# Ra Tuning



## median (Oct 17, 2012)

Anyone use Ra Tuning? How do you like it? I'm thinking of changing my tuning soon.


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## djyngwie (Oct 17, 2012)

Never heard of it. What is it?


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## median (Oct 18, 2012)

RA Music : Natural Standards


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Oct 18, 2012)




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## median (Oct 18, 2012)

SchecterWhore said:


>


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## GuitaristOfHell (Oct 18, 2012)

I HAVE to try this. I just wish I knew how to tune to it


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## celticelk (Oct 18, 2012)

So basically it's just tuning every string sixteen cents flat? I fail to see how this produces a major revolution in music.


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## Pooluke41 (Oct 18, 2012)

Wait.

Do I need to put my tinfoil hat on? Or is it not all that weird new age frequency bullshit.


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## median (Oct 18, 2012)

What we call 'A' is supposed to be 440, but Ra tuning says "actual" A is around 427 or so.


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## median (Oct 18, 2012)

celticelk said:


> So basically it's just tuning every string sixteen cents flat? I fail to see how this produces a major revolution in music.



I'm sure there were a lot of things I failed to see (at the time) that actually created a "revolution" of sorts in the past, to now. Who can know? It's just art.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Oct 18, 2012)

If we were somehow shackled by A440, and the savior was to be found in non-standard reference pitches, then punk music would have been so much more than a loose congregation of angst-filled middle class teenagers. And let's not forget that the guitar does not accurately produce equal temperament across its range. The guitar, being the most influential instrument of the twentieth century (don't delude yourself into thinking that it had something to do with its inaccuracies with intonation - the popularity of the guitar had everything to do with with its affordabilty; pragmatism wins here, as it did with the development of 12tet and pitch standard in the first place) would easily have inspired a pitch revolution, if there was a need for one. First world problems, you know?


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## no_dice (Oct 18, 2012)

Applying the law of sympathetic vibration to the human body (and spirit? ) is an interesting concept, but just doesn't motivate me to try it. It seems like a good way to alienate potential bandmates ("Sorry bro, we tune to Ra standards in this band!").


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## Gemmeadia (Oct 18, 2012)

Sounds pretty cool, id like to try it. So instead of 440, id switch my tuner to 424?


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## Winspear (Oct 18, 2012)

Gemmeadia said:


> Sounds pretty cool, id like to try it. So instead of 440, id switch my tuner to 424?



Yup - it's pretty simple just a different reference than standard tuning.

I do find it really amusing that people think this makes any difference, though  I can totally understand opinions that things like just intonation etc could have some spiritual connection since frequencies are all in tune and resonate etc etc, but a guitar simply pitch shifted down a few cents is still just as out of tune as usual!


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## Ultraussie (Oct 20, 2012)

It be weird, like Machine Head uses some whippywhoopy tuning between Drop B and Drop C and covering one of their songs you have to tune to whatever the tab is writeen in guitar pro and then tune to their spaz tuning to play with the actual recording...
But it sounds like an interesting concept.
Just be annoying to implement.
"Our albums released in A424 so you have to re-tunes your gutars to plays our songs"


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## median (Oct 20, 2012)

Over the years I have realized that almost ALL the artists I've ever seen or heard, who were trying to do something different (however minor it may seem) have always been met with resistance. I think it's in our human nature to get comfortable with what we are familiar with and/or used to (for all sorts of things). 

Ra tuning is actually quite easy to achieve. I use the gStrings tuner on my Droid and it works fine. You can tune down A440 to whatever you want. And I think there are many tuners that can do this now. 

In my experience, I have different reactions to different key signatures. So Ra tuning may just be another way to a different experience of music. For me, it's worth experimenting with. Sometimes the subtleties in music can create the most dramatic effects.


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## Overtone (Oct 20, 2012)

I'm skeptical on the concept because there are many many frequencies present in nature and they haven't given any solid proof that 424 is more significant than 440 or anything else in the neighborhood. Furthermore I think part of what makes the sound of nature have a special effect on us has more to do with the range of frequencies represented and the rhythms of the sounds we hear than what the baseline is. For example the sounds of the wind or the waves sort of are like white noise in that it's a massive spectrum of frequencies, and the sounds of a stream or birds have some soothing combination of randomness and pattern.


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## TomAwesome (Oct 20, 2012)

I've heard similar claims made about different reference frequencies, too. It doesn't look like there's ever anything to actually back it up, and if you think about it, it doesn't make much sense.



> The "A" note in RA music has a frequency centered on "A"=424 cycles per second, this turns out to be correct all over the world.



Based on what? Compared to what? How is "correct" being deciphered? Dolphins?



> RA music literally resonates with your body using frequencies that occur in nature.



I don't know if you've noticed, but most of our bodies are pretty squishy. We tend to absorb vibrations rather than resonate. Even if we did resonate, everyone's body is different and would resonate at different frequencies.

If you're interested in this kind of stuff, look into different kinds of temperaments. Guitars are horribly imperfect in this respect, and there are some who have done things to adjust the temperament and intonation of the fretted electric guitar with actual theory and science to back up their reasoning.


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## Winspear (Oct 21, 2012)

Yeah the whole body resonance thing really doesn't make any sense at all if you know anything about frequencies and acoustics. I can understand why so many people believe it because they just have to read the words "frequency" and "resonate" and they think it's magic


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## Dayn (Oct 21, 2012)

Less Chopra, more Chopin.


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## Edika (Oct 21, 2012)

What crap do people come up with to get famous and make a buck!


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## ElRay (Oct 21, 2012)

SchecterWhore said:


>


I'll see your :ugg: and raise you a






{{Once again, we need a witchcraft smilee}}

Oh, does AoA have a second account now?

Ray


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## SirMyghin (Oct 21, 2012)

Changing the frequency you tune to is a no change. This isn't resistance for innovation, it is resistance for irrelevant  Besides, everyone knows REAL A is actually 415.7 Hz. (I should add that is the stupidest shit ever as we just named the notes and assigned them frequencies, each and every one can be whatever the fuck we felt like, it is not as if we discovered note values, we merely assigned them.)

Also, go learn some actual wave mechanics, not assume you know it like most modern hoodoo new age folks. It will help filter this shit.


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## Miek (Oct 21, 2012)

I suggest such informative sites as:

Time Cube


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## Fiction (Oct 21, 2012)

So like dimebag darrell? (1/4 Step down, 425hz IIRC)

Edit;



> All the music that has been played and recorded since the year 1925 has been made to a "Standard tuning" that was agreed upon by the music industry



I like to think we have an underground music society run by the genre overlords, who settled after a brutal week long debate regarding the universal frequency.


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## Varcolac (Oct 22, 2012)

> All the music that has been played and recorded since the year 1925 has been made to a "Standard tuning" that was agreed upon by the music industry



Whoever wrote this clearly never had to play with, or even listen to, a bagpiper. A=470 wtf. Or, y'know, Pantera with 422.5ish. Or any of the orchestras which tune to 442 or 443. They're not exactly unknown (rhymes with "Moo Pork Schmilharmonic").


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## median (Oct 22, 2012)

LOL. The resistance continues! HAHA. 

I don't really mind what people tune to. I was just bringing it up to see if anyone else heard of it - not to start some fundamentalist sounding discussion about what tuning is "better". It's not like all of us who use some Ra tuning actually believe a lot of the "hype" around it. 

If the argument is, _"We don't like it because it changes the status quo of A-440"_ then I guess I don't really care. As an artist, the status quo doesn't matter to me. I will experiment with different things as I see fit (just as all of you will as well) - and that's fine. 

But if the argument is, "It's irrelevant" I say, in art, it is the artist that gets to decide what is relevant and what is not. A-440 is only 'relevant' because someone called it so. But it's not set in stone and with technology the way it is we can easily change tunings to whatever we like (depending upon our preferences).


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## Varcolac (Oct 22, 2012)

In art the artist decides, but we're not all solo artists. I tune to 440 because I enjoy playing with other musicians, not watching them tune. Since I play in several groups and use the same instruments for all of them, I see no reason to tune my instruments to some other standard than my peers. That's the reason for standardisation : if everyone tunes to the same frequency, my A and your A aren't going to clash horribly in the first bar of "Layla." 

Could be 440, could be 470, could be 439 (fuck yeah, prime numbers!), but I'll go with ease of use before trying to be "original" with 424. It's barely a quarter step flat, not a massive paradigm shift. You do it, have at it. More power to you. The content of the notes (harmony, melody, rhythm) will excite me far more than their reference pitch.


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## sage (Oct 22, 2012)

I can see how this is pleasing to the ear. If you listen to the examples given on the RA page, the music sounds a little more slack. It's kind of like listening to G'n'R. They tune to E flat. Or Pantera, who tuned wherever they felt like tuning. They had different guitars for different songs in some cases, none of them close to anything standard. But, yeah, I don't see how 424 can be deemed to be "more correct" than anything else. Just like I don't see the 20 note octave used in eastern music to be "more correct." Or Steve Vai's 24 note octave guitar. It's just different divisions of the octave. It'd be like saying 13/8 is actually the time signature that makes the most sense to whitetail deer because that's how they run in nature. Like everything else, fucking cool idea, just don't try to sell it to me as some new age bullshit.


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## Overtone (Oct 22, 2012)

I know someone who snores in 13/4


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## Fiction (Oct 22, 2012)

Id be worried about snoring in 15/16.


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## Pooluke41 (Oct 22, 2012)

Fiction said:


> Id be worried about snoring in 15/16.



A symptom of Sleep Apnea is snoring in 15/16. Probably. 

And it is the perfect name for a Blotted Science song and 15/16 would probably be a time sig for one of the riffs. 

Coincidence? No. Ron Jarzombek is the Wicked Sleep Fairy.


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## TomAwesome (Oct 22, 2012)

median said:


> LOL. The resistance continues! HAHA.
> 
> I don't really mind what people tune to. I was just bringing it up to see if anyone else heard of it - not to start some fundamentalist sounding discussion about what tuning is "better". It's not like all of us who use some Ra tuning actually believe a lot of the "hype" around it.
> 
> ...



The argument is that their arguments are invalid. If you want to tune to A=424hz, that's fine. I messed around with different reference pitches for a while, too. Just don't make up a bunch of pseudoscience claiming that a particular reference pitch is objectively better.


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## Ryan-ZenGtr- (Oct 22, 2012)

I read up on this on a few different occasions. You always end up with a history of Greek civic decisions regarding the idolitary nature of the Lydian scale, outlawed as it made listeners lazy and optimistic etc.

If you adjust the target pitch of the tuning you'll be adjusting the resonances the instrument produces. Most guitars sound and feel significantly better at lower tensions than E standard @ A=440hz, so there are direct advantages.

I had to sell my Engl Powerball as it produced mid range resonances which hurt my teeth (  ) so I can appreciate that the functional range of an instrument can have a direct physical consequence.

Just listen to a learner violinist and tell me that sound can't induce physical agony. Sonic weapons as crowd dispersal tools are quite commonplace now, often to discourage teenagers from loitering in town centres and find other uses in preventing wild animals trespassing on private property.

Interesting that an association with Egyptology has been grafted on to this concept, either to create a marketable mystique, or as a hallmark to brand those proclaiming the idea so others may recognise the source of the disinformation.

New age self help authors will be the end of all things worthwhile.


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## ixlramp (Oct 24, 2012)

I can imagine A424Hz sounding good simply because it is such a relief to our ears to hear 12 equal temperament a quartertone flat when music worldwide generally is being ever more rigidly tuned and auto-tuned to A440Hz 12 equal temperament.

As with A432Hz and LOVE528Hz that Ra music website is very naive. When i saw the thread title i had a funny feeling it was going to be another naive new-age music thing.

If you want to discover something truly revolutionary research 'Just intonation' and microtonal music, try some Jacky Ligon at fairly high volume: http://soundcloud.com/xen-arts/jacky-ligon-other-time

Perhaps try some TetraF metal in 16 tones per octave:



To answer your question, i haven't used Ra pitch however ... realising that A440Hz is arbitrary i wanted to use a reference pitch that was meaningful. I decided that one of the most fundamental and constant frequencies in human experience is the day frequency. My guitars are tuned microtonally and i often use the reference pitch of G -16.12 cents, this is an exact number of octaves above the day frequency. I simply like the idea of being 'in tune with nature (man)' but i don't necessarily believe it has an effect other than being a refreshing change from the tyranny of A440Hz.

Below i have transposed the day frequency by octaves until it becomes a beat, an audible pitch and finally a light frequency. The background colour is matched to this light frequency.






Some of my friends call me a hippy, and in some ways i am indeed a sort-of new age hippy, but not a naive uneducated fluffy-headed one, i have a degree in physics from Oxford university and have studied the maths behind microtonal theory, world music and the history of tuning.

EDIT  don't mean this in an arrogant way  almost failed the degree ...


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## Ami (Oct 25, 2012)

so many skeptics. If our brain's mental processing works on vibrational frequencies which can be recorded and categorized by computers, and our body's processes communicate with those vibrations, i don't see why it is so hard to be able to comprehend something like harmonizing with nature through music. kind of makes sense. an interesting experiment at the least.


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## Ami (Oct 25, 2012)

ixlramp said:


> I can imagine A424Hz sounding good simply because it is such a relief to our ears to hear 12 equal temperament a quartertone flat when music worldwide generally is being ever more rigidly tuned and auto-tuned to A440Hz 12 equal temperament.
> 
> As with A432Hz and LOVE528Hz that Ra music website is very naive. When i saw the thread title i had a funny feeling it was going to be another naive new-age music thing.
> 
> ...




It's easy to judge something when you don't understand it, that's more or less ignorance. But to see something, and be able to turn judgment into curiosity with an unbiased perspective and from there into innovation, now that's revolutionary! Right on my hippy brother!


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## Ryan-ZenGtr- (Oct 25, 2012)

^Dat muzik! sooo out of tune...  *quickly covers ears and reaches for mute*

Maybe I've been indoctrinated to accept traditional harmony, I can accept that. Perhaps others here share the similar burden of a strong dislike of poor tuning (perceived or otherwise) and poor harmony.

Can those with further research into this topic please post a dignified exponent of this style, please?

Also, why focus on one tuning? Why not multiples of Phi, primes or other mathematical foundation?

The important thing is that it sounds good when you press "Play", rather than it sounding good when you lecture fellow physics students about how it was made. 
That's the joy of music: good music can reach out to many people.
(No need to discuss the appeal of niche music, for me right now)

*More examples please!*


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## Overtone (Oct 25, 2012)

Ami said:


> so many skeptics. If our brain's mental processing works on vibrational frequencies which can be recorded and categorized by computers, and our body's processes communicate with those vibrations, i don't see why it is so hard to be able to comprehend something like harmonizing with nature through music. kind of makes sense. an interesting experiment at the least.



On what level do our bodies work based on vibrations?


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## Razzy (Oct 25, 2012)

median said:


> What we call 'A' is supposed to be 440, but Ra tuning says "actual" A is around 427 or so.



Cool, so that one note will resonate with everything in mother nature? (It won't, by the way. Everything is going to resonate at a different frequency.)


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## ixlramp (Oct 25, 2012)

Ryan-ZenGtr- said:


> please post a dignified exponent of this style


Klangwirkstoff - Label
Klang' has some good music, i think some of it is just intonation based on reference pitches from molecules or planets etc:
Klangwirkstoff - Morphon - OM Mars Venus - KW003


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## TheOddGoat (Oct 25, 2012)

I tune with A=425hz as a reference when I play or write my own things or sometimes when I am solo.

Feels a bit different, shakes me out of my comfort zone a tiny bit.

I don't think this is because it's 425hz. I think it's because it's not 440hz.


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## Ryan-ZenGtr- (Oct 29, 2012)

@*ixlramp*

Thanks for the recommendation. Interesting sounds to say the least.

I normally make something like these synth sound scapes as an intro for my tracks, then fade in the guitars. 
I consider it a courtesy so listeners know how loud the track will be before the music begins and can adjust their volumes appropriately.


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## Grimbold (Nov 6, 2012)

do the people who made that site have even the slightest clue of what they are saying?


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## ixlramp (Nov 6, 2012)

This video full of delusions tends to explain it clearer than the text at the site. Apparently he's patenting a conversion process to digitally detune modern music to RA frequency, and his business plan is to re-issue modern music tuned to that frequency.

If he wants to create music containing the mathematics of Phi and Pi he should derive a microtonal scale from those, that would be more meaningful than just detuning our standard 12 equal temperament.

Some microtonal music in Phi related tunings:


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## Grimbold (Nov 7, 2012)

well that just made me poop my pants a little... very cool stuff


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## Tasteh (Nov 30, 2012)

I felt like it was a lot easier to write in.


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## median (Dec 26, 2012)

Ok, so now that we've all "gotten it out of our systems" (i.e. - the bashing), mostly, let me say this. I am a drummer, recording engineer, guitar player, bass player, and a skeptic (non-theist). Why does this matter? Because I did not bring up this topic to promote some new-age bullshit, as I don't promote such mantras. Alan Howarth is pretty big in the industry of film scoring (Halloween, Star Trek, The Exorcist, Apollo 13, etc), and I've spoken with him personally (at a friends studio) about Ra Tuning. We were working on some analog to digital sound dumps (of the original Halloween reel to reel film scores), and he brought it up. I was interested to know what it was and thought to raise the question here. That is all. 

Overall, it's about preference - not magic or myth.


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## InfinityCollision (Dec 28, 2012)

median said:


> Ok, so now that we've all "gotten it out of our systems" (i.e. - the bashing), mostly, let me say this. I am a drummer, recording engineer, guitar player, bass player, and a skeptic (non-theist). Why does this matter?



It doesn't matter. The linked site uses new-age nonsense and a bunch of incorrect assertions to promote a product and the response was appropriate. Bumping the topic a month later doesn't change that. If there'd been less numerology magic sprinkled on, the response would have been somewhat different. As it is you still got some fairly productive discussion out of it regarding the actual significance (and largely lack thereof) of using A424 along with some information on what for lack of a better word I will characterize as "actual" microtonal systems as opposed to detuned 12-tone with a sprinkling of numerology. It's not magic, it's just a transposition of slightly more than a quarter step down. Non-A440 tunings are nothing new, in popular music or classical. If you like the lower tuning, go for it.


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## ixlramp (Dec 29, 2012)

EDIT Found some more videos and i'm not impressed. I was very ready to soften my atitude on this but the bashing is justified. In no way is my ridicule directed toward yourself median.

Alan Howarth -Ra Music - Part 1 - YouTube

Alan Howarth -Ra Music - Part 2 - YouTube

Alan Howarth -Ra Music - Part 3 - YouTube

Alan is seeking a worldwide patent on the concept of pitch shifting music down to ra frequency and has a website where you can upload some music and have it pitch shifted and downloaded for 99 cents 

I hope he discovers microtonality because he can then use the microtonal phi and pi intervals and create scales with them, using A424Hz as the tonic frequency.


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## SirMyghin (Dec 29, 2012)

Think of it this way Median, if you had chosen your preface better, and asked 'does anyone tune to a non-standard reference pitch', opposed to linking to pseudo-science mumbo-jumbo, this would have been averted entirely.


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## RGA8 (Jan 1, 2013)

at the 8:15 mark the narrator talks about science of musical tones.


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## ixlramp (Jan 4, 2013)

To my surprise, in a pile of scrap paper i have just found details of a microtonal scale derived from phi... an example of a direction ra music could have taken.

Phi = 1.618033988...

The golden ratio phi can be expressed as a musical interval by having either the frequencies or the wavelengths of 2 notes in the ratio phi. Either way the interval is 8.33 semitones. 33 cents or one third of a semitone sharp of a minor sixth.

To create a scale with the phi interval appearing as many times as possible between note pairs, we stack the phi interval on the tonic, in the same way that the major scale is created by stacking fifths on the tonic. Phi becomes the 'characteristic interval' of the scale.

Stacking 6 intervals results in a 7 tone scale called a 'Moment Of Symmetry' because there are only 2 step sizes instead of 3.

7 tone MOS Phi scale in semitones
0__1__2__4.66__5.66__8.33__9.33__12

The 2 step sizes are roughly 1 and 2.66 semitones EDIT 2.66 semitones is the 'just intonation' 'blue note' septimal subminor third 7/6. Used in blues and jazz.

A guitar with 36 frets per octave produces these microtonal intervals to within 1 cent...







Microtonal Guitar Gallery

EDIT It's possible to retune a normal guitar to an open phi tuning and play this scale
First retune to major thirds tuning and then microretuning strings...
high
+33 cents
+66 cents
0
+33 cents
+66 cents
0
low
Then play across the strings using 3 adjacent frets.


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