10:9 and 9:8 on pedal steel

Paul Erlich wrote:
>I had no idea that the standard pedal steel guitar had pedals that
>lowered pitches by a comma.

It's not unusual at all to add "compensator" rods to tweak the tuning of
harmony strings. Most players don't even mention these on their tuning
charts - only the change where the name of the note changes is charted.

The most common compensator on the E9th tuning lowers the F# from 9:8 to
10:9. It's typically attached to the pedal that raises B to C# or the one
that raises G# to A. Since there are two F# strings, some players
compensate the high F# on one pedal and the low F# on the other.

I take a different approach. I started by tuning the F#'s to 10:9 and
raising them to 9:8 on the lever that lowers my E's to D#. This flavored my
playing with more 10:9's than 9:8's. In recent years I've tempered my
tuning to get a bit closer to ET, to the point where the compensator is now
only moving the pitch about 14 cents.

-b0b-

http://wco.com/~quasar

> I think I'm in agreement with this. But, (like Gary?) I'm not
> clear about the distinction between 'full keyboard scales' and
> 'octave scales':
>
I will change the description at the web site to "12 note octave scales" to
clear up any confusion.

> (3) Pitch assignation to a user definable keyboard zone - for example
> - select a zone of 34 consecutive keyboard notes, and assign each
> keyboard key a pitch value (ET or not) relative to 1/1 in that zone
> (normally in an ascending scale, but not necessarily). Then tell the
> machine to automatically assign that 34 key tuning scheme into the
> next octave either (for example) at the 35th key above or at the 36th
> key above and below. (I don't suppose the latter exists yet).
>
Most Ensoniq's have an "extrapolate" function that creates a scale in this
manner and compiles it to the full keyboard tuning. I think that's the
best way rather than having some third method of storing scales, if that's
what you're suggesting.

John Loffink
jloffink@pdq.net

Hello all...since I'm on the road, I won't
be posting much this month. So to give
you all something to read from me, I've
finally started my website.

All I have there so far is a fairly detailed
autobiography with some cool links (check
out my buddy Dan Palkowski's page --
although he's not particularly a microtonalist,
he has a flexible conception of pitch; and
some cool artwork). If you're interested,
the URL is:

http://onramp.uscom.com/~monz/bio.htm


But -- stay tuned for a detailed microtonal
analysis of a Robert Johnson blues vocal.
(Hopefully I can put it up before I get back
home in July).

I'll be meeting with several of you out west.
If anyone else in California/ Oregon/ Colorado
or nearby is interested, email me and give
me phone# and address -- I'm driving, and
pretty flexible.

Enjoy!

- Joe Monzo
monz@juno.com
(somewhere in America)

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