Experiment with 15-ET guitar

I've added a new example to my sites.google.com/site/teamouse/ page.

http://sites.google.com/site/teamouse/15guitartest.mp3

It's very crude, since I don't even know how to play a 12-ET guitar, but I managed to find a few chords on the 15-ET guitar, and it definitely has potential.

Actually, this isn't a real 15-ET guitar at all, but the Acoustic Guitar from Garritan Jazz & Big Band tuned in TOP 15-ET, controlled by the Rock Band 3 MadCatz Fender Mustang guitar controller. I wrote a crude little Windows app that reads the MIDI In from the guitar, alters it to fit the 15-ET tuning, and sends it through MIDI Yoke to the Garritan ARIA player.

I've played enough of Rock Band with the guitar to learn a few basic chords, but that doesn't help at all with 15-ET. None of the basic 12-ET chords really work, so I had to find new ones. And since the frets are actually spaced for 12-ET, I think I might need to implement a virtual capo and start higher on the neck where the frets are closer together, which would limit the range. But it should be interesting.

I can't listen right now. However this is true determination! What an excellent route you devised.

I use a fender mustang with a roland gr20 which is a bit similar. I think, judging from what Igs has said, the biggest difference is in the tuning of the open strings. Compared to a real 17edo guitar Igs found my open string tuning “compressed“.

Chris
*

-----Original Message-----
From: Herman Miller <hmiller@IO.COM>
Sender: tuning@yahoogroups.com
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2010 22:34:01
To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Reply-To: tuning@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [tuning] Experiment with 15-ET guitar

I've added a new example to my sites.google.com/site/teamouse/ page.

http://sites.google.com/site/teamouse/15guitartest.mp3

It's very crude, since I don't even know how to play a 12-ET guitar, but
I managed to find a few chords on the 15-ET guitar, and it definitely
has potential.

Actually, this isn't a real 15-ET guitar at all, but the Acoustic Guitar
from Garritan Jazz & Big Band tuned in TOP 15-ET, controlled by the Rock
Band 3 MadCatz Fender Mustang guitar controller. I wrote a crude little
Windows app that reads the MIDI In from the guitar, alters it to fit the
15-ET tuning, and sends it through MIDI Yoke to the Garritan ARIA player.

I've played enough of Rock Band with the guitar to learn a few basic
chords, but that doesn't help at all with 15-ET. None of the basic 12-ET
chords really work, so I had to find new ones. And since the frets are
actually spaced for 12-ET, I think I might need to implement a virtual
capo and start higher on the neck where the frets are closer together,
which would limit the range. But it should be interesting.

The chords sound impressively natural. I must explore 15et. - Nice work on
this!

Thanks for the example. You may be interested in my latest Roland GR-20
experiment.

http://chrisvaisvil.com/?p=404

Chris

On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 10:34 PM, Herman Miller <hmiller@...> wrote:

>
>
> I've added a new example to my sites.google.com/site/teamouse/ page.
>
> http://sites.google.com/site/teamouse/15guitartest.mp3
>
> It's very crude, since I don't even know how to play a 12-ET guitar, but
> I managed to find a few chords on the 15-ET guitar, and it definitely
> has potential.
>
> Actually, this isn't a real 15-ET guitar at all, but the Acoustic Guitar
> from Garritan Jazz & Big Band tuned in TOP 15-ET, controlled by the Rock
> Band 3 MadCatz Fender Mustang guitar controller. I wrote a crude little
> Windows app that reads the MIDI In from the guitar, alters it to fit the
> 15-ET tuning, and sends it through MIDI Yoke to the Garritan ARIA player.
>
> I've played enough of Rock Band with the guitar to learn a few basic
> chords, but that doesn't help at all with 15-ET. None of the basic 12-ET
> chords really work, so I had to find new ones. And since the frets are
> actually spaced for 12-ET, I think I might need to implement a virtual
> capo and start higher on the neck where the frets are closer together,
> which would limit the range. But it should be interesting.
>
>
>

Again, let me say from the get go, far as TET temperaments go, I'm a fan of
15TET. The stretched 5th, IMVHO, still is close enough to sound decent, the
major and minor thirds are as good or better than 12TET, and there's a strong
5/3 sixth and 7/4 augmented sixth in there.

The guitar example on

http://sites.google.com/site/teamouse/15guitartest.mp3
...sounds simple but strong to me and, yes, consonant enough to fool
non-microtonalists into calling in musical.
On the flip side...to my ears the "good" chord selection here, by and large,
simply sounds like 12TET-style chords. Then again, I've found, the most
consonant scales tend to have at least 65-70% of their so-called good chords in
common (either in actually notes or general mood IE via inversions) with 12TET
chords. History repeats itself...despite our hate for it's "imperfection"...it
becomes obvious why so many leading tunings have so much in common,
emotion-wise, with 12TET and the whole concept of diatonic feel.