Madder (Rubia tinctorum) is one of the oldest dye plants in recorded history — its roots yield a red that shifts toward pink or rust depending on the mordant, the water, and the age of the plant. The name carries that same quality of variability within a fixed material: the color is never quite the same twice, but it is always recognizably itself.
Guitar 002 "Madder" is a seven-string kite guitar built around the 41-equal division of the octave (41-EDO), a microtonal tuning system capable of approximating just intonation with a maximum deviation of approximately 6 cents across common intervals. By comparison, 12-EDO — the standard tuning system of Western instruments — deviates from just ratios by up to 14 cents in the major third and 31 cents in the harmonic seventh. The perceptual consequence of just intonation is the near-elimination of beating between harmonics: chords lose their characteristic tension and become acoustically transparent.
Hand-drawn on handmade paper by artist JX Qiu
The instrument addresses a fundamental constraint of just intonation — its key-specificity. Traditional just intonation instruments can only maintain precise interval relationships in a single key; the Renaissance lute partially solved this through repositionable gut frets, but remained optimized for one key at a time. Guitar 002 distributes 41-EDO across six strings at 20.5 frets per octave, with adjacent strings tuned at odd-numbered step intervals, allowing full traversal of the tuning system across the fretboard without key-specific retuning.
The making process followed what Tim Ingold describes as correspondence with materials — not imposing predetermined form, but attending to each material as it disclosed its own grain, resistance, and behavior. The wavy headstock profile was cut freehand with a scroll saw and finished through successive grits without a template; its slight bilateral asymmetry is not incidental but indexical of how it was made. The figured maple neck reveals its chatoyance only under raking light. The rosewood back and sides carry a density perceptible first through touch. The pink ivory details — small, specific, warm — echo the color the instrument is named after.
This is a raw recording from the moment Guitar 002 was finished and handed to Devin Ulibarri to try—no edits, just the instrument finding its voice.
Microphone:
RODE NTG-3
String:
Aquila Type-D Wounded Bass &
Aquila SHN Plain nylon
Microphone:
RODE NTG-3
String:
Aquila Type-D Wounded Bass &
Aquila SHN Plain nylon