Musical tuning

This page is about musical 'systems' of tuning, for the musical 'process' of tuning see tuning.

Tunings of other scale systems

• Slendro, a scale used in Indonesian gamelan music with five notes to the octave
• Pelog, the other main gamelan scale, with seven notes to the octave
• Harry Partch, an American composer who wrote musical and dramatic works in just intonation
• Xenharmonic
• Bohlen-Pierce scale
• LucyTuning, a microtuning system created by Charles Lucy, devised from Pi and the writings of John 'Longitude' Harrison. Designed to emulate Eastern tuning systems as well as Western.
• Alpha and beta scales of Wendy Carlos
• Quarter tone scale, first presented by Mikha'il Mishaqah, used in the theory of Arab music tone systems. From this the heptatonic scales consisting of minor, neutral, and major seconds of maqamat are chosen, this system was first promoted by al-Farabi using a 25 tone scale.
• Stretched tuning makes an octave represent slightly more than a doubling in frequency. It is usually applied to keyboard instruments with tines or thick strings, where the ratio of harmonic to fundamental can be slightly greater than a true integer ratio (typically piano and electric piano). Stretched tuning is sometimes claimed to give a warmer sound to chords.