I think Jack's interest in this is partly fueled by listening to a lot of middle eastern (especially Turkish) music. They do use different scales there, not just different arrangements of tone and semitone steps, but subtly different intervals. When I first heard music played on the Oud (an unfretted stringed instrument) I though it was out of tune. It was only after I heard a lot more and twigged that it was all identically out of tune in exactly the same places that I understood that it was quite deliberate.


Less obviously, it works even less well with a lot of fiddlers. They tend to push these sharps even higher
Perhaps not if you meet a fiddler who knows Turkish music well?

Anahata