Georgian (Black Sea) modal tuning for voices

Dear Tuning:

I sing the folk and liturgical music of Georgia in several groups; but in
the trio Kavkasia, with Stuart Gelzer and Carl Linich, we've been
experimenting to re-create the old tunings evident on archival
recordings, as well as some modern-day village singers. The music we are
interested in is almost exclusively vocal, or accompanied non-essentially
by folk instruments (lutelike panduri and chonguri, and bowed chuniri).

We've constructed a paradigm, built upon short modes encompassing a fifth,
then stacked on top of each other, which allows us to hunt around for the
correct tunings "in the old style". We cannot hear any half-steps in the
old recordings we've been listening to; the fifths are more reliably pure
or just than the octaves; and the thirds are neutral (with fourths cranked
up a little bit -- perceptibly more than a half-step away from the neutral
thirds).

The accompanying folk instruments are tuned either with special frets or
no frets at all. Therefore we have no reliable mechanical reference
points for tuning up our chords and our modes; by listening to old
recordings over and over, we have only begun to make the modal tunings
predictable to ourselves.

Does anyone have bibliographical suggestions, or software recommendations
.. or any other sort of hints to help us find our way?

Hoping to hear from you soon,

I'm yours,
Alan Gasser

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