I do not yet own a fretless guitar or a guitar fretted with quarter tones. I do have some fretlets but do not (yet) have a classical guitar to put them on. However, I do own a quarter-tone tuner. In this short post, I’m going to put it to use by experimenting with the most simple quarter-tone tuning I can think of: tune to standard tuning and drop every other string by a quarter tone. Here are the pitches of the six strings:
Where d means “half-flat”.
Here’s one rendering of the Bayati maqam starting on D (D, Ed, F, G, A, Bb, C, D) in this tuning:
Ed|-------------------------
B |-------------------------
Gd|-------------------------
D |-------------------------
Ad|------7------------------
E |--10-----13--15--17--18--
This is not great for speed or ease of playing. Here’s another:
Ed|---------------------
B |---------------------
Gd|---------------------
D |---------3--5--7--8--
Ad|------7--------------
E |--10-----------------
This might be an improvement depending on the specifics of your situation. I will post more when I’ve experimented with other fingerings and tunings.
Update
I’m using Guitar Tab Creator to create the tabs. Fingerings calculated using my program.
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