Another tuning thought: what about CGDAEC?

A quick post to document a thought that hit me last night.

What about C2-G2-D3-A3-E4-C4?

Disadvantages:

• First string is lower in pitch than the second;  which could theoretically get confusing.
• Without a fourth interval between the second and first strings, you do lose that beautiful ascending V-I option (especially with harmonics).
• Low C may be optimistic with nylon strings (but is fine for steel).

 Advantages:

• All the fifths relationships of the Guitar Craft tuning (C2-G2-D3-A3-E4-G4).  Two complete four-string groups in fifths, allowing lots of fifths-based scale thinking and chord construction with no need to "skip strings".
• For fingerstyle, a minor triad on the top three strings.  With this voicing, at least some common alterations may present very convenient left-hand fingerings.
• First and sixth strings are two octaves apart.  Lots of people playing standard tuning and DADGAD take advantage of this.
• The first string becomes a simple pivot between CGDAEC (root position Am triad on top 3 strings) and CGDAEB (GAD intervals on top 3 strings).  Or, for that matter, CGDAEC# (A major triad) or even CGDAED (which is theoretically another GAD variation).  Total retuning movement for the first string here is a minor third--very do-able--and well within the range of appropriately-gauged strings.  And, the GAD variations re-capture the ascending V-I arrangement.
• The possibles of using these intervals with partial capoing seem immense, almost intimidating--and yet above whatever capo(s) are placed, I've still and always got five strings in fifths to work with.

Hm.  Velly intellesting.

I will have to try this out.  Since I don't have years of fingerstyle under my belt yet, it may be that I can adapt to this easily enough to take advantage of the benefits.  The more I think about it, the more interesting it seems:  the first string is the only thing that ever "moves", and yet it seems like there are four very individual tunings there. 

What about CGDABE?

After playing with the DGAD concept for a bit now, the thought suddenly occurred to me:  why not CGDABE for a tuning?  Some interesting attributes, compared with the CGDGAD option I've been considering as a general-purpose tuning:

• Six individual tones, as opposed to four.
• A true four-string group (6543) in all fifths.
• Fifths-based scales available on five strings, simply skipping the second string to do it.

It retains all the advantages of the DGAD relationship that matter to me, and the partial-capo options would seem to offer a great deal of flexibility with these tones, while retaining the ability to play up-the-neck with consistent available intervals.

Interesting thought.  I may string up the SoloEtte that way, and see what happens.

The DADGAD revelation (really, the DGAD revelation)

Dude. It may well be that the rest of the world knows all about this already, but I think I just "got" the huge value of the DADGAD tuning (or at least the DGAD part).

For the investment of selectively ignoring a string and going to the next one, you can

1. think of fifths-based scales normally (!!!),
2. sound multiple open-string harmonics with the first string either representing the root ("GAD" as Dsus, "AD" as D or Dm), the fifth ("GxD" as G or Gm, or even "GAD" as Gsus2), or even the fourth ("AD" as Asus)...ideas can get crazier from there if you dip into the major-third harmonic too, and
3. you get some really nifty options for close chord voicings in the upper register, while maintaining a wider separation in the bass where it does the most good.

I'm looking at some chickenscratch here for a basic tuning of C2-G2-D3-G3-A3-D4, and the head is spinning. Note that in that tuning you have ascending C-G-D-A strings to work with for melody;  you simply skip the third string to do it.  As an example:  if you're centric to D as a tonic, you can begin a scale run at the m7 on the open sixth string, run normally up through the fourth (D) string, skip the third string and pick up the upper tetrachord of the D scale on the 2nd (A) string, and complete the scale either stopped at the fifth fret of the second string, or open on the first. Major or minor, your choice.

Note, too, that in the DGAD sequence you have two pairs of separated fifths available: DxA, and GxD. Why lookee, that's V and I with a G tonic, and I and IV with a D. (Major or minor, again take your pick.)

For fingerstyle (which is really waking me up to some of these ideas), the concept is even more appealing, since notes on these non-adjacent strings can be easily sounded together.  And get this:  if I take that CGDGAD tuning and add a single Hipshot detuner to the third string, bringing it down to F, the open strings (and thus all those gorgeous open-string harmonics) become CGDFAD...and that gives me two three-string blocks with different Dm voicings (DFA and FAD, all in one octave!), not to mention "FA" as the relative major's root-and-third notes.  "FAD" is in fact the exact same intervallic relationship as the standard tuning's top strings, just a whole step lower.  As I've been discovering recently, that's a beautiful and useful voicing.

I've been trying to have it all, of course.  Melodically, because I first learned relationships in fifths (Guitar Craft's "new standard" tuning and then mandolin), I want to have that available for improvising, and four ascending fifths covers that just about as well as it can be covered. 

Next on the importance list is to have useful open-string harmonics for tapping and fingerstyle accents;  the standard tuning's "inverted fifth" that puts the root on top is hugely useful in this regard, and having either the m3 or the sus4 below that root, with supporting open strings below that, is great. 

Third, Michael Manring has really turned me on to the idea of detuning and retuning during a piece;  most people fixate on either the bass and/or treble string for that, but how about turning that idea upside down a bit and having the third string move...between a m3 and a sus4?  I think that just might work*. 

As yet another item in the mix (as if there weren't enough), I'm fascinated by the partial capo concept, which provides open strings for droning and accents but which does not disturb the string intervals for stopped notes.  (So, for example, if for my tuning of CGDGAD I did a partial capo of 220000, I get a true DADGAD on the "open strings", but if I want to improvise, I simply play the notes where they are in CGDGAD.  The only "affected" notes are below the capo.  That's intriguing, and if there does prove to be a drawback there, it would be that by capoing some strings you do change the available open-string harmonics.  Then again, that might prove to be an unexpected tool.) 

And finally, there's quite a bit of music for DADGAD out there;  just between Davy Graham (who seems to have pioneered it as a solution to playing non-Western music) and Michael Hedges (the Aerial Boundaries tuning is a simple but clever variation, C2-C3-D3-G3-A3-D4, almost a "double DGAD" since there are now three pairs of separated fifths, but at the expense of the CGDA sequence I want), I can certainly say that people I respect consider it a serious part of the vocabulary!

At any rate, I may have to string one of these git-tawr things up and give it a serious test.  The idea of a true "standard tuning" that permits logical thinking when improvising, while also permitting flexible changes to open strings and providing useful open-string harmonics, is really attractive, and this idea has more nice features than anything I've seen thus far.

Jeff Cooper had his Scout Rifle;  maybe his quest for the pinnacle of generalization just got under my skin beyond the realm of, er, "simple combustion engines".  I'd be real happy with that explanation.  (I'm not looking for "inventor" status--I'm quite sure that others have been here before--but rather, like Col. Cooper, I'm interested in arranging the best of what others have done, for my own purposes!)


_____________________
*For those who haven't looked into it:  there are considerations of available physical space for the Hipshot Xtender detuners, and it is impractical to simply use detuners on all the pegs of a conventional guitar headstock--they need too much room.  Here, I'm looking at leaving roots alone, and featuring two mid-scale notes instead...although I may also consider a 6th string Xtender, to allow the really nice convenience of pulling the C note up to D;  for scales that feature a m7, that could even be done during playing to go between the m7 and the root.  On a 3-and-3 headstock, one detuner per side should work fine.

Standard tuning observations

In trying to learn a little bit about fingerstyle playing, using the rough-but-functional classical guitar graciously disposed onto me from Steve B., a couple of observations seem worth noting.

This is my first real exploration of the standard guitar tuning (E2-A2-D3-G3-B3-E4), since I have cut my teeth and done all my real learning with the Guitar Craft standard tuning (C2-G2-D3-A3-E4-G4).  So, this is probably really old hat to most people, but I find it interesting enough to document.  (Please, then, excuse the pedantry.)

I'm trying to learn a right-hand discipline that I do not yet understand, having trained myself to use a flat pick in mostly single-note mode.  Consequently, I've been thinking primarily melodically--or at least, monophonically, about how the string intervals should work.  It's really helped to have the regular intervals (ascending fifths, in my case), acting as an anchor point to develop and refine my sense of where those notes are, and in this effort it's quite nice if you have regular intervals you can count on.

But lo and behold, in looking more at some of even the simplest exercises of, say, "plucking chords" with thumb and three fingers, alternative ways of looking at this just kinda jump right out.  Multiple ways.  Polyphonic ways.  And so I never really noticed a couple of things about the mojo of the standard tuning, at least from a fingerstylist's point of view:

• The top three strings are an Em triad, with the m3 in the bass and the root on top.  Wholly aside from having a convenient barred minor triad available, for someone who is very interested in open-string harmonics, here's a convenient way to play three strings at once and get a minor chord in harmonics, in a dramatic voicing, and the technique can quickly become automatic.  (A little improvising here made it immediately obvious how much has been done using exactly that little tidbit.  Again:  duh.)
• Strings 4, 3, and 2 comprise a G major triad, with fifth in bass and third on top.  Further, that chord happens to be the relative major of the above Em of 3, 2, and 1.  Now that is handy, again especially when you may want to ring out the open strings or open-string harmonics.  And again, it falls right under the "home position" of the i-m-a fingers.
• Breaking things down further into two-string pairs (as I did a chord-plucking exercise which featured "blocking" two fingers against the thumb, instead of three) yielded another way of looking at this.  Strings 2-1 are either an ascending fourth from I to IV, or an ascending fourth from V to I.  I'd never thought of looking at it that latter way, even though I've known for a long time that a fourth is an inverted fifth.  The voicing of V-I is a powerful voicing, especially on rising harmonics.  Double duh.  And then, suddenly, I could see how it is that the major interval in the otherwise-all-fourths tuning, actually produces a very useful minor chord once you exchange roots.

So, suddenly, I see a lot more logic in the "DGBE" intervals, and will be happy to work with them a little more.   It didn't take long to figure out that by using pairs of strings, I could create an effective polyphonic chord sequence out of harmonics:  12th fret harmonic for strings 2-1 (B-E), 7th for 3-2 (D-F#), 5th for 4-3 (D-G), produces a very useful VI-VII-I sequence--it certainly takes longer to write than do, and it's just right under the fingers.

So I'll be mulling on this one for a while, and hopefully trying a lot out.  I do need to find out the essential logic of how fingerstylists play fast melodic lines; if that can be integrated with the very simple things I'm seeing here, then this should be a pretty wild ride.

On a different note, I do notice that I am having a hard time applying these initial fingerstyle exercises to the acoustic fretless, and it seems to be primarily a function of string spacing.  I'm starting to get the logic, too, of the classical instrument's string spread at the bridge;  the fretless' spread is scant even by electric guitar standards.  Maybe that axe will wind up a five-string after all!

Okay, that got documented and my embarrassing secret is out--I may have missed all this before, but I'll start from where I am and go with it now.  :-)

Instrument tunings - happy tweaking

Per that last post, it took me longer to get strings on things than I'd expected, and in the interim a couple of things have happened that have made me decide to tweak things a bit.  Lemme 'splain.  (No, there is too much.  Lemme sum up.  Yes, I assure you, the following is a summary.)

Ovation.  I'd planned to change this one's tuning to work on an Antoine Dufour tune, but then I started working on Aerial Boundaries again, and nope, this sucker's staying in that tuning for a little while longer!  And, since Dufour has several pieces that will work with standard tuning and a detuned sixth string (std, drop D, drop C), I'll use a single, other instrument to work on those.  (And now, I've found it, sitting right in front of me.)

Classical.  Steve Bambakidis donated me the beaten-up classical guitar that he had no use for, and I've been trying to figure out what to do with it.  It's rough, but then am I not experimenting?  Anyway, I'd thought I'd tune that up to work on Antoine Dufour's piece "Scratch" (via which I would learn how he approaches fingerstyle, and also learn about not only capoing, but partial capoing), but in stringing things up with a set of nylons, the limitations became obvious.  Neck is far from perfect, action is not at all ideal, the body fret is of course at 12, and there's a lot going on in "Scratch" that definitively takes advantage of steel strings.  And trying to bring a nylon sixth string out of a standard-tension set down to C2 is just...uh...optimistic.  But!  Now with the burrs on the frets cleaned up a little bit, the neck (really) rough-leveled and a new set of strings, and a decent action in first and second positions, what if I just make this instrument a standard-tuning knockabout?  It can serve for guests who want/need standard tuning, and I can use it with all the standard-tuning resources I have for learning standard approaches to fingerstyle/Celtic.  I'll just treat EADGBE as another alternate tuning to learn.  (I might even some day get jiggy with it and try all fourths, EADGCF, because I'm just that way, and you can get all fourths without bending much.  :-)  Anyway, the tuning is now standard and the strings are standard-tension ("High Tension") at 43w-35w-30w-40p-32p-28p.

SoloEtte.  I've not been perfectly happy with the Bb5 tuning on this axe (it's really cool in a few contexts, but it just feels like too much of a one-trick pony), and so this will become the "learn Dufour" instrument, starting with the "Scratch" tuning (C2-A2-D3-G3-B3-E4) and then migrate to the other pieces;  it will be nice to have an instrument that I can work with late at night without upsetting people.  I'm happy with this idea.  Gauges are 59w-46w-30w-22w-12p-10p.

Fretless.  Likewise, I've not been perfectly happy with either the NST tuning on this instrument, nor with the various half-assed options I've worked with so far.  So, until I get the chance to fashion another nut/saddle combination (and as a teaser, there is a whole lot of head noise going on about that concept), I'm going to try out DADGAD, but with a twist.  I'm going to do "CGCGFC", instead, both going down a whole step and swapping out the whole-step interval but keeping the pitches the same.  This little tweak will give me the chance to try out the sus4 tuning concept while still retaining:

• Three adjacent pairs of general-purpose intervals, for scale work in different registers.  (Three of those, strings 6-5, 4-3, and 2-1, are a fifth apart, allowing one-octave-over-two-strings, and one of those, strings 5-4, is a fourth, both leading out of a fifth interval and into another one.
• Top three strings defining the essential sus4 chord for the tuning.
• Root on top.
• Bottom strings defining a power chord.

I think it will be fun to play with this.  Since it's really tough to grab lots of strings at the same time for a chord on the fretless, having good open strings to work with should prove interesting.  We'll see!  (To document:  strings are flatwound steels for the basses--50, 40, and 30 at the moment--and plain steel trebles in 16, 17 and 13 for this experiment.  If this works out, I may be able to get away with using heavier strings.  I'm thinking of something like 56fw-42fw-30fw-18fw-20fw-16p;  that might be really rich in the harmonics!)

Anyway, now I can say that there are two instruments in the house that are in their natural tunings.  That's okay, I haven't lost my mind--yet.  :-)

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!  :-)

Possible tunings for a 4-string...

The brain is chewing on things. In this case, the next instrument project, which is an absolute jumble of ideas at the moment, but with some starting to gel. I'm after a fretless, solid-body instrument with lots of sustain, and with some Michael Manring-esque instant detuning options. Pretty much every moving part is being considered, but that's the overarching goal.

Today's chewing is over the actual string tuning options. How can I get the most flexibility out of the simplest system? With a theoretical detuner for each string at both the bridge and nut end, yielding three possible "open" notes per string, permutations get daunting. But hell, let's take a stab, right?

I set an arbitrary box: could I get a tuning that would allow me to use both open fifths and open fourths? How about an additional option of the Guitar Craft intervals?

I pretty quickly came up with two possible options--there may be others, but the current exercise is: what might be possible with these?

Option 1:

String	Low note	Middle	High note
#4	G1	A1	B1
#3	C2	D2	E2
#2	A2	B2	D3
#1	D3	E3	G3

Option 2:

String	Low note	Middle	High note
#4	G1	A1	B1
#3	D2	E2	F2
#2	A2	B2	C3
#1	D3	E3	G3

Well now, these two options present quite a few obvious possibles. They both permit open 5ths (GDAE), open 4ths (BEAD), Guitar Craft intervals (AEBD), multiple power chord voicings (interestingly, rooted on G, D, A, and E), multiple major triad voicings, even more minor triad voicings, multiple sus4 voicings, at least one major seventh voicing, and a couple of minor seventh/major sixth voicings. Option #2 also has an obvious available dominant 7th voicing which does not seem available in #1. (I haven't ventured past seventh forms yet, but there's obviously other things there too.) Melodically, something might be significant about the first option's consistency; within each string's tuning profile, the only "intervals" that are not major seconds are the upper intervals on the top two strings, which are minor thirds. On the other hand, the second option has the two interior strings featuring a whole and a half-step. I'm thinking about the possibilities of chasing harmonics around, melodically, and it seems to me that a variety of possible intervals just might be too fun to pass up.

So, at least initially, it seems that either of these options would keep me busy for quite a while, and the latter option may prove to be slightly more flexible than the first. Now that it's documented, I can mull on it for a while, and see if it might be worth the effort of trying to get a detuner on both ends of each string.

I suppose it would be much simpler if I didn't keep trying to take every fixed point I can see and cast off its moorings. I can hear ya: isn't fretless enough? Well, sure it is. Hell, just listen to the available corpus of great music: twelve-tone, standard tuning is enough.

But it's not the point. Face it, I'm just a pain in the ass. :-)

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.

Fretless video sample

Okay, do please forgive me the problems here. One must begin somewhere, and here I am.

Here's a first-take sample of the kit-built acoustic fretless guitar. There are certainly problems--the audio and video seem to get unsynchronized, there is some audio editing that should probably be done to cure boomy spots and hiss, and of course I'm still learning how to play this beastie. But learning consists of putting darts on the board, and this does give an idea of what the instrument actually sounds like in person.

(Constructive criticism from musicky and audiophile folks is welcome. My learning here is both for KPC project business and my own edification. :-)

Annotations:

• Tuning is Guitar Craft Standard (C2-G2-D3-A3-E4-G4).
• Bass strings are electric flatwounds; trebles normal-tension nylons.
• Music is...aw hell, who am I kidding? Total wanky improv. ("Okay, so here I am ready to play for a test. What should I play? Uh... Okay, the open G sounds good...mmm...minor seconds...mmm...augmented seconds...what was that again?")
  
• Much of the playing is between the third (nylon) and fourth (steel) strings. (That actually was on purpose, and mostly intentional.)
• No audio or video editing has been done, other than timeline cropping.
• Video is a webcam (a common Logitech if memory serves), microphone is a MXL USB.008.
• Recorded with Camtasia Studio. (I'll soon be testing audio recording with Audacity too.)

Again, constructive criticism and comments are welcome. What I learn from this overall process (of audio and video recording and editing) will wind up contributing to our "new to distance ed" video-segment project, from spoken audio to camera recording to background music. Assume I know nothing, and you'll be pretty close! :-)

Fretless update - strings

More on the fretless acoustic guitar project.

So it does appear that tying the nylon strings to the tailblock is going to prove a lot more workable than trying to use the ball-end approach. If nothing else (and after one tie pulling out on me, dagnabbit) I learned the trick to this technique, which appears to be to have the tail of the knot under angular tension, here taking advantage of the rounded upper edge and slight cantilever of my tailblock:


This seems obvious in retrospect, of course, much like some climbing knots, but doesn't necessarily occur to you at first.

It seems like these strings are still stretching after an entire weekend, although they're a lot closer to settled now than they were when I put them on. (As I look at all the little angles, twists and other places where stretching can happen, I suppose this should not be that much of a surprise.) What is encouraging is that the knots are no longer pulling through, and I can get on to bigger and better things, like playing them. What's funny now is to look at the strings and see all the pinch and wind points that represent my learning curve; hopefully the next string change will see a one-shot installation, with an even cleaner playing surface in the end.

Hey, sometimes it takes a time or two, but I do learn. :-)

Here's another take of the soundhole, bridge and tailblock, with the amusing visage of three ball-end steel strings and three tied nylons:


Up at the headstock, you can see yet more string blemishes right off the nut. Sigh. What's interesting in playing is that with the thicker first string there, I find myself wanting the string groove to be located just a hair more inboard--it's very close to slipping off the edge of the board if I get sloppy. If I do end up adjusting the action to accommodate these strings (which I suspect is probable, at some point), I'll probably try to cut only on the inward face of the groove, both here and at the saddle. It won't take much, but I do notice it. More learning!


Finally, note here in side-view yet another lesson: since the nylon strings stretch so much, there is no need to wind two or three times around the capstan before starting to tension the string, as I've always done with steel strings. By the time you're up to pitch and stable, you'll have a lot more winds on that sucker! (Note here that my third string has considerably fewer winds on it than the other two--here's the story: after cutting off the ball end, tying a double-knot on the tailblock and trimming the obvious kink at the other end from the previous attempt, there was only enough string left to even reach the third-string capstan with a little assistance from a needlenose plier. So the winds that you do see are all there from stretch!)


So, my little Frankenstein woodworking project limps along, sounding far better (to my ears, at least) than it has any right to, and I continue to learn little things about luthierie. It's all good. Hell, I'm still a bit dumbfounded that I managed to build something I could not only play, but improve upon noticeably. (Just wait, this will probably embolden me just enough to try something else. Keep your eye protection on! :-)

Interestingly, when I got around to plugging it in, I found a pretty sizable disparity in output between the steel basses and nylon trebles: to wit, the basses sound simply huge, and the trebles are distinctly softer. Acoustically, they sound very even, but this pickup strongly favors the steels. (Probably not much of a surprise there, viz the physics of it.) What's encouraging technically is that if the nylons are softer, they sound very even across themselves (much moreso than the previous difference between wrapped and plain steel strings). I'll do a little experimenting with the tone pot on the onboard preamp to see what I can come up with, and of course there's always the controls further down the signal chain. There should be something workable there.

And the sound! Maybe it's the "my baby" thing talking, but I think there is a personality there, and the sound is as intoxicating as the feel. With a little luck, I'll get around to recording some samples. Fingers crossed!

Fretless update

And verily, today I did place upon the home-built fretless guitar three flatwound basses and three nylon trebles, and wound them up to see what would happen.

This idea came about from discussions with the redoubtable Steve Cornish, who has been incredibly gracious in letting me use the "back room" in his shop for mandolin lessons. I had long liked the idea of flatwound bass strings, especially as they'd be easier on my padauk fingerboard, but then again I had originally conceived this instrument as a nylon-strung project--I even ordered the LR Baggs pickup that was optimized for nylon strings. Steve seemed to think that blending the two types might be worth trying out, and set me up with .050, .040, and .030 flatwounds, and the lightest ball-end nylon trebles he had on hand. I came home, re-sanded the fingerboard with 600-grit paper, oiled it up, and put the strings on. My target tuning was the Guitar Craft standard tuning, C2-G2-D3-A3-E4-G4.

First, the bad news. I don't think I'm going to be able to tune that first string to G4. Just as I got it there, the ball-end pulled completely through the tunnel in the tailblock. Since the string itself was fine, I tried tying a bigger knot in the end, and backed the tuning off by a whole step, just as I've had it for a while now. It still makes me nervous, as I can see it trying to pull through again even tuned down to F4. I suspect I've got a lot to learn about how to work with nylon strings, which--for starters--stretch in a completely different way than steel. Okay, learning curve! I may intensify a search for an appropriate first string as I go along, and I may experiment with actually tying that string as on a classical guitar bridge. I think my tailblock may permit that, and a double loop may resist pulling through better than what I've got now. (Suggestions from nylon-string experts welcome!)

Along with that, I may want to fine-tune the fingerboard and action (nut/saddle) a little bit, since the nylon strings are considerably thicker than their steel predecessors. I'll play it a bit first and see what makes the most sense.

At first glance, my sixth string now does seem a bit floppy, tuned as it is to Bb1. That's low. If I settle on this tuning (Bb1-F2-C3-G3-D4-F4), I may revise the gauges of the flatwounds to be a little beefier. Continued experimentation!

Touch wood, that's it for the bad news--and all of those items should be easy fixes. Now, for the good news.

This is exactly what I wanted this instrument to be.

The feel of these strings is just plain sexeh. (As in, "I'll have what she's having.") The flatwounds are everything I wanted them to be: easy on the board, quiet and smooth under the fingers, and surprisingly lively in the upper registers, with a great "mwah" sound. And I think I am going to really love the nylons, which have a very similar feel under the fingers and a distinct "mwah" of their own, plus a much more balanced acoustic output and sustain than the tiny steel strings they replace. My fingers can actually feel them there; the plain steel strings would dampen so quickly that I found myself rolling up on my fingernail to get a workable note, which certainly ruins any sort of consistent technique! :-)

Slides on the top strings have gone from optimistic to sensuous, with an unexpected personality that I look forward to developing. Playing in the upper registers sounds a lot less "forced", and string-to-string balance looks to be much improved. The whole instrument sounds warmer and I think I am starting to hear a distinct voice in it. Initial testing playing across the boundary--going from steel flatwound to nylon in scale runs--sounded much more even than I would have guessed, and I'm pumped to try this out for a while.

Thus far everything has been acoustic. Tomorrow, I'll add a little electricity and see what happens. :-)

Training with diatonic sevenths

Let's face it: training yourself to ingrain a chord library is a bit of a chore. A chore that pays worthwhile dividends, to be sure, but a chore nonetheless. Today, somewhat out of the blue, I realized that I have to add another item to the practice regimen. It came out of trying to re-familiarize myself with diatonic sevenths from the Western major scale on the Guitar Craft tuning's top four strings. I've got a lot less time in these shapes than I do with the shapes of all-fifth-intervals, and that's probably what brought this thought out: I need this skill now, because my constraint of the NST intervals on the banjo means that I don't have four strings in fifths to lean back on. This is exactly what I was hoping to force myself to do here.

My basic chord library--what I try to train myself in as a basic competence--follows a few key constraints:

• Closed shapes only, available to any key.
  
• One shape per chord inversion (so, if I want to master Cmaj7, I construct four shapes, so that I can put any desired note in that chord--C, E, G, or B--in the bass or in the treble position)
• Inner chord tones may be swapped around if fingerings become superhuman (some of 'em are pretty tough!)
• All chord tones represented if at all possible (and in all but a couple of cases, it is!)
  
• Use of a four-string group to cover the chord (three-string chords introduce the structural complexity of "which tone to omit?" which I think will be a useful thing to address after I've cemented the basics)
  

Yep, they're arbitrary constraints, but building a library this way has helped me immensely with comfort with chords, and it's given me a vehicle to alter them methodically. I can recommend it with enthusiasm.

So! When practicing these inversions, I like to walk up the scale playing the diatonic chords (that is, Cmaj7 - Dm7 - Em7 - Fmaj7 - G7 - Am7 - Bm7b5) according to these rules:

• First: Play each inversion of a chord before moving to the next chord. That is, play Cmaj7/C, Cmaj7/E, Cmaj7/G, and Cmaj7/B before moving to the Dm7. I like doing it both starting with the root inversion of each chord, and then starting with whatever inversion is closest to the nut. This builds a sense of how to move from one inversion to another within the same chord, at different spots on the neck (when I use keys other than C major).
  
• Second: Play the I chord of the key (whatever inversion you choose to start with), then the closest II chord, then the closest III chord, etc. When moving from VII to the root, play the next highest I chord inversion. Again, I like to do it both starting on the root inversion of the I chord, and then again with the lowest available inversion of the I chord. This exercise gives you a sense of the chords closest to your original hand position, and it also teaches you how the different inversions interrelate to each other over the entire fingerboard. This is really eye-opening, to watch yourself go through four passes through the key, playing seven chords at a time, and only occasionally needing to move your hand position more than a couple of frets at a time.
  

I started to do this second exercise today, in a different key than C, and realized that I froze up because I had started to internalize the key of C, rather than the abstract shapes determined from inversion and scale tone. Which inversion was I looking for again? Well, drat. More work to do.

So: I am now going to add to that this exercise:

• Third: Play the chords of the scale, ascending, all in the same inversion. This should accomplish two things: first, it should cement how the chords alter the basic shape common to the chord inversion (i.e., which tone goes flat to turn a M3 into a m3); second, it should help you to understand where your next chord should be, ascending or descending, in the same inversion...this may help to develop a sense of where the other chords overlap (in theory, one should always be able to play the chord a diatonic third up in almost exactly the same hand position as the chord you're on...so you can develop a cadence: I chord in root inversion, shift up a whole tone to II chord in root inversion, back down a whole tone to III chord in a different inversion, then up a whole tone to the IV chord in that same inversion, back down for the V chord, back up for the VI chord, back down for the VII chord and then up to the next available I chord...). It's an oversimplification, but only barely. It works in all but a couple of special cases such as "do I alter the chord in order to play it at the nut rather than at the octave, because one of the chord tones would be 'just below' the nut?"

Time to put that into practice. I expect it to be a great skill-builder, and will report back here with a little work.

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

Fretless revision 1

The fretless guitar has been revised to cure the high spot on the fingerboard. A bit of judicious time with sandpaper has proven fruitful and educational.

The diagnosis was a high spot in the region of "frets" 14-18, for the first and second strings. On careful inspection, the bottom lip of the fingerboard was partly the culprit, it was also partly the general slope of the board above the octave. These tolerances are tight!

The diagnostic sanding (60-grit and 150-grit) was done with strings in place; once all notes were ringing clear, I took strings off and more gratuitously sloped off the end of the board. When satisfied, I finished up with 220, 400, and 600-grit paper. The board is certainly not perfect, you can see that right away, but since this is a bit of work in progress and an experiment to begin with, I'm pretty happy with progress thus far. Before restringing, I did manage to get a couple of photos of the fingerboard, which I'd meant to do before:

Yeah, 600-grit sandpaper is pretty nice. I'd never seen unfinished wood shine before these projects. (It was after these photos that I wiped on the linseed oil.)

Restringing this time was another experiment. The first iteration had a marvelous warm buzz (what Dave Sweeney called the "mwah" sound, which is exactly right), but the top two strings were so light (.012 for the E and .010 for the G) that I thought I should try some heavier ones to see if I could get a little more sound. What I did, so as not to risk overtensioning my little kit's system, was to go to heavier gauge strings all around, and then tune everything down a whole step. So, I used the following for this experiment

• 6th string: .059 bronze wound, tuned to Bb1
• 5th string: .048 bronze wound, tuned to F2
• 4th string: .038 bronze wound, tuned to C3
• 3rd string: .022 nickel wound, tuned to G3
• 2nd string: .014 plain, tuned to D4
• 1st string: .012 plain, tuned to F4

Boy, interesting observations there. First: the .059 for the Bb is floppy, and the instrument does seem to have a hard time responding to it. Curiously, the .054 string seemed to work fine for the low C previously. Quite a difference. Next, those first two strings really do sound better being a little thicker. That point is well-taken. Finally, I noticed that a lot of the "mwah" was missing, at least the first time the strings were brought up to pitch.

I started thinking about this, and it's quite possible that multiple things are at work. First, the thicker strings may simply ride a little higher in the nut/saddle notches, and be enough higher off the board that the natural buzzing is affected by it. Probably it's also that the fingerboard has indeed been relieved by the sanding.

Some of that "mwah" is coming back as things settle in, or perhaps it's because of how I'm playing it. I also have considered the roundwound strings. Ultimately, I am still interested in either flatwound electric strings, or possibly the original idea, nylon. (That would really require some more work on nut and saddle!) But...I wonder how much of this buzzing sound is actually coming from the roundwound strings. I've heard that the "Jaco growl" may have been partly due to his use of roundwound strings, and I'll admit, that's not a bad sound to have available...

One way or the other, it's given me a lot to think about. Current plan is to play like this for a while, and then at my next string change, polish up the fingerboard once again and put on the "light" electric flatwounds to see what they sound like. The plan there is for the following:

• 6th: .056 flatwound, tuned to C2
• 5th: .042 flatwound, tuned to G2
• 4th: .024 flatwound, tuned to D3
• 3rd: .018 plain, tuned to A3
• 2nd: .013 plain, tuned to E4
• 1st: .011 plain, tuned to G4

I figure that if the action/setup sounds good with the lightest strings, I'll have done with the instrument what I am capable of doing as a luthier, and by then I'll have enough evidence to decide how I want to string in the longer term.

For now, we'll try whole-step-down, heavy strings, and see how it goes!

The NST fretless acoustic guitar

The big project, the one I'm the most excited about, is the fretless acoustic. This project is still one or two steps away from being "really done", but these are definitely in the spirit of small refinements. I am psyched about this one.

The concept

I was after several things here. I had for a while been intrigued by the concept of a fretless guitar, having loved the sounds of Jaco, Percy Jones, Kai Eckhardt, Michael Manring, and Tony Levin for some years now. But it was running into Neil Haverstick, who served as a marvelously patient and charmingly idiosyncratic "theory teacher" for Dave Cialone and I (after Nathan left for Illinois), that really inspired this project. In addition to teaching us an approach to tonal music theory (read the theory posts on this blog and you'll see the product of a lot of that), Neil was personally in the midst of exploring alternative tuning options for his microtonal music, and was himself just beginning to perform with a fretless guitar. It was compelling.

So, I had identified that I wanted to build a guitar from a Musicmakers kit, and their "Guit-along" teardrop shaped mini-guitar (which is not a currently available kit, it appears) seemed like the right design for compact size and complete access to the upper register. It is designed to be a steel-string, fretted acoustic guitar in standard tuning with a small floating bridge and no electronics. So, naturally, I decided I'd build it as a nylon-string, fretless acoustic guitar in Guitar Craft standard tuning (aka New Standard Tuning or NST to Crafties*) with the addition of an onboard pickup and preamp for amplifying and recording. This would involve coming up with a solution for the provided fretboard, which was already slotted for fretwire, fabricating my own bridge and saddle, and selecting and adapting electronics.

You know, for building my first guitar. :-)

I'm happy to say that I am pleased with the end result. There were certainly headaches in there, but the result is good as it is, and will get better with a couple more refinements.


The tour

The kit came with pre-bent wood for the guitar body, and sound- and backboards. The wood turned out much prettier than I'd expected it to be, but I didn't find that out until the finish (clear lacquer) went on. The plainest piece of wood on the thing is the Sitka spruce laminate soundboard!

Note in the pic on the left, above, the battery box, and look closely inside the far side of the soundhole and you'll see the volume and tone pots supplied with the LR Baggs undersaddle transducer (I got one specifically calibrated for nylon strings). In the pic on the right, you can see the battery box through the other side of the soundhole. Note too that the bridge in these shots is the first-phase bridge, fabricated from a plank of padauk wood from Rockler's in Denver whose color was pretty close to the kit's supplied padauk fingerboard. The saddle in this first iteration is a plastic saddle from an old dreadnaught and was being used as a placeholder; I had not even started work on the bone saddle at this point.

Here's a look at the fingerboard and the headstock. It's a shame that I wasn't able to capture the almost mirror shine that 600-grit sandpaper put on the fretless surface.

To solve the problem of the fret slots, the staff at Musicmakers suggested I glue light-colored wood veneer into the 18 fret slots, and then sand the board flat. This was a great idea; it looks really nice and the reference is very useful for someone getting started with fretless playing!

Of interest: despite my using a drill press to cut the peg holes for the tuning machines, I still managed to get one of them off-center. Doesn't affect how it plays, I know, but it still makes me grumpy. I'm much happier with the bone nut (from Stewart-MacDonald, along with the bone saddle, battery box, and electronics) I substituted for the plastic one provided with the kit.

Here's a look at the neck, and a closeup of the volume/tone pots in the soundhole:

In hindsight, I probably should have shaped the neck a little differently, as this one feels a little thick, but it is my first time shaping a neck (the kit's neck was bandsawn, so it wasn't a complete neck blank; essentially the rounding is mine), and I was conservative.

As a woodworking project, it was fun. I learned a great deal about gluing, sanding, and the use of router attachments for Dremel tools, and enjoyed it. The electronics scared the shite out of me, though, as I am no electrician, and I was continually petrified that I'd build the whole thing, plug in and then get...nothing.

The pickup is an undersaddle transducer, which meant that I could not use the kit's supplied bridge--which simply floats on top of the soundboard with no provision for a separate saddle to transmit vibration to the transducer. So...I fabricated a bridge, from a plank of padauk wood from Rockler's, with a Dremel tool and hand sanding, using the Dremel plunge router attachment to fashion a workable but far from perfect channel for the saddle, and then just sanding that thing square with the aid of my shooting micrometer. In the end, I managed to build a little compensation into the saddle, with the bass strings slightly longer than the trebles (this may be somewhat academic on a fretless instrument, but I'm happy I did it).

The preamp is built into the endpin jack, so a giant hole went into the tailblock of the guitar, and instead of using the battery bag included with the pickup, I rewired the battery to Stew-Mac's battery box, which I fitted on the top side of the guitar in the only "flat" spot on the teardrop's curve. I think that will work out rather nicely; the box is much more elegant than trying to negotiate a battery bag through that reduced-size soundhole.

I assembled the whole thing up, mostly to see if the electronics would even work, and strung it up and plugged it in. To my total astonishment, it sounded fabulous through my SWR California Blonde. To my ears, at least.

My thoughts now turned to the guitar's action. For the initial test, I used "throwaway" strings, and acoustic steel roundwounds at that, just to provide a starting point. The action was sky-high, which I kind of expected as I had just fabricated a bridge from scratch, used a placeholder saddle, and had not done anything to reduce the height of the nut. Check out these shots of the initial action. (For reference, note the how thick the bridge is in the first three pictures in this post.)

Measured with my reloading micrometer, string heights at the nut were .130" for the sixth string down to .085" for the first string. (A general rule of thumb is that 1/16", or .063", is appropriate for this measurement, for guitars, and this measurement is from the crown of the first fret to the bottom of the string.) At the 18th "fret", the heights were .345" for the sixth string and .290" for the first. In general, the lower the action the better, especially for a fretless instrument, and my goal was to get to 1/32", or .0313", at the nut. (My Fender Stratocaster's action, set up for me by a luthier, measures .025" at the first fret and .100" at the 18th, and it is the easiest action I currently own.)

So, I thickness-sanded the bottom of the bridge, sanded down the top of the bone saddle (both to reduce height, and also to observe the "50/50 rule" that you want at least 50% of the saddle to be down in the slot, not above it, to avoid excessive tilt), and filed deeper slots in the nut for the strings I have on, to hit my target.

I was careful, and the result was extremely gratifying. These pics are of the revised bridge with the bone saddle fitted and notched:

And these last pics are of the revised action. Compare them to the ones above!

In the end, the numbers were a little better than my target. The revised action has .021" - .030" gap at the nut, and .071" - .080" at the 18th "fret". What a difference!

The revision did highlight a small high spot in my fingerboard, in the area of "frets" 16-18 on the first and second strings. I'm no luthier, but I would think this is an encouraging place to have a minor high spot, and my intent is to sand this area slightly to take care of that, put a final nice polish on the whole fingerboard again, and re-string with my next experiment: flat-wound electric guitar strings (which have the primary advantage of not needing to be purchased; I already have a set of them, in NST gauges, from my previous experiment with the Stratocaster).

When I tuned up and plugged in again, I played for a while for Sabre, who seemed to enjoy the new sound. For me, the sound of the instrument is intoxicating, and I suspect I will learn a number of new techniques to allow me to take advantage of what I've got. (Those will certainly get posted here...)


Now what?

The purpose of this was to experiment with a fretless instrument; hell, mostly it was to see if I could build something worth playing! It started with the idea of "hey, let's try building a guitar" and steamrolled with the additions of the fretless fingerboard and the onboard electronics.

It's got its warts, and I'm sure I'll find things to dislike about it. But I have to say, I'm pleased at the result, and I intend to see what the application of a Crafty mindset to a completely new instrument might yield. (I am certainly treating it as a new instrument!)



_________________
* For those who do not know it, the Guitar Craft Standard Tuning is C2 - G2 - D3 - A3 - E4 - G4, from sixth to first strings. This gives an expanded range over the fourths-based standard tuning, broader chords in general and an orchestral approach to music theory (the CGDA pitches of strings 6-3, are the same pitches as a cello is tuned). I like this tuning, and being a blowhard, all my guitars are tuned this way; I've even brought the intervals of the top four strings to my new kit banjo. Anything to be difficult! :-)

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!