Guitar stuff

[mmcirvin]

I haven't had much to write about lately with regard to my musical fumblings, because I'm at the point where there aren't a lot of big cerebral revelations, I'm just training my ears and fingers. Les Paul just died; he was a pretty significant figure. Jorie actually knows his name, if only through the line of Gibson electrics he endorsed.

These pages on intonation by luthier Mike Doolin are really interesting. I don't have an instrument which has been crafted to the degree suggested here, but the weird six-string A5 and E5 power chords he introduces at one point as a rough and ready tuning device are actually useful. The idea is that, if you want to play more than one chord shape, you want equal temperament, which means you want to deliberately ignore thirds when tuning; but having six-string chords to work with cuts down on the accumulating systematic errors in the beginner tuning method of just comparing each fretted string to the next higher one played open. (I know, tuning systems get a lot more elaborate than this.) It's not possible to finger them in any normal hand position, as far as I can tell, but I can get them by reaching over the neck.

Jorie's 3-year-old power games have assisted in my ear training: her latest thing is to insist that I'm not allowed to play my guitar in her presence, but I am allowed to play HER guitar, the small-scale instrument that I actually started out on. This guitar, being a glorified toy (albeit a good one), was never very precisely intonated to begin with (the saddle is completely uncompensated, so there's only so much you can do), it's pretty battered by now, and it drifts all over the place, and also Jorie has a tendency to randomly detune it by fiddling with the keys. So playing recognizable tunes on it means that I have to retune it all the time, starting from total chaos. I'm actually getting good at this, and the silly thing now sounds better than it did when we first got it.

For a long time I'd make the B and high E strings ridiculously sharp if I didn't have access to Sam's electronic tuner, but these days I usually just tune it while I'm trying to play along with Jorie's Wiggles DVDs, which gets me the tone reference, especially since I now remember what keys a fair number of Wiggles songs are in (the characteristic keys got higher when Sam Moran replaced Greg Page as lead singer).

As for Jorie, her current favorite instrument is the electronic drum pad set she got for her third birthday. She can bang away at that thing for ages. Fortunately it's not as loud as her little glockenspiel, which I think could hold its own against Sam's horn.

Comments

[pootrootbeer.livejournal.com]

I was just reading up on this subject last night. The nut that came on my cheap eBay 10-string bass is poorly made, to the point where I have to cut and file a replacement myself; so why not use an intonation compensation system while I'm at it?

I would disagree with the luthier that the 1/100th-of-a-half-tone unit should be pronounced sonts, after the French; the standard English pronunciation of "cents" is understood by everybody.

My digital piano allows me to use about 8 different intonation presets, or design my own; it's easy to hear how consonant intervals sound purer in some temperaments than others, and also how non-equal temperaments all have some intervals that sound really, really bad, which is why we've come to accept 12tet as sounding "correct".

It also allows me to switch between pure and 'stretched' piano tuning . I can't hear a difference, but that may be more due to the implementation of the practice in a digital instrument than to the practice itself.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

My mother-in-law, who is a nurse, pronounces the first syllable of "centimeter" in the French fashion. I wonder if this is typical medical practice; I've never heard an anglophone physicist say that.

[ikkyu2.livejournal.com]

Surgeons do this, not physicians. It is one of the little ways they set themselves apart.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Come to think of it, Jorie's guitar might actually exhibit nut positioning problems to a lesser degree than a typical guitar would, since it has a zero fret and extremely low action.

fingering those open fifths

[notr.livejournal.com]

Unless your fingers are way shorter than mine, 0-1-1-3-4-0 should do it for E5, and 0-0-1-1-4-4 for A5. Shouldn't be too hard to get the two strings under your pinky, since you can just clamp it right down around the edge of the fingerboard.

Re: fingering those open fifths

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

My hands actually are on the small side for a 5'10" adult male, and they're also probably not as strong or limber as a more accomplished guitarists' would be. That's on the very edge of what I can reach and it's very difficult for me to get it without a lot of buzzing.

[ikkyu2.livejournal.com]

The only way to achieve another temperament is to make a special "broken Fret" fretboard for each key you wish to use!

See, this just isn't right. There are two other ways to temper your various keys; one is to vary the way you fret each note, the other is to vary your pick attack. This guy is thinking inside a box that actual musicians, who want to produce sonorous, euphonious music, do not bother to stay in.

Sharp thirds, even if a little sharp, matter, because they sound monstrously ugly. They are heinous. Throw a shelf nut on, intonate it so it's euphonious in E, A, and G, and start playing. If you are called on to play in B-flat, do what real guitarists do and reach for the G string and tighten it up about 5 cents during the change. Etc.

This set of adjustments, mostly unconscious, is why guitarists get so fussy about their instruments once they've been playing them a few years.