Major thirds: a better way to tune your ipad

Many new melodic instruments use a touch sensitive surface with notes arranged in a two-dimensional grid. Most of these arrange notes in chromatic half-steps along the horizontal axis and in intervals of 4ths along the vertical axis. Although many alternatives exist, this arrangement, which resembles that of a bass guitar, is quickly becoming the de facto standard. In this study we present experimental evidence that grid based instruments are significantly easier to play when we tune adjacent rows in Major 3rds rather than 4ths. We have developed a grid-based instrument as an iPad app that has sold 8,000 units since 2012. To test our proposed alternative tuning, we taught a group twenty new users to play basic chords on our app, using both the standard tuning and our proposed alternative. Our results show that the Major 3rds tuning is much easier to learn, even for users that have previous experience playing guitar.