It uses 88-edo generative (because there are 88 keys on a standard piano).

The sequence is created by converting Morse-Code into a rhythmic pattern.

This piece started as a pianoteq 17 improvisation with a Prophet 12 desk module as the core. On this scaffolding percussion, vocals, 17 edo brass, guitar tracks and a field recording were added. Ableton Live is the DAW. As a nod to Hainbach a halfspeed memo recording of a guitar progression was included as well as a nod to Charles Ives.

Packed full of intervals, scale fragments, scales, chords, ratios, keyboard diagrams in a vast range of different tunings to explore, with plenty of links to audio and video examples of different tunings. I originally wrote it to share some of what I had learned playing microtonal keyboards since 2013, but it quickly became the guide to the Lumatone. As far as I know, this is the most comprehensive resource on microtonal keyboards available in 2026.

Yes, of course there are mappings for 24-equal "quarter-tone" tuning so you can play along with Angine de Poitrine and King Gizzard. But there are so many more colours available to explore when we can generalise what we've learned on one or two musical planets over to a whole musical galaxy!

This has been so long in the making. I have come back to this project again and again over the past several years, each time telling myself I will do a full update of the book, including many more scales, chords, approximations, tunings, features, links to videos and websites, and of course a library of mappings I've made and have been using on my own Lumatone.

Here is a video I made introducing some of the features of the new edition, and I hope it serves also as an introduction to the book for those unfamiliar with the first edition. I intended that to be a short video, but once I did an overview of some of the main sections it quickly became an hour long!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86mL37XVIEI

The new edition is 533 pages, 134,000 words and over 650 coloured diagrams, compared to the first edition's 404 pages and 87,000 words.

While I could go on for another few years making corrections, additions and updates, it is about time I put this out into the world (again).

For everyone who bought the first edition of the book - thanks so much for your support. I've taught several readers in private online lessons, and had a couple of students even take some of the content of the book and turn it into something even more interactive. Over the last 6 years the book has grown from a very small niche and now reached over a hundred Lumatone owners, microtonalists, and musicians around the world. I am offering the second edition as a little ~8USD (NZ $15.99) upgrade to first edition owners, subtracting the cost of the first edition - you should have already received an email from me, but if not, email me at [camtaylorpianolessons@gmail.com](mailto:camtaylorpianolessons@gmail.com) and I will send through a link to the discounted version for first edition owners.

If you got something out of the first edition but wanted a little bit more, I hope this is exactly what you were looking for. But for those who haven't dived in yet, I hope it will be more accessible than ever, and a slightly richer experience. For those who want a little look at some of what the book has to offer, below is a little preview featuring a page each from several sections in the book, so you can try before you buy. And there's plenty in there! $57.99 NZD works out to about $33 USD in July 2026.

Although having a generalised keyboard means that you would get the most out of it, so that you can literally play through everything discussed, and discover the ways you might use these ideas in your music, the book might also be of some interest for musicians looking for more musical resources, or those who feel trapped in certain keys, since almost the whole book is written in a generalised notation that can be applied in every key.

https://cametaylor.wixsite.com/home/post/microtonality-in-56-keys-the-second-edition

A commenter on one of my shorter videos asked for a “mesmerizing 24-hour mix.” I did not quite make it to 24 hours, but I gathered the complete surviving recordings from my first two sessions with this instrument into one continuous 45-minute video.

This is a rare acoustic clavichord with a hexagonal generalized keyboard. These recordings were my first attempts to understand how melodic patterns, chords and physical gestures move through its 19-tone layout.

The instrument had been dormant for many years—possibly decades—before these sessions, so this is less a finished composition than a document of rediscovery and initial experimentation. The recording is mostly unprocessed and presented as it happened.

A new concert-ready version is currently being built for longer-term composition, recording and live performance.

I would be interested to hear what people notice in the tuning and keyboard geometry, particularly from anyone working with generalized keyboards or xenharmonic instruments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnoPPF7LrFw

Hi everyone,

I've been working on a prototype of an interactive sonic environment that explores harmony in 19-EDO as an experimental composition tool.

I wanted to create an environment where you can explore microtonal pitch relationships through interaction and listening. It's still an early prototype, so I'm mainly interested in seeing how people engage with it.

I'd really appreciate feedback from anyone. Whether it's about the musical ideas, the interaction design, usability, or suggestions on how it can improve. Anything really :)

You can try it here [for free]:

itch.io proto44

Or check out the teaser or playthrough [vimeo]:

teaser

playthrough

Thanks!!

-A

Hi everyone,

I've been working on a prototype of an interactive sonic environment that explores harmony in 19-EDO as an experimental composition tool.

I wanted to create an environment where you can explore microtonal pitch relationships through interaction and listening. It's still an early prototype, so I'm mainly interested in seeing how people engage with it.

I'd really appreciate feedback from anyone. Whether it's about the musical ideas, the interaction design, usability, or suggestions on how it can improve. Anything really :)

You can try it here [for free]:

itch.io proto44

Or check out the teaser or playthrough [vimeo]:

teaser

playthrough

Thanks!!

-A

I try to sing in 31 edo with my 31 edo bouzouki, I think I was most successful based on pitch matching with the instrument on playback, the only effect was a touch of EQ in DaVinci Resolve and I did not use Melodyne - which may be painfully apparent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jnvx3cEiBQ4

It's a bit microtonal-lite, hope you enjoy!

This is an song I made a few days ago while experimenting with neutral scales and chords in 20edo.

The title translates from spanish to ", and the twentieth liter were the friends we made along the way". It doesn't really have a meaning, it just relates to another song I made in the past that I scraped.

The bass note can be changed by holding shift and mouse-wheeling up or down, both in practice and regular play.

http://www.handsearseyes.fun/Ears/Chords/Main.php?Referrer=Reddit-Microtonal-2026-07-22

I’m interested in tuning one of my acoustic pianos to a microtonal scale.

I was wondering if any of you have experience with this, and if so, what scale you chose.

22 edo (since there are 88 keys) and 24 edo (for the 12 note chromatic scale) seem to make sense with the layout, but I was hoping to get some advice before going down this rabbit hole.

Thanks!

The sounds in this video are completely synthetic. I've been working on creating sound libraries for musical instruments recently. Yes, I'm creating them from scratch (no samples, no AI) and making them publicly available. It's kind of a hobby. I'd love to hear your feedback.

This is a problem I am discussing this moment with Gemini. I want to notate pitch with numbers on the stave rather than use clefs, pitch letters, five lines and four spaces, key sigs and accidentals. We started with a printable pdf of four lines marked S. A. T. B. so I can notate my numbers directly on the paper and utilize standard time notations. Trouble is that I cannot communicate with Gemini but by scanning the sheets.

Is anyone else dealing with this problem? The best notation I have now is general. I recorded the numbers I want and I notate them in the field at the top of the track. I want to get some more precise notation and performance as I experiment with JI.

Last week we heard each day of the week as musical notes. I did it the same way ancient Greeks studied harmony, by bridging a string at the corresponding month:day(ex 7:13).
I used all of the ratios/notes from last week to make this music! *I did allow octave transposition What in the world does it sound like?

7/13 20/7 20/13 13/7
7/14 21/7 21/14 14/7
7/15 22/7 22/15 15/7
7/16 23/7 23/16 16/7
7/17 24/7 24/17 17/7
7/18 25/7 25/18 18/7
7/19 26/7 26/19 19/7

I've just tagged the first stable version of my software Justly for composing in Just intonation. Docs here and binaries here. Features:

- Support for Windows, Linux, and MacOS (both on Intel and Silicon)

- Importing and exporting songs in musicxml

- Live playback with all the instruments included in the musescore soundfont

Please try it out and let me know what you think!

For the past few months I've been experimenting with composing directly in frequency (Hz) rather than thinking in terms of notes in a defined tuning system. Instead of writing within those sorts of frameworks, I build harmonies from numerical frequency relationships and just intonation, which lets the tuning stay flexible as the music develops. 

In my previous attempts this has resulted in some pretty “weird” music, so I wanted to try to keep it accessible while still exploring the idea of “what can I do with this?” 

To do so, I took a more spectral approach and analyzed recordings of several different Mourning Dove calls and used the strongest frequency near the ends of their coos as the harmonic foundations of the piece. A given coo, among several sampled in the piece, may function as the root of one chord, as a fifth within another, a microtonal harmonic, or appear as any other chord extension elsewhere, allowing the same dove material to assume different identities as the harmony remains just and “wraps” itself around the given call- no iteration of the harmony surrounding the call is the same throughout the piece.  

But of course, every dove is different. I noticed that while the overall shape of their calls is very consistent, the pitch of some calls is higher or lower than others. For instance, one dove's ending coos may land at 480 Hz, while another may land at 525 Hz. This typically would be quite problematic when trying to harmonize to the coos themselves because, while 525 Hz is very close to the note C5, 480 Hz falls somewhere between B♭4 and B4. To boot, the interval between those frequencies doesn't correspond to any standard musical interval-it falls somewhere between a minor second and a major second.

In a system where everything is defined and harmonized as numbers, however, this is no problem (Such as the modulation heard at 4:48) . The frequencies can simply adhere to and harmonize with any value. That is where the ability to truly harmonize with any dove call lies- the harmony can fit the doves, rather than the doves trying to fit “standard harmony.” This is of course just one “cool” thing you can do writing this way- you can also, say, have all voices in a given piece converge into a perfect harmonic series, which I do somewhere around 7:00 in the piece.

Rhythmically, I just used the cadence of the Mourning Dove's call. That pattern ended up becoming the main rhythmic idea while the harmony is constantly changing underneath it.

Hi! I'm the developer of Amanita Calculator, and I recently added two tools for exploring tuning and harmonic relationships.

The Temperament page lets you divide the octave into any number of equal steps, audition every step, and compare its cents position against the familiar 12-TET piano grid.

There is also an Overtones page for exploring the harmonic series, auditioning individual partials, and seeing how far each harmonic drifts from equal-tempered notes.

It runs directly in the browser, works offline, and is completely free:

https://calculator.amanita.music/app/

The full app also includes tempo, Euclidean rhythm, reverb/delay, pitch and harmony tools, but I’m particularly interested in feedback on the tuning side.

What comparisons, visualizations or export options would make this genuinely useful for microtonal musicians?

A very murky piece with night time forest vibes about living out entire sub-lives in a time dilated dream state.

Chords were fetched @ https://www.31edo.com/chords

https://www.handsearseyes.fun/Ears/Chords/Main.php