newbie

hello all
im new to this list
ive recently been getting into microtonality(at least planned microtonality)
ive been doing 'unspecific' microtonality for a bit(random tunings of
instuments)
im also a music student so you can imagine how difficult it is to get info on
stuff other than 12ET
what would be a good place to start getting info on stuff like that(i have
helmholtz 'on the sensations of tone' and partch ' a genesis of music')

thanks in advance

rodrigo

On Mon, 24 May 1999 14:55:58 EDT, Kriist@aol.com wrote:

>hello all
>im new to this list
>ive recently been getting into microtonality(at least planned microtonality)
>ive been doing 'unspecific' microtonality for a bit(random tunings of
>instuments)
>im also a music student so you can imagine how difficult it is to get info on
>stuff other than 12ET
>what would be a good place to start getting info on stuff like that(i have
>helmholtz 'on the sensations of tone' and partch ' a genesis of music')

There's a lot of info on the web: see John Starrett's page for a good list
of sites (http://www-math.cudenver.edu/~jstarret/microtone.html). A good
place to start would be Joe Monzo's page of definitions of musical terms
(http://www.ixpres.com/interval/dict/index.htm).

As far as books, I haven't seen much other than Scott Wilkinson's "Tuning
In" (which is okay for introductory purposes but doesn't go into much
detail about specific tunings), and William Sethares's book "Tuning,
Timbre, Spectrum, Scale" (more advanced, mainly concerned with acoustics
and the relationship between timbre and tuning). Very brief mentions of
alternative tunings (such as 19-equal, 53-equal, and meantone) in a few
other books. I've heard about books by Owen Jorgensen (on historical
tunings) and Easley Blackwood (on diatonic scales), but I haven't had much
luck finding them.

--
see my music page ---> +--<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/music/music.html>--
Thryomanes /"If all Printers were determin'd not to print any
(Herman Miller) / thing till they were sure it would offend no body,
moc.oi @ rellimh <-/ there would be very little printed." -Ben Franklin

hi there-

i've been playing guitar now for around 8 years, and only dabbled in
alternate tunings. i've been writing more often, and am interested
in expanding my sounds. glad you're here.

Hi all,

Being an intermediate guitar player, and tired of playing in Cmaj, I
started playing with the tuning pegs. I love it. It seems to have
opened another door to songwriting and broke the monotony of G-C-D.

Is there a basic guide to different tunings and respective major and
minor scales? Right now I'm playing with 'open G' and 'open E', and
trying to get something that sounds right.

the guitar handbook has several different tunings
i have always been into slack g or hawaiian
but the best is to get a drone and tune the strings harmonically to the
Overtones
cheers

Pat Pagano, Director
South East Just Intonation Society
http://indians.australians.com/meherbaba/
http://www.screwmusicforever.com/SHREESWIFT/
----- Original Message -----
From: <sunnee@mindspring.com>
To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, April 23, 2001 9:23 AM
Subject: [tuning] newbie

> Hi all,
>
> Being an intermediate guitar player, and tired of playing in Cmaj, I
> started playing with the tuning pegs. I love it. It seems to have
> opened another door to songwriting and broke the monotony of G-C-D.
>
> Is there a basic guide to different tunings and respective major and
> minor scales? Right now I'm playing with 'open G' and 'open E', and
> trying to get something that sounds right.
>
>
> You do not need web access to participate. You may subscribe through
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>
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>
>
>

As long as you leave the frets where they are, any fingering is going to give you equal temperament. But if you re-tune some of the strings, you could get quarter tones or sixth-tones (Busoni was interested in that).
It hasn't been mentioned here that I recall, but if you look in Harry Partch's "Genesis of a Music", there are references to and pictures of "adapted guitars" for use with his 43-tone to the 2/1 (octave) scale.
I wouldn't recommend that you rip out your frets with the idea of moving them around unless you first look into quite a bit of scale theory. On the other hand, you might prefer to fool around and see what you can come up with. You can't be sure in advance what you will really like, either musically or in terms of ease or difficulty of playing. You may have to do your own composing, as well.
If your guitar is a good one, you might see if you can find an unfinished kit guitar and work with that instead.
On several instruments Harry Partch used moveable rods which could give gliding tones, not unlike a Hawaiian guitar effect. If you had a guitar with no frets, steel rods about 1/16" in diameter could be used between a flat fingerboard and the strings. Bear in mind that with any untempered tuning, any final arrangement of frets is likely to have them segmented rather than straight across, or at least at an angle or even curved.

>>> sunnee@mindspring.com 04/23/01 09:23AM >>>
Hi all,

Being an intermediate guitar player, and tired of playing in Cmaj, I
started playing with the tuning pegs. I love it. It seems to have
opened another door to songwriting and broke the monotony of G-C-D.

Is there a basic guide to different tunings and respective major and
minor scales? Right now I'm playing with 'open G' and 'open E', and
trying to get something that sounds right.

You do not need web access to participate. You may subscribe through
email. Send an empty email to one of these addresses:
tuning-subscribe@yahoogroups.com - join the tuning group.
tuning-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com - unsubscribe from the tuning group.
tuning-nomail@yahoogroups.com - put your email message delivery on hold for the tuning group.
tuning-digest@yahoogroups.com - change your subscription to daily digest mode.
tuning-normal@yahoogroups.com - change your subscription to individual emails.
tuning-help@yahoogroups.com - receive general help information.

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

--- In tuning@y..., "John F. Sprague" <jsprague@d...> wrote:
> Bear in mind that with any untempered tuning, any final arrangement of frets is likely to have
>them segmented rather than straight across, or at least at an angle or even curved.

David Canright's guitar is an exception to this, as is the Shrutar, a 22-fret-per-octave instrument
(tuned, for example, C G C G C G) that Dave Keenan and I were developing on the list for a
while (now off-list).