Micro path

Thorin...nice post....here's my take...As folks are pointing out, there's a zillion different ways to tune, maybe 2 zillion. When I started out in 1989, someone gave me a 19 tone guitar, so the choice was easy...that's where I started, and it went from there. I started meeting a lot of the tuning folks, and found out how vast the field could be. Some basic advice I got was very helpful...first, there are tunings with "good" 3rds/5ths, and those without...if a person likes chordal music, than perhaps tunings with better 3rds/5ths would be a good idea, and there are a number of those. There are some folks who don't like tempered tunings, so they may choose to stay with Pure intervals (just intonation)...it's harder to do complex chords and modulations with those sorts of tunings, but maybe that's ok. And Ivor Darreg was fond of pointing out that different tunings have different moods of their own that need to be taken into consideration as well. I think that's true, but maybe a tuning can have a number of different moods, depending on the composer using it.

And indeed, the kind of music one wants to create has a big effect on the tunings they work with. Modal based music doesn't rely on chords, so you don't have to be as concerned with the harmonic aspects of the music. And, the number of notes makes a difference, too...I have guitars with 31, 34, and 36 notes/octave, that's a lot, and on a guitar it gets mighty teensy; you might wanna think about that as well. Try and listen to a lot of micro music too, see what sounds good to you...can't hurt. Best of luck, check www.myspace.com/microstick to hear samples of my 19, 34 tone, and fretless work...best...Stickman www.microstick.net

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