User:CompactStar/EDO impressions

Disclaimer: Don't expect my opinions to be very informed, I am not a microtonal composer.

1edo: Nothing much to say for this one. Percussion needs to take the center stage in any 1edo music. If you want to use an equal temperament with very large step sizes, I recommend a nonoctave one such as 1edf Othey have far more diversity).

2edo: There is the contrast between the 2 notes, but without anything else, it barely amounts to much.

3edo: Has a somewhat higher level of practicality than the other ultra-small 12edo subsets, with a mild consonance (the major third) and mild dissonance (minor sixth) available. The major third can be used as a dyad here. But it's still very difficult to avoid from sounding stale.

4edo: 3edo but minor, essentially. I'm unsure if it can be called any better than 3edo, being a downgrade in terms of consonance, although there are slightly more options for melody.

5edo: We have reached the actual EDOs. Very constrained, of course, but that has some advantages. Almost all combinations of notes sound satisfactory so it is ideal for "randomly-generated" music. 1\5 is the only interval which may be reasonably considered a "third", so it is almost an exclusively minor scale, but not in a way which gets exhausted very quickly like 4edo. The interseptimals are on a weird border region here, 1\5 being either a sharp supermajor second or flat interseptimal, and similarly for 4\5.

6edo: By far the most popular of the 12edo subsets, it has quite a directionless sound unless the type of very brute-force contrast from 3edo is applied. Works well for atonal music.

7edo: Interesting but I do slightly prefer 5edo. Equalization of many different scales, but most importantly to listeners accustomed to 12edo, diatonic. Analogous to 5edo, the neutral third and sixth are on a border region, in which they are slightly too neutral to sound supraminor or submajor, but too much in the direction of minor or major to properly be in the neutral area. I would rather use a quasi-equal heptatonic scale like 33edo's near-equalized diatonic or 3L 4s neutral third scale,, they are are similar in sound but more versatile and also can be expanded if needed.

8edo: