth that’s tuned slightly sharp — sharper than the 702 cents of Pythagorean tuning, somewhere around 710 cents. This gives it a supermajor third of roughly 9/7 (around 435 cents) and a subminor third of roughly 7/6 (around 267 cents). If you’ve heard medieval European or Arabic music, you might recognise something of that sharp, passionate quality in these intervals.
The 6-note MOS scale of Superpyth — Superpyth[6] — is essentially a minor hexatonic scale (like the standard minor pentatonic with an added note), but with those slightly stretched intervals. The minor thirds are flatter and more urgent, the major thirds are wider and more vibrant. It has an ancient, pre-common-practice quality — not quite Arabic, not quite medieval European, but in that family. It’s a scale that makes melodies feel like they have stakes.
If you love this, explore: Superpyth[17] for a full 17-note palette, or 22edo as a natural home for superpyth harmony with rich septimal chords.
4. Porcupine[6] — Smooth but Vivid
Sounds like: Something between 6afdo and the minor hexatonic — subtly strange, smooth, and lush
Porcupine temperament is generated by a minor whole tone of about 160–165 cents (flatter than 12edo’s 200-cent whole tone). Its name comes from Herman Miller’s Mizarian Porcupine Overture written in 15edo, though 22edo is often considered the ideal porcupine tuning. Three stacked generators reach a perfect fourth, which gives porcupine scales a characteristic “equal tetrachord” feel.
The 6-note porcupine scale — Porcupine[6] — has a smooth, lush quality that can feel similar to the 6afdo scale (see below in the JI section), but arrived at from a different direction. The intervals are slightly different and there’s a subtle difference in texture: where 6afdo has some sharp edges, Porcupine[6] is a little more evenly rounded. But it’s also slightly less vivid, slightly less tropical. If 6afdo is a plumeria flower, Porcupine[6] is a smooth river stone — beautiful, pleasant, and a little more understated.
What makes porcupine particularly interesting is that it contains surprisingly good approximations of the 11th harmonic, so even simple melodies can have a faint undertone of exotic richness.
If you love this, explore: Porcupine[15] for a lush 15-note palette, or 22edo, which is probably the most popular all-purpose gateway into non-meantone microtonality.
5. Orwell[5] — Dark, Broody, and Full of Life
Sounds like: Jarring at first, then deeply expressive and emotionally rich
Fair warning: this one takes a little longer to settle into than the others on this list. But the payoff is real.
Orwell temperament is generated by an interval of roughly 271 cents — a subminor third, close to the 7/6 ratio. The temperament is named because 19 steps of 84edo (one of its supporting equal temperaments) is a possible generator, and 19/84 is an Orwellian fraction. More usefully: orwell divides the interval of a perfect twelfth into seven equal steps, and its smallest scale — Orwell[5] — contains two slightly different flavours of tritone but no conventional fourth or fifth.
That absence of the familiar fourth and fifth is exactly what makes this scale so disorienting at first and so rewarding later. Without those anchoring intervals, the scale doesn’t behave like anything you’ve heard before. It floats. It broods. But it doesn’t feel empty — it feels like a world that has different rules, rules that, once you accept them, make perfect sense on their own terms. The two differently-sized tritones create a strange internal asymmetry that gives melodies a restless, searching quality.
Once you’ve spent time in Orwell[5], it starts to feel not just usable but emotionally articulate in a way that’s completely its own.
If you love this, explore: Orwell[22], a large and harmonically rich scale, or the excellent temperament environments of 22edo and 31edo.
6. Bridgetown[5] — 5edo with Bite
Bridgetown is a temperament with a generator of roughly 252 cents — close to 5edo’s 240-cent equal step, but slightly larger, and not equal. The result is a 5-note scale that has a similar overall shape and flavour to 5edo — that same floating, neutral-between-major-and-minor quality — but with a little more internal variety. Because the steps aren’t all equal, some intervals have a slight sharpness or bite to them that 5edo’s perfect evenness smooths away.
If 5edo is like walking barefoot on smooth sand, Bridgetown[5] is like walking on sand with the occasional small pebble. The texture is similar, but you’re more aware of your surroundings. Bridgetown has a slightly more alert, slightly more intense character that some listeners prefer once they’ve spent time with both.
If you love this, explore: Bridgetown[19] or 19edo which have excellent minor-like harmony, or 24edo, the quarter-tone system used in Arabic theory that is easy to access on many software instruments.
7. Roulette[6] — Whole-Tone Scale with Colour
Sounds like: The whole-tone scale — dreamlike and ungrounded — but richer and more dimensional
If you’ve ever played Debussy, you’ve probably encountered the whole-tone scale — a six-note scale made entirely of equal major-second steps, giving it that famous hovering, dreamlike quality. It’s beautiful, but it has a certain flatness: because every step is the same size, there’s no hierarchy, no gravitational pull, nothing to anchor you. Some call it “ungrounded.”
Roulette temperament, whose 6-note MOS scale Roulette[6] offers a similar overall shape, is like the whole-tone scale with internal variation added back in. The steps are no longer all equal, so there’s a gentle internal hierarchy — a faint sense of direction and weight — while the dreamlike, floating quality of the whole-tone family is largely preserved. You get the best of both: the unmoored, luminous atmosphere of the whole-tone scale, plus just enough variety to sustain melodic interest over time.
If you love this, explore: Roulette[13] and Roulette[19] for larger roulette scales with more harmonic resources.
8. Augene[6] — The Augmented Scale with Flavour
Sounds like: The augmented scale, but with more character and sting
Augene temperament (named after “augmented” and theorist Gene Ward Smith) has a period of a major third (one-third of an octave) and a generator of roughly a whole tone. This gives it a structure deeply related to the augmented chord and augmented scale of classical harmony — but displaced, sharpened, given edges.
If you’ve ever used the augmented scale in jazz or neo-classical music and found it beautiful but a bit too smooth, too glassy, Augene[6] is your answer. The slight tuning sharpness gives it more grittiness, more presence. It retains the augmented scale’s characteristic three-fold symmetry (three identical “sections” per octave), but the intervals within each section have a microtonal bite that makes them feel more alive. It’s a scale that rewards players who want colour but not chaos.
If you love this, explore: Augene[9] for a 9-note version with more notes to work with, or 27edo, a natural home for augene temperament.
Part Two: Just Intonation Scales
Just intonation (JI) means tuning based on pure mathematical ratios — the relationships found in the natural harmonic (overtone) series. When two notes are tuned to a simple ratio like 3/2 (a pure perfect fifth) or 5/4 (a pure major third), they lock together with a clarity and resonance that tempered intervals can only approximate. JI scales have a different character from tempered ones: they tend to have more internal variety (because not all steps are equal or related by a single generator), and they can have an acoustic richness that sounds almost physical.
The JI scales in this section range from ancient to contemporary in theoretical origin. Some are taken directly from the harmonic series. Others are built using a structure called a hexany — a six-note set invented by theorist Erv Wilson, constructed by taking four “harmonic factors” and combining them two at a time. Hexanies have a beautiful mathematical symmetry: every six-note set contains eight just intonation triads, and every pair of adjacent triads shares two notes. They’re designed for rich, consonant harmony in a small package.
9. 6afdo — Lush, Tropical, and Sharp-Edged
Sounds like: Something gorgeous but with thorns — lush, tropical, vivid
“afdo” stands for “ascending from,” so 6afdo means “the 6-note scale ascending from the harmonic series.” More specifically, it is the 6th mode of the overtone scale built on the harmonic series — the set of pure frequency ratios 1, 9/8, 5/4, 11/8, 3/2, 7/4 when octave-reduced and rotated. (The exact pitches and their ratios above the root are 1/1, 9/8, 5/4, 11/8, 3/2, 7/4.)
What makes 6afdo remarkable is that every interval in it comes directly from the natural harmonic series, so the notes lock together with a physical, almost acoustic resonance. The scale has a warm, lush quality — some players describe it as “tropical,” reminiscent of humid air and bright colours. But it’s not syrupy: the 11/8 interval (a neutral tritone, roughly halfway between a fourth and a tritone) and the 7/4 (the natural seventh, slightly flatter than 12edo’s minor seventh) give it sharp edges, a little danger. Beautiful, yes — but with complexity.
This scale is natively at home in 11-limit just intonation, meaning you’d need a tuning system that can express the 11th harmonic accurately to play it pure.
If you love this, explore: 11-limit just intonation more broadly, or Harry Partch’s famous 43-tone scale, which contains this kind of material in abundance.
10. The Otonal Pentad (8:9:10:12:14:16) — Sweetest on the List
Sounds like: Impossibly sweet, warm, and barbershop-rich
This scale is built from a straight slice of the harmonic series: ratios 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, and 16 (which reduce to the root with intervals 1/1, 9/8, 5/4, 3/2, 7/4, 2/1). It can also be described as a 5-note subset of 8afdo (the octave-spanning harmonic series from the 8th to 16th harmonic), or as a rotation of 5afdo.
Whatever framing you prefer, this is the sweetest scale on this entire list. The intervals all come from the lowest possible harmonic ratios, meaning they lock together with almost uncanny clarity. The 9/8, 5/4, and 3/2 are pure and resonant; the 7/4 adds a warm, slightly flat “barbershop seventh” that sounds like the kind of chord a barbershop quartet reaches for instinctively without knowing why. It’s a sound that feels simultaneously ancient and effortless.
Because it’s taken from the overtone series, it belongs to the family called otonality — the “over-tone” direction, as opposed to the undertone direction (utonality). Otonal chords have a characteristic focused, bright quality.
If you love this, explore: 7-limit just intonation broadly, the 32afdo scale (harmonics 32 to 64, a rich 32-note palette), and the concept of over-2 primodality.
11. The Cosmic Scale (32:43:48:51:57:64) — A Mystical Space Adventure
Sounds like: The outer reaches of space — mysterious, vast, otherworldly
This is a more unusual scale: a 6-note selection from the upper harmonic series (harmonics 32 through 64), specifically the ratios 32:43:48:51:57:64. These are high-numbered harmonics, which means the intervals between adjacent notes are smaller and more closely spaced than in the lower-harmonic scales above — and some of them are intervals you simply cannot approximate in 12edo at all.
The result has a genuinely strange, outer-space quality. It’s not threatening or harsh — it’s more like the feeling of looking at a night sky and comprehending distance for the first time. The intervals have a shimmer and a strangeness that doesn’t resolve into anything familiar, but it’s beautiful rather than abrasive. Harmonic series scales at this altitude often evoke images of astronomy or ancient mythology — things that are beyond human scale but still somehow luminous and meaningful.
This scale lives within 32afdo, the 32-note scale spanning harmonics 32 to 64.
If you love this, explore: 32afdo as a larger tuning, and the concept of over-2 primodality for understanding how these harmonic-series scales are organized.
12. The 5–7–15–17 Hexany — Thorny and Consonant
Sounds like: Unexpectedly consonant for a 17-limit scale — angular but beautiful, best above 17/14
Recall that a hexany is built by taking four numbers and multiplying them together in all possible pairs of two. For the 5–7–15–17 hexany, the four factors are 5, 7, 15, and 17. The six notes are: 5×7=35, 5×15=75, 5×17=85, 7×15=105, 7×17=119, 15×17=255, all octave-reduced. This is a 17-limit scale — the 17th harmonic is involved — which in ordinary tuning theory terms is quite far out. But despite the high prime limit, it has a surprising number of consonances due to the hexany’s structural symmetry.
This scale works best when you rotate it so that 17/14 (roughly 336 cents, a neutral third slightly flatter than 12edo’s minor third) is at the bottom. In this rotation, you get a series of intervals that feel angular and fresh — nothing quite like anything you’ve heard in 12edo — but with underlying harmonic logic holding them together. It’s the kind of scale that rewards careful listening: at first encounter it might seem merely unusual, but patterns of beauty start to emerge as you explore it.
If you love this, explore: No-11s no-13s 19-limit just intonation (JI that uses the prime numbers 2, 3, 5, 7, 17, and 19 but skips 11 and 13), and the concept of over-17 primodality.
13. The 3–7–9–19 Hexany — Aquatic and Floaty
Sounds like: Bubbles in a coral reef — pretty, floaty, gently bent
The 3–7–9–19 hexany uses the four factors 3, 7, 9, and 19. The resulting six notes — 3×7=21, 3×9=27, 3×19=57, 7×9=63, 7×19=133, 9×19=171, all octave-reduced — include a 19-limit interval: the involvement of the 19th harmonic adds a gentle, slightly bent quality to some of the scale’s intervals, like a note that’s slightly detuned in the most charming way possible.
The overall character is aquatic and buoyant. There’s a floatiness to this scale, a sense of being suspended in something fluid and translucent. Some of the intervals have a bendy, slightly wavering quality (the quarter-tone and sixth-tone inflections near the 19th harmonic) that gives melodies a subtle wobble, like a note seen through moving water. It’s one of the most immediately pleasant hexanies on first encounter: consonant enough to feel inviting, unusual enough to feel genuinely new.
If you love this, explore: No-11s no-13s 19-limit just intonation, and over-7 primodality.
14. The 1–13–19–23 Hexany — Neutral Thirds and a Hidden Fifth
Sounds like: Playful, rich, with two distinct flavours of neutral third — best above 19/16
This hexany uses the four factors 1, 13, 19, and 23 — a highly unusual set of primes that skips the most common harmonic factors entirely (no 3, no 5, no 7). The six notes include intervals from the 13th, 19th, and 23rd harmonics, making this a scale from what’s called the 2.13.17.19.23 equalizer subgroup — a highly unusual collection of prime numbers chosen for their specific intervallic properties.
What makes this scale particularly fun to play is that it contains two distinct flavours of neutral third: two intervals that both sit between a minor and major third, but at slightly different sizes. This gives it a remarkable internal variety for such a small scale — almost as if you have two different emotional “gears” built into the same six notes. The scale also contains the interval 368/247, which is a very close approximation to the 3/2 perfect fifth (about 0.04 cents off) despite the scale containing no factors of 3. This is a phenomenon called fudging: a complex ratio that very closely resembles a simple one by coincidence, adding a familiar anchor in an otherwise very exotic scale. Best explored in the rotation above 19/16.
If you love this, explore: The broader world of 2.13.17.19.23 equalizer subgroup just intonation.
How to actually try these scales
The most accessible way to start is with Scale Workshop (free, browser-based). You can enter the cent values or ratios listed on the Xenharmonic Wiki page for the scale, assign them to your computer keyboard or a MIDI controller, and start playing immediately. No software installation required.
If you use a DAW, the Entonal Studio plugin is your best option for using these scales across all your VSTs (even those without nativr support). Otherwise, individual VST plugins like Bounce (free) or the built-in microtuning in Surge XT allow you to load .scl files (Scala format), which is the standard format for microtonal scales. Scale Workshop can export directly to .scl.
The community around these tunings is active and welcoming. The Xenharmonic Wiki has deep theoretical material on every scale listed here. The Discord server “Xenharmonic Alliance” and the Facebook group of the same name are full of composers, theorists, and curious musicians at every level of experience.
A brief glossary
edo — Equal divisions of the octave. 12edo is standard Western tuning. 5edo, 19edo, 22edo, 33edo etc. are other equal tunings.
Just intonation (JI) — Tuning based on pure mathematical ratios from the harmonic series, with no tempering.
MOS scale — “Moment of Symmetry” scale. A scale generated by stacking one interval repeatedly until a certain number of notes is reached. Written as TemperamentName[number of notes], e.g. Porcupine[6].
Hexany — A 6-note just intonation scale invented by Erv Wilson, built from four harmonic factors combined two at a time.
Otonality / Utonality — Otonal means “overtone-based” (intervals ascending from the harmonic series). Utonal means “undertone-based” (the mirror image). Otonal chords tend to sound bright and resonant; utonal chords tend to sound more diffuse.
Neutral third — An interval between a minor third and a major third, neither one nor the other. Common in Arabic, Turkish, and many microtonal scales.
Subminor third / Supermajor third — A third flatter than minor (subminor, approx. 7/6) or sharper than major (supermajor, approx. 9/7). These intervals are close to the 7th harmonic and have a characteristic bluesy, septimal quality.
Prime limit — The highest prime number involved in a just intonation tuning. 5-limit JI uses primes 2, 3, 5. 7-limit adds 7. 11-limit adds 11, and so on. Higher limits mean more exotic intervals.
Good luck, and welcome to the wider world of sound.
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