17 noodles

Here is a quick improvisation using only the effects of my used Alesis multimix 8 mixing board called 17 Noodles. A surprising aspect of the guitar was how easy it was to adapt to 17 equal fingering. With some adjustments I can play 12 equal equivalents – and of course do more.

About two thirds through you will hear me switch from neck to bridge pickup. I particularly like how clear the full barr hammer ons came out at the end. As far as tuning the guitar – I tuned it as it is were a 12 equal guitar except I used the 7th fret – and 6th fret for the "B" string.

Download
http://micro.soonlabel.com/17-ET/17-noodles.mp3

Online play
http://chrisvaisvil.com/?p=436

Chris,

That's really cool! Both the guitar and the improv!

I'm still trying to train my ear to understand what I'm hearing, so please forgive some naive questions. My experience here is similar to what I get when I listen to Bill Sethares's 19-EDO "Truth on a Bus" -- my ear happily ignores my mind's warning that it's in unusual territory, which makes it really hard for me to understand what's out of the ordinary.

By "used the 7th fret", I assume you mean you still tuned each string up a 494-cent fourth from the previous one, and that really sharp 424-cent major third for the B string. Yes? From there, it looks like you should have been able to keep most fingerings for things like E-bar and C-form chords, using the fifth and the very sharp thirds. My mind is telling me that the thirds and sixths should sound way too sharp for comfort, but they're mostly okay. Were you using the 353-cent thirds much, or the Em-form bar chord, which would give you a 282-cent minor third?

Also, what chord changes did you favor? Even though the notes didn't seem out of whack, some of the changes were pretty unusual-sounding.

Thanks,
Jake

Hi Jake,

Let my try to answer your questions with scala open as I did everything by
ear.

1. Yep - the 494 fourth is what I used excepting the 424 "major" third

2. Fingerings - I observe the following

Octaves and 5ths are dead simple - instead of skipping 1 fret you skip 2
frets.
4ths are the barr - obviously from the open tuning

the following is acceptable to me

An E major - same shape just push the fretted notes up one fret.
An A major - same shape - just up one fret
An open G major - stops on 4th and 3rd fret. - looks the same
A D major is pushing it to my ears (up one fret) works better if you remove
the 3rd - D sus is fine.
A minor - up one fret - not so good.
An open E minor is right on the edge for me - stops on 3rd fret

I was favoring a 282 minor 3rd. I used this in parallel a lot:

open e, open g, open b strings - then fingering that at different frets.
So... it is an root, minor 10th, and 12th used in Debussian fashion as a
parallel color.
And that was the chord progression I favored in the improvisation we are
discussing.

Thank you for the listen, comments, and even more the questions!

Take care,

Chris

On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 9:44 PM, Jake Freivald <jdfreivald@...> wrote:

>
>
> Chris,
>
> That's really cool! Both the guitar and the improv!
>
> I'm still trying to train my ear to understand what I'm hearing, so
> please forgive some naive questions. My experience here is similar to
> what I get when I listen to Bill Sethares's 19-EDO "Truth on a Bus" --
> my ear happily ignores my mind's warning that it's in unusual territory,
> which makes it really hard for me to understand what's out of the ordinary.
>
> By "used the 7th fret", I assume you mean you still tuned each string up
> a 494-cent fourth from the previous one, and that really sharp 424-cent
> major third for the B string. Yes? From there, it looks like you should
> have been able to keep most fingerings for things like E-bar and C-form
> chords, using the fifth and the very sharp thirds. My mind is telling me
> that the thirds and sixths should sound way too sharp for comfort, but
> they're mostly okay. Were you using the 353-cent thirds much, or the
> Em-form bar chord, which would give you a 282-cent minor third?
>
> Also, what chord changes did you favor? Even though the notes didn't
> seem out of whack, some of the changes were pretty unusual-sounding.
>
> Thanks,
> Jake
>
>

So you used the other mapping for 5/4 then, treating 424 as though it
were the major third? And you tuned the guitar to just the superpyth
equivalent of normal guitar tuning?

Very nice, all in all!

-Mike

Mike,

Are these rhetorical questions? I'm lost... I apologize - I'm very
tuning challenged.

On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 5:05 AM, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> So you used the other mapping for 5/4 then, treating 424 as though it
> were the major third? And you tuned the guitar to just the superpyth
> equivalent of normal guitar tuning?
>
> Very nice, all in all!
>
> -Mike
>

It occurred to me -- one of those "well, duh" moments -- that any EDO
that's tuned in fourths (except for that guitaristic peculiarity, one
approximate major third for the B string) should be relatively
consistent with 12-EDO chord forms. You don't even have to spread your
fingers differently: The string still has to be fretted around the
same point in order to give a fourth, fifth, etc, right? The only
question is precisely where the fret stops the string.

The big variable -- and the reason Chris's open Em forms didn't sound
so hot -- is what's considered a fourth. In 17 EDO they're only 494
cents, which drives the G string down to an (octave-reduced) 282-cent
interval. (A standard guitar is tuned EADGBE, low to high, so the G
string is three fourths higher than the bass E. Also, because E is
lowest, I tend to think of everything relative to E, and all cents
references here are determined that way.)

I made a spreadsheet that would let me play with different EDOs. 19
would make a very playable guitar, I think; the slightly sharp fourth
(505.3 cents) puts the G string at a perfectly tuned G (316 cents).
The other chord forms remain familiar relative to (though not exactly
the same as) 12 EDO. The Am chord form is also available for use now,
too.

17 EDO would probably be a little easier to get used to, because you
literally just push the chord shape one fret higher; but that major
third is really sharp, so you might expect that other tunings would
encourage you to fret a little farther back, and you'd be right. With
19 EDO you'd want to keep one of your fingers back a fret to hit the
379-cent major third.

In other words, in 12 EDO you finger an E chord as
Open (root)
2nd fret (fifth)
2nd fret (octave)
1st fret (M3)
Open (fifth)
Open (octave)

In 17 EDO you do it as
Open (root)
3rd fret (fifth)
3rd fret (octave)
2nd fret (M3, 424 cents)
Open (fifth)
Open (octave)

In 19 EDO you do it as
Open (root)
3rd fret (fifth)
3rd fret (octave)
1st fret (M3, 379 cents)
Open (fifth)
Open (octave)

31 EDO gives a very nicely tuned open Em-form chord and semi-familiar
chord shapes, but -- without evidence -- I'd guess that it would be a
little harder to get used to. Too many skips of five frets here and
two frets there, etc. The five frets would be in the space of two
ordinary ones, so it's not like you'd be stretching more, but the
shapes are starting to get distorted. Plus the frets are getting
really close together as you move up the neck.

So, Chris, since I'm probably not buying a 19-EDO guitar anytime soon
(unfortunately!), I look forward to your next purchase and
performance. :)

Regards,
Jake

On 1/19/11, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> So you used the other mapping for 5/4 then, treating 424 as though it
> were the major third? And you tuned the guitar to just the superpyth
> equivalent of normal guitar tuning?
>
> Very nice, all in all!
>
> -Mike
>
>
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On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 9:09 AM, Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...> wrote:
>
> Mike,
>
> Are these rhetorical questions? I'm lost... I apologize - I'm very
> tuning challenged.

OK, so I'll start at the beginning - superpyth. You know what meantone
is - it means that four fifths gets you at a 5/4 and some octaves, and
three fourths gets you at a 6/5 and some octaves. This is because
81/80 vanishes.

Superpyth is the 7-limit evil twin brother version of meantone - the
fifths are wider, so that four fifths gets you at a 9/7 and some
octaves, and three fourths gets you at a 7/6 and some octaves. So
aeolian scales, for example, rather than being based around 5-limit
minor triads like 10:12:15, end up being based around 7-limit subminor
triads like 6:7:9. Instead of 81/80 vanishing, it's 64/63 that
vanishes. This also means that two fourths gets you to 7/4.

17-tet is usually considered a superpyth tuning. The minor thirds are
closer to 7/6 than 6/5, and the major thirds are closer to 9/7 than
5/4. So I asked if you tuned your guitar to "superpyth open" - e.g. E
A D G B E all around the circle of fifths, same as in 12-equal.

Lastly, there are two intervals in 17-tet that could work as a normal
5/4 major third - you have the 353 cent "neutral" third, and the 424
cent really sharp "supermajor" third. Neither is really close to the
sweet spot of 386 cents, which is what a just 5/4 is. The 353 cent
neutral third is actually closer, but I prefer to use the 424 cent
supermajor version, since it sounds more like a major third to me.

So when you talk about major chord voicings on this guitar, which
version are you using? The neutral or the supermajor version?

Hope that makes sense.

-Mike

Yes it did make sense - thanks for being patient.

The answer is the 424 "3rd"

"17-tet is usually considered a superpyth tuning. The minor thirds are
closer to 7/6 than 6/5, and the major thirds are closer to 9/7 than
5/4. So I asked if you tuned your guitar to "superpyth open" - e.g. E
A D G B E all around the circle of fifths, same as in 12-equal."

Yes, because the Lutier handed me the guitar in 12 eual standard
tuning and I just adjusted to the 7th (and 6th) fret. It was almost
there all the way around anyway.

What I need to do - and in fact will after this message is sent - is
to compare to my keyboard in 17 edo. That will give me a bit more of a
grounding of where I'm at as well.

Chris

On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 1:04 PM, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 9:09 AM, Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...> wrote:
> >
> > Mike,
> >
> > Are these rhetorical questions? I'm lost... I apologize - I'm very
> > tuning challenged.
>
> OK, so I'll start at the beginning - superpyth. You know what meantone
> is - it means that four fifths gets you at a 5/4 and some octaves, and
> three fourths gets you at a 6/5 and some octaves. This is because
> 81/80 vanishes.
>
>