R&R tuning

Although this isn't rock lore here, it's interesting. I just talked to a guy who played bass on a gig with Lightnin' Hopkins in Denver some years ago (for a week). He was in charge of tuning Lightnin's guitar, but said when Hopkins would pick it up, he would tune the top E and B strings back down a bit before he would play...must have been hearing things a bit differently...HHH
myspace.com/microstick

Could he have been tuning the B a just third above the G and the high E a fourth above the B, so that the top two strings were a comma flat?

I think some punk guitarist did that to make their sound more dissonant and jarring, but I can't remember who it is/was.

~D.

----- Original Message ----- From: microstick@msn.com
To: tuning@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2007 7:29 AM
Subject: [tuning] R&R tuning

Although this isn't rock lore here, it's interesting. I just talked to a guy who played bass on a gig with Lightnin' Hopkins in Denver some years ago (for a week). He was in charge of tuning Lightnin's guitar, but said when Hopkins would pick it up, he would tune the top E and B strings back down a bit before he would play...must have been hearing things a bit differently...HHH
myspace.com/microstick

> I think some punk guitarist did that to make their sound more
dissonant and
> jarring, but I can't remember who it is/was.

I could be wrong, but I think that was Black Flag's Greg Ginn. He
sure had some microtonal-sounding solos. Though what I seem to
remember reading somewhere was that he actually tuned his high strings
up or down by approximately a quartertone, as opposed to to down a
comma to incorporate the just major third. However, I can't for the
life of me remember where I read or heard this, and I've not been able
to find a source to back it up. I'll post if I find one.

-Igliashon

> I think some punk guitarist did that to make their sound more
dissonant and
> jarring, but I can't remember who it is/was.
>
> ~D.

From the Microtonal Music Wiki:

"The American hardcore punk band Black Flag (1976-86) made interesting
vernacular use of microtonal intervals, via guitarist Greg Ginn, a
free jazz aficionado also familiar with modern classical. (During
their peak in the late '70s and early '80s, long before American punk
was mainstream, the band was considered, not unwarrantedly, a thuggish
and hostile street unit, although time has given their work a
considerable measure of musical acclaim.) A worthwhile song is
"Damaged II," from 1981's Damaged LP — a live-in-studio recording in
which intentional (and surprisingly scale-aware) use of quarter- and
eighth-steps suggests a guitar in danger of detonation. Another is
"Police Story," most versions of which end in a cadence played a
quarter-tone sharp, to similar effect."

> > I think some punk guitarist did that to make their sound more
> > dissonant and jarring, but I can't remember who it is/was.
>
> I could be wrong, but I think that was Black Flag's Greg Ginn.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Flag_%28band%29

-Carl

Igliashon Jones wrote:

>> I think some punk guitarist did that to make their sound more
> dissonant and
>> jarring, but I can't remember who it is/was.
>
> I could be wrong, but I think that was Black Flag's Greg Ginn. He
> sure had some microtonal-sounding solos. Though what I seem to
> remember reading somewhere was that he actually tuned his high strings
> up or down by approximately a quartertone, as opposed to to down a
> comma to incorporate the just major third. However, I can't for the
> life of me remember where I read or heard this, and I've not been able
> to find a source to back it up. I'll post if I find one.

Yeah, I need to listen to a lot of Black Flag (I'm only familiar with a few songs like "TV Party"). A Wikipedia article alone won't convince me.

I also had Sonic Youth in mind; they use some weird tunings, but I don't know if they use anything microtonal.

~D.

I wrote:

> Igliashon Jones wrote:
>
>> I could be wrong, but I think that was Black Flag's Greg Ginn. He
>> sure had some microtonal-sounding solos. Though what I seem to
>> remember reading somewhere was that he actually tuned his high strings
>> up or down by approximately a quartertone, as opposed to to down a
>> comma to incorporate the just major third. However, I can't for the
>> life of me remember where I read or heard this, and I've not been able
>> to find a source to back it up. I'll post if I find one.
>
> Yeah, I need to listen to a lot of Black Flag (I'm only familiar with a > few
> songs like "TV Party"). A Wikipedia article alone won't convince me.
>
> I also had Sonic Youth in mind; they use some weird tunings, but I don't
> know if they use anything microtonal.

Speaking of eccentricity in scordatura, I once came up with a tuning for acoustic guitar with slide for a certain song I wrote circa '97, an open Hendrix chord: E B F Db Ab Db, with the ratios between the strings being 4/3 7/5 5/4 4/3 3/2. I need to remember and rewrite. I had a lot of full barre chords, but I have some highly dissonant and jarring major sevenths in there somewhere...

~D.

Black Flag could well be using microtonal instruments, as Geza X, (the notorious L.A. record producer) who has worked with them has at least one LucyTuned guitar.

Charles Lucy lucy@lucytune.com

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On 20 Jul 2007, at 22:53, Danny Wier wrote:

> I wrote:
>
> > Igliashon Jones wrote:
> >
> >> I could be wrong, but I think that was Black Flag's Greg Ginn. He
> >> sure had some microtonal-sounding solos. Though what I seem to
> >> remember reading somewhere was that he actually tuned his high > strings
> >> up or down by approximately a quartertone, as opposed to to down a
> >> comma to incorporate the just major third. However, I can't for the
> >> life of me remember where I read or heard this, and I've not > been able
> >> to find a source to back it up. I'll post if I find one.
> >
> > Yeah, I need to listen to a lot of Black Flag (I'm only familiar > with a
> > few
> > songs like "TV Party"). A Wikipedia article alone won't convince me.
> >
> > I also had Sonic Youth in mind; they use some weird tunings, but > I don't
> > know if they use anything microtonal.
>
> Speaking of eccentricity in scordatura, I once came up with a > tuning for
> acoustic guitar with slide for a certain song I wrote circa '97, an > open
> Hendrix chord: E B F Db Ab Db, with the ratios between the strings > being 4/3
> 7/5 5/4 4/3 3/2. I need to remember and rewrite. I had a lot of > full barre
> chords, but I have some highly dissonant and jarring major sevenths > in there
> somewhere...
>
> ~D.
>
>
>

Considering i was playing with many of these groups at the time. I can assure you i don't remember any of them ever understanding microtonality outside of I'll tune it to what i please or you disdain attitude. The detuning of guitars were widely used though by just about all of them which was my own appeal to this music. Besides myself there was a group called Cypher which worked in microtones, a 22 tone 7 limit system. Robert Rich would also appear in such venues. Here is where microtones became known and was met with as much shock as an idea. Go through the stuff written in the late 70's and early 80's and see where you find the word microtonality in the L.A. punk community.
--
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North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/index.html>
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