Current instrument tunings

Because it really is kinda funny.  Eight stringed instruments in the house, eight different tunings.  Only one instrument is in its natural tuning.

Here's where they're at:

• Mandolin:  G3-D4-A4-E5 (natural tuning)
• Strat:  C2-G2-D3-A3-E4-G4 (Guitar Craft standard tuning)
• Fretless:  Bb1-F2-C3-G3-D4-G4 (experiment - 5ths with 4th on top)
• Banjo:  G4-G2-D3-Bb3-F4 (experiment - open Gm7)
• SoloEtte:  Bb1-F2-Bb2-F3-Bb3-F4 (experiment - open Bb5)
• Ibanez dreadnought:  B1-F#2-D3-F#3-C#4-C#4 ("Raindigger" tuning - open Bm9)
• Ovation:  C2-C3-D3-G3-A3-D4 ("Aerial Boundaries" tuning)
• Classical:  C2-A2-D3-G3-B3-E4 ("Scratch" tuning:  partial capo on 3fr, strings 1-5)

I guess we'll see what changes first!  :-)

Banjo, iterated.

Well, I managed to get the fingerboard insert glued down on the kit banjo. A mixed bag, at least on first analysis. I should reserve judgment and continue tinkering before drawing too many permanent conclusions.

I do believe the neck is straighter and flatter than it was. The trouble is that the rim of the resonator still intrudes on practical action height, and I still get buzzing up the neck.

There are things I can try, both in the realm of the minor tweak and the substantial change, to remedy this. One thing I might try is tightening the drum head more significantly, and/or substituting a taller bridge. (I suppose it's also possible to reduce the neck angle and go for a shorter bridge, and see if that works.) I could also simply relieve wood from the resonator rim, which seems like a gruesome change, but would be worth it if it works.

On the plus side, the action (at least below the octave) is better than it was, and I got the chance to restring the fifth string so that the cut end is not at substantial risk of putting a hole in my thumb during normal playing. I did end up going with a fifths tuning this time, to wit:

• 5th: 09p, tuned G4
  
• 4th: 32w, tuned G2
  
• 3rd: 26w, tuned D3
  
• 2nd: 18p, tuned A3
  
• 1st: 12p, tuned E4

The strings are still a bit Frankensteined (4th is nickel-wound, 3rd bronze) but I am already much happier with the 5ths tuning, appreciating both the expanded range (std G tuning on a banjo is D3-D4, where here I'm G2-E4) and regular shapes and scales.

Next steps: play this a little bit, mostly below the octave to stay away from the buzzing, and contemplate this "steeper neck, taller bridge, shallower nut" or "shallower neck, shorter bridge, deeper nut" question. Learn more about the right hand.

It's a tinkerer's project anyway. So, tinker.

A little attention to the banjo

It's unfortunate that the rather nifty design feature of the Musicmaker's kit banjo, wherein you can replace a short section of the fretted fingerboard up by the nut (the first three frets) with a fretless insert, seems to require just enough tolerance slop that I cannot achieve a consistent action up the neck. (I'm not necessarily faulting the design; it's quite possible that other instances of the kit may be more forgiving, or that a more competent luthier than myself--probably not saying much--could feng shui things to work out just peachy...but I have been unable to do it well.) The retaining screw invariably seems to drive the end of the insert up right by the nut, causing enough angle that the frets fall away precipitously from the strings right from the get-go. An acceptable action at the first fret becomes conspicuously high even by the third, and the whole insert seems to be higher than the main fingerboard, even with a little thickness-sanding.

Here's the thing. I like my action low, and certainly play better that way. I also like to play all over the neck, so the action at the octave and above is something I pay a lot of attention to. In short, I realized that I would play the banjo a lot more if it had an acceptably consistent action, and also that if I wanted a fretless banjo, I'd just build myself a fretless banjo. (That latter is not at all a bad idea, by the way. :-)

For me, the best way to achieve this (certainly on my budget and time!) was to glue the fretted insert in place, and dispense with the fretless insert altogether. So, yesterday I spent a little time thickness-sanding the insert, to pare down the "step effect" it seems to have over the remainder of the board, spent a lot of time sighting down the neck to make sure I had it right, and glued and clamped the insert in place. I'm hopeful on this, but we'll see how we end up after things dry completely.

Next step: string up with some new strings, and take a new look at how the adjustable neck angle (another nifty feature of the design), nut and bridge heights might be tweaked to get the action I'm looking for. I suspect it will at least be as playable as it was before, and for that it was worth the risk. Better, of course, is what I'm hoping, but we'll see.

I also think I'm going to try open fifths on this set of strings. I just haven't been able to get into the NST intervals the way I was hoping, although the attention thereto has certainly helped my understanding of the NST guitar. It's just different, somehow, when the m3 interval on top is in addition to at least one four-string group in fifths.

Banjo revelation: strap height compromise

Viz the posture of holding the banjo, I find that I have competing interests: the banjo three-finger style is ideal with the instrument a little too low for a preferred flatpicking attitude, and so I think I'm going to keep things comfortable for flatpicking and learn my three-finger style (which is bound to be a bastardized hybrid anyway, no matter what I do) with a higher hold. I really like the percussive sound of the instrument with palm-on-bridge muting.

Onward then!

Banjo revelation: training the hand for arpeggios

An unexpected revelation (maybe) about the banjo's picking hand. The first basic "forward-roll" exercise that you find in books is pretty straightforward, focusing on the first three strings, thus:

A little weird to someone trained in flatpicking, but I do find it "physiologically logical" and just need to train myself.

Now...at some point you get to an exercise involving the fifth string, and that's where things started to get interesting for me. Note this exercise:

(all open strings...
T means to play with thumb,
I with index finger,
and M with middle finger)

This plays havoc with something I have taken for granted: that strings constantly ascend as they get farther away from you. My thumb wants to be "responsible" for the bass note in the arpeggio, and while the thumb does play the first note in the arpeggio (which is the bass note), it does not play that note again in the same measure. Amazing how hardwired that concept can be! I suspect I must now be feeling like all those sweep-picking guitarists who have such a hard time learning alternate picking in odd time signatures. (Since I learned alternate picking from the beginning--thank you Guitar Craft--that never bothered me.)

Of interest here, though, is how that fifth-string exercise relates to this one:

Aside from trying to decouple my brain from what it already "knows", I found myself wondering why the second note in the second exercise is picked by the index finger, but the same note in the third exercise is picked by the middle finger. There's got to be a reason for that!

That reason occurred to me when I tried alternating between the two patterns. Ding! I think it's a way of signalling to your hand how it's going to spread for the arpeggio, at least initially. In the first fifth string exercise, your thumb and index finger maintain a constant distance from one another; the whole hand simply moves from "thumb-over-third-string" to "thumb-over-fifth-string" and the middle finger picks up on the first. The three fingers are equidistant from one another, and the whole hand could stay locked that way if desired. In the second fifth-string exercise, the hand spreads after the first note, with the middle finger "staying" on the first string and the index finger picking up the second while the thumb travels all the way out to the fifth. Here the fingers are not equidistant from one another. Does the first upstroke note signal to the hand what to do next?

I'm not claiming to "know" here--among other things it's quite possible that different permutations of the exercise might nullify this concept--but I do know that when I started thinking of it in this way, I immediately got both faster and cleaner. Call it a working theory, and something to pay attention to!

Today's work seemed to confirm as well that the "logic" of the right hand includes assigning the thumb the task of the "1" count. Most banjo music I suppose uses enough notes that this is not ever really a problem, but I am at least theoretically interested in high-speed odd time signatures, and it will be interesting to see how the logic applies. (With flatpicking, the subject of the 1-count always being a downstroke can get contentious, and in Guitar Craft we learn--conspicuously--not to assume that the 1 will automatically be a downstroke. Apparently this was instilled so well that I am scanning the horizon early to see it coming with the banjo!)

Okay, let's try that again later and see if it holds...

Needed: banjo action work

Spent a little time with the banjo at lunch today and came to a few conclusions.

I really like the basic sound of this instrument. Going to have to find ways to incorporate it into the things I'm doing. And, I suspect I'm going to have to learn to play both fingerstyle and traditional banjo picking as well as flat picking, as the sounds are all different and all worth using! Sigh. Now, to find a practice discipline...

It has become clear that I can either keep the design feature allowing for the replaceable fingerboard insert for the first three frets (the replacement insert is fretless), or I can glue one of them down and try to get the action I'm looking for. It's a really cool concept and I give major marks to the innovator that came up with it, but--at least on the banjo I built with the skills I had at the time and now--I am not going to get the quality of action I'm looking for without at least gluing the insert down, and probably thickness-sanding it just slightly as well. Between a slight upbow in the neck (the truss rod is nonadjustable), the extra height of the fretted insert at the first two frets within the tolerances of its tension screw, the disparity in height of the fifth-string nut, and the jut of the body ring, I just don't see a way to get the primary four strings any lower than they are now, and they're too high at the octave and above. (I'm pretty sure I like a lower action than most people, and it's becoming worse the more I realize how much I like how the fretless turned out!)

So! When I can get around to it (no snickering, now), I'll thickness-sand the fretted insert to compensate for the upbow and glue it in place, true that neck up to dead-flat, and dehorn the snot out of it. (Now that things have settled from the original construction, I definitely notice some sharp spots that can be corrected.) Then, I'll re-set the neck to the optimum angle, and will reserve the right to relieve the curve of the body ring if that remains an obstacle. I'll bring the bridge down to the right height so that I've got the action I'm looking for, and I suspect that at that point I will also have corrected the disparity problem of the fifth-string nut height.

Then, of course, I'll have no excuses for how badly I play the instrument, so I'll need to get on that problem too. :-)

Finally, I am still out on the tuning I want to use here. I just went through a re-introduction of diatonic triads and sevenths on these intervals (I'm ignoring the fifth string for now), and while some of these chords are really nice, I don't know if it is worth not having three adjacent fifth intervals for melodic/improv purposes. On an instrument with six strings, like the Guitar Craft guitar for which the tuning was designed, having the m3 at the top of the range while still having two other all-fifth-interval four-string groups to work with, works out well. With only four main strings on the banjo, though, melodic runs that work great on the guitar or mandolin start to feel cramped; you have to shift hand position to complete the second octave. (One of the best features of tuning in fifths is that you have an octave available on two strings within one hand position, and two octaves over four strings within one hand position.)

It's still too early to make a permanent call; first, I do not yet understand the Tao of the banjo, so to speak, and that may suggest a decision by itself. As well, I will have to be careful with tension on the neck viz string gauges. If I go all fifths, I'll have to be careful how tight I try to wind the first string and how big a gauge I use for the fourth. If I do go all fifths, I'll probably try either for G2-D3-A3-E4 (the same as a mandocello, and that's low for a banjo...a traditional banjo usually tunes its fourth string to D3) or possibly a minor third up from that (Bb2-F3-C4-G4) with a really tiny first string. And then the fifth string should be appropriate to that. I kinda like the fifth string a whole tone above the first, and in theory it should be quite possible to do that even with A4, with a suitably small gauge. But that may sound really weird against the open Bb, I dunno. Hey, it's that way with experiments.

Anyway, I'll keep working with the NST intervals for now, and as I learn more about the banjo itself, I'll listen for direction on where all this should go. If nothing else I'll keep confounding the snot out of anyone trying to figure out what I'm doing by watching my left hand, which is always a conversation starter with standard-tuning guitarists. (I decided to keep the mandolin tuning at standard just to throw a monkey-wrench into the works, you know. :-)

String gauge notes

A housekeeping post here--some string-gauge notes on different pieces of paper, in danger of being lost, will instead end up out in cyberspace for the truly geeky to stumble across. :-)


For the Ovation (acoustic steel roundwound)

1. 6th C2: 59-60 wound
2. 5th G2: 45-50 wound
3. 4th D3: 30-36 wound
4. 3rd A3: 20-22 wound
5. 2nd E4: 11-13 plain
6. 1st G4: 9-11 plain

For the fretless acoustic (acoustic steel roundwound)

1. 6th Bb1: 59-60 wound
2. 5th F2: 45-50 wound
3. 4th C3: 35-38 wound
4. 3rd G3: 22-25 wound
5. 2nd D4: 11-15 plain
6. 1st F4: 11-13 plain

For the fretless acoustic (electric steel flatwound)

1. 6th C2: 54-60 flatwound
2. 5th G2: 42-48 flatwound
3. 4th D3: 30-36 flatwound
4. 3rd A3: 18-21 wound or plain
   
5. 2nd E4: 11-13 plain
6. 1st G4: 10-12 plain

For the banjo (acoustic steel roundwound)

1. 5th G4: 9-11 plain
   
2. 4th C3: 20-26 wound
3. 3rd G3: 13-18 plain or wound
   
4. 2nd D4: 9-11 plain
5. 1st F4: 8-10 plain

For the SoloEtte (acoustic steel roundwound)

1. 6th C2: 59-60 wound
2. 5th G2: 45-50 wound
3. 4th D3: 30-36 wound
4. 3rd A3: 20-22 wound
5. 2nd E4: 11-13 plain
6. 1st G4: 9-11 plain

For the SoloEtte (electric steel flatwound)

1. 6th C2: 56-60 flatwound
2. 5th G2: 42-48 flatwound
3. 4th D3: 30-36 flatwound
4. 3rd A3: 16-20 plain
5. 2nd E4: 11-13 plain
6. 1st G4: 8-10 plain

For the Strat (electric steel flatwound)

1. 6th C2: 54-60 wound
2. 5th G2: 42-50 wound
3. 4th D3: 26-36 wound
4. 3rd A3: 16-20 plain
5. 2nd E4: 11-13 plain
6. 1st G4: 8-10 plain

For the Strat (electric steel roundwound)

1. 6th C2: 54-60 flatwound
2. 5th G2: 42-50 flatwound
3. 4th D3: 26-36 flatwound
4. 3rd A3: 16-20 plain
5. 2nd E4: 11-13 plain
6. 1st G4: 8-10 plain

The NST banjo

Well, it's finally here, and mostly done. I now have a working banjo, with a twist (those of you who know me don't need to snicker so loudly). Instead of the standard banjo tuning, I have employed the intervals of the top four strings of the Guitar Craft (New Standard) tuning, so I'm dubbing this the NST banjo.

(Click to enlarge any picture!)

The brief history

A "Cumberland Banjo" kit was ordered about two years ago, from Musicmakers in (Stillwater, Minnesota, of all places), and it was early last year that I started to work on it. The design intrigued me--it's a small, open-backed banjo with a couple of nifty features including a cleverly adjustable angle on the neck, and an interchangeable insert in the fingerboard that allows you to use either the standard first three frets, or a fretless insert. It seemed something that I could try my hand at to see if I enjoyed the woodworking, and if I could actually make a playable instrument from the kit!

Things didn't start out so well. While trying to shape the peghead, I put too much stress on the joint where the nut is glued in (the kit's neck came rough-fabricated, with the fingerboard already glued on, truss rod in place, 5th-string peghole pre-reamed and tapped, and nut already in place, with the neck rough-shaped) and put a telltale hairline crack in it using an inappropriately underpowered jigsaw. I was not pleased, and put the kit away, disgusted with myself. About along that time, the move to Alaska started up, and I didn't resume building the kit until June of this year. I sheepishly got on the horn with Musicmakers, described the problem, and got the encouraging opinion that I could probably try to force a little glue in there and just glue the hairline back together, proceeding as normal. Because of the specific place the crack was located, the tension of the strings will tend to pull it closed, not open, and between the wood glue, re-epoxying the nut in place, and the strings pulling the crack closed, it seemed to be a good risk (and so far, so good!).

And so, while I assure you I am no sort of nascent Dan Erlewine or Ken Parker, I did manage to build the banjo, learning a great deal in the process. It was a lot of fun.

In this picture, note how the tone ring tensions the (8") plastic drum head. Six cap screws abut directly on the tone ring--simple but effective. The angle in this pic is a bit tough (I'm no photographer either), but you can just see two screws at the bottom of the black plastic tone ring.

The "tailpiece" is another ingeniously simple design, five pins sunk into the banjo's body and draped over a leather strap.

How's this for a first-timer's gaffe: notice anything unusual about this photo of the neck and headstock?

If you look closely, the eagle-eyed may notice that I managed to put the tuning machines on backwards! (Thank you, thank you.) I was so careful about shaping the peghead, after almost destroying it initially, that I just fit those machines on it in the manner most conducive to how they fit, and I got lefts and rights backwards without even realizing it! (The little "point" on the machines is supposed to point down, not up.) How's that for a truly customized banjo? I foresee continual amusement while playing the tuning song on this one...

Next pic is of the body. Eight-inch drumhead, and a standard five-string banjo bridge. Of interest is that this picture was taken before intonation. It became clear very quickly that the bridge was set too far forward, and after about 10m of work intonating, I've got a good position for it, very slightly compensated with the traditional bias towards longer bass strings.

Below, a shot of the banjo back. Note the two cap screws holding the neck joint. The top one is the tension screw; the bottom one abuts against a brass plate on the neck itself. To adjust the angle of the neck, loosen the top screw, then set the angle with the bottom one, retightening the top when finished. That was the fastest "action job" I've ever seen!

Interestingly, the action is limited on this instrument by the string height of the fifth string. At the neck joint, it is dramatically lower than the other four strings. I may at some point try to lower the action more, both by taking the main four strings down at the nut and filing slightly deeper notches in the ebony bridge for strings 1-4, but first I'm going to take some time to learn how to play it as it is!

This last picture doesn't really show this string height disparity, but it does give you an idea of the fifth string peg, individual "nut" (machine screw) and fingerboard. The fingerboard is made of padauk wood, a beautiful African hardwood with a lovely red color. (The rest of the banjo is of cherry wood, finished with plain clear lacquer.)

All in all, I'm reasonably pleased with my work. Doing the dot-inlays was an educational task, but I got it figured out and sanded that puppy to glassy smoothness with a final pass of 600-grit sandpaper. Fretwork turned out all right, with decent bevels and a minimum of sharp edges. The Dremel drum gave me one "oops" on the side of the fingerboard; otherwise I am pretty happy with it.

I learned a number of lessons, in addition to the ones noted above:

• The Dremel is your friend, but there's nothing like hand-sanding for final shaping and detail work.
• I do seem to enjoy the work with details--polish sanding, intonation, action setup, etc.
  
• That 5th string tuning machine is not geared (the main string machines are 14:1). So far it has not been a problem, but I can envision getting excited and working that one too far either way at some point!
• What to do with the string-end on the 5th string. Since it's a very light-gauge string (.010), the cut end is sharp, and although one should not have one's hand in a position to contact it during normal play, if it does end up making contact, there's gonna be a hole in your hand. I think I'll find a way to trim the string end so that the end loops back into the hole, presenting a smooth surface. Just seems smart!

So now what?

I got this banjo because I love the sound of the instrument, and of course I have a love of bluegrass-related musics. Being essentially a resounding mutt by disposition, I envision trying to use this instrument in bluegrass/newgrass, jazz, Crafty, and other contexts that haven't occurred to me yet. So, the fact that it's not a "bluegrass banjo" doesn't bug me (the sound is rather cool, actually) nor that I've adopted a different tuning for it.

Learning to play the banjo will be an interesting journey. The right hand clearly has a lot to learn, as I have thus far used a flat pick in Guitar Craft style, and my physical programming runs pretty deep. My intent is to apply a Crafty approach to it and see what happens.

The tuning, from strings 5-1, is:

G4 - C3 - G3 - D4 - F4

The main four strings (4-1) are the same intervals as the top four strings of the Guitar Craft tuning: a perfect fifth, a perfect fifth, and a minor third. (The standard banjo is tuned G4 - D3 - G3 - B3 - D4, with intervals over the main four strings being a perfect fourth, a major third, and a minor third.) My thought here is that it would allow me to use the same music theory on the banjo that I am learning for the guitar, and avoid me having to learn another set of intervals. (It will certainly also have the effect of giving this banjo a different voice, with chords very broadly spaced in the bass register and closely spaced on the top...and, duh, it's bound to be a PITA for someone else to figure out, which is always good for a larf. :-)

Anyway, the instrument is essentially done, with leeway for a little refinement on setup. I've got a strap fixed to it now (buttons at two and eight o'clock on the rim) and am ready to start the learning process!

A preliminary chord dictionary for the 'NST banjo'

Stringing up the new kit banjo (writeup coming soon) with NST intervals for the main 4 strings, I finally sat down and worked through the basic library of chord forms that I had long ago wanted to get around to. For NST guitar players this may look a little funny, with everything down a whole step and a 5th string that I haven't even considered yet, but since I'm after closed forms anyway, this will certainly serve as my own reference for these intervals. For this library, I have operated within the following constraints:

• The banjo is tuned, from strings 5-1, thus: G4-C3-G3-D4-F4. Diagrams should be read accordingly.
  
• I'm looking for closed forms.
• I want one working form for each possible chord inversion. In general, this means each form has a unique bass and treble note; occasionally they swap out interior notes.
• I approached the problem like I did when working through the "all-fifths" four-string group, trying to increment each note on each string first, and only amending a given form if the fingering started to look superhuman.
• Whenever possible, each chord contains all constituent tones (no omitted notes)...this is obviously a limitation on the number of available chords, but I am looking both for a working library, and an approach to chord construction that I can use as a basis for on-the-fly alteration.
• Finally, I used all four strings for each form, simply for the purposes of thinking in a useful box.

Okay then, here's the initial library; it only gets better from here! First, there are the fifths, which are pretty easy to figure out:


Then, there are the four triads. (NOTE: I have not been happy in my search for viable three-string triads on the first three NST strings. Fingerings get ugly; it's just not as elegant as straight fifths or fourths. In the end, I have returned to the four-string model, which obviously works fine.)


Then there are the basic suspended forms:


Then, the meat and potatoes--diatonic sevenths from the Western major and minor keys:


And to round things out, major and minor sixths:


There is a lot more work to be done, for sure, but this should serve as a basis.