An Odd Clef for 88CET Guitar?

An interesting series of thoughts popped into mind recently regarding
notation for my 88CET guitar. My 88CET-tuning notation system uses
traditional notation symbols, although the pitches don't correspond to what
they would in traditional tuning.

Well, my notation system is another big topic in itself, but what
matters for this discussion is that, in this notation system, the pitches
that correspond to my 88CET guitar's practical pitch range aren't terribly
practical for any traditional clef. And since this is a nonoctave-based
tuning system, doing what in traditional tunings would be called an octave
transposition, like the real guitar does, is kind of risky.

That practical range works out to the A on the third ledger line below
the bass staff up to the F on the top line of the treble staff. Notes
above that F are feasible, but not terribly common. As you can see, it's
also not centered nicely for a full grand staff.

So, I'm toying with kind of an offshoot of the ol' Baroque-era movable
clef approach, or perhaps kind of a hybrid of that with a grand staff.

Here's the evolution of thought as it ran through my head: Of any of
the traditional clefs, that range of notes centers best on the tenor clef:
The low A works out to be five ledger lines below the tenor staff, and the
high F works out to four ledger lines above the staff. But even still,
four and five ledger lines is a little cumbersome, especially since it can
play higher than that F. So I then said, I can cut that down to three and
four ledger lines by employing a seven-line staff - one additional
non-ledger line below and above the usual bottom and top lines of the tenor
clef. That makes keeping track of ledger lines a little bit more
tractable.

Then I thought, you know, I'd almost bet money that it would be easy to
lose your place on a seven-line staff. It would probably be easy to
confuse for example, the A on middle (fourth down) line with the C on the
third line down. That distinction will probably be a rather unfortunate
additional complication when you're trying to also trying to monitor your
tone, that your fingers are right behind the frets, remember where the beat
is, which fingers (left and right!) you're going to play the next note, and
all that in three part harmony in eighths and sixteenths at 100bpm!
They'll probably both look like "notes buried somewhere in the middle of
this big, fat staff"!

So what popped into mind was, as a navigational aid, how about removing
the center (A) line? The result would look something like this (in this
dreadful ASCII-text graphics world!):

-O- Highest typical note
---
---
++-^---------------------
++o-/--------------------
||<>-------"------------- 1st (D)
++o \ -O- 2nd (A)
++-v---------------------
-----------O------------- 3rd (D)
-------------------------
-"- Open 4th string (A)
---
-"- Open 5th string (D)
-O- Open 6th string (A)

So what you have is kind of like two three-line staves in a
grand-staff-line structure, all built around the C clef. That except that
the two staves would have no more space between them than that left by
removing the center line, rather than the usual greatly enlarged space
between treble and bass staves.

Anybody have any thoughts on that, in terms of playability, for example?
Or how about thoughts on extending that one line farther in each
direction?

-O- Highest typical note
---
-------------------------
++-^---------------------
++o-/--------------------
||<>-------"------------- 1st (D)
++o \ -O- 2nd (A)
++-v---------------------
-----------O------------- 3rd (D)
-------------------------
-----------"------------- 4th (A)
---
-"- Open 5th string (D)
-O- Open 6th string (A)


SMTPOriginator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
From: mr88cet@texas.net (Gary Morrison)
Subject: Tuning-List Tape
PostedDate: 06-12-97 06:32:49
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