G'day yet again "The GUEST who was BUTTERFLY",

I missed replying to your remark: "I would have thought that Western Music was more melody oriented!". I think that the Chinese had reached an "orchestral" approach to constructing large group music long before the Western world "invented" it. They claim to have been using the 'tempered scale' millennia before us.

The Richter tuning gives best treatment to two of the original 'Gregorian" modes ... the one that became our standard "major" scale ... plus Gregorian mode #1: the Dorian, which is what you get when you start and finish on the draw hole #4. That mode remains popular in areas of old (ie, 'dark & gloomy') Catholicism - particulary northern Europe (where the mouthorgans came from) and Ireland.

Regards,

Bob