Desert Winds in 23EDO
23 July 2011 Filed in: Music | Tuning
Theory
Listen to Desert Winds
This is an improvisation I recorded in a single take playing an Omnisphere’s sound. I did not edit a single note but copied parts of it assigning them to a flute and a synth bass sound to enhance top and bottom lines then I edited the overall volume of this piece and the relative loudness of components of a couple of patches (you can see on the picture below, 1A and 3B levels being automated).

This piece is the outcome of a research about 23EDO by Igliashon Jones (Igs).
In the research he presents four 23EDO heptatonic (7 notes) MOS modes, so I started wondering if I could elaborate on those scales and come up with dodecatonic (12 notes) variations of those modes (simply because I wanted to try out 23EDO on my Halberstadt keyboard).
I could only come up with 2 dodecatonic MOS modes of 23EDO:

(steps 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 23)

(steps 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 23)
The first one is not very compelling (too close to 12EDO), the second one is simply absurd!
So I gave up MOS scales and moved on. The following strategy was to take those heptatonic scales by Igs and intersperse 5 more steps to make them dodecatonic.
The resulting scales have 3 or 4 step sizes that I call s (small), m (medium, L (large) and XL (extra large). Here they are:

derived from MOS eptatonic 3L+4s
(steps 0, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20, 21, 23)
this is the one I used for Desert Winds

derived from MOS eptatonic 2L+5s
(steps 0, 2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 23)

derived from MOS eptatonic 4L+3s
(steps 0, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 22, 23)

derived from MOS eptatonic 1L+6s
(steps 0, 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, 20, 23)

derived from MOS eptatonic 4L+3s
(steps 0, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 23).
These ones are only a few of the possible dodecatonic combinations of 23EDO. Then, of course, it is possible to create sub-modes of these dodecatonic scales as I did with Desert Winds where, I guess, I have not used more than 8 out of 12 notes of the chosen scale.