Isorhythmic Gardens
Study
Duration: 6:20
Created: February 2026
This piece was originally released here, on Music and Math and Feelings.
Even a peaceful and steady forward momentum can be destabilized by the push and pull of an independent system.
There’s no controlling it. Time stretches and contracts, creating a dysphoria that stains reality.
Acceptance means simply floating through it all.
About the tuning
Isorhythmic Gardens is composed using two scales:
one very familiar diatonic justly-tuned scale of 7 notes
(quite suddenly) a far less familiar seventeen note construction (you’ll know when it happens).
For a deep dive into Moments of Symmetry and why they can help explain the pull toward scales of 5, 7, and 12 notes throughout human history, check out this post: Moments of Symmetry.
For curiosity’s sake, here’s my own notes I created as I worked on this piece:
