A documentation post, just so that I can remember it right.
A lot of experimentation right about now, as I try to figure out a few directions.
The Ovation is now strung with the Aerial Boundaries tuning, as follows:
C2, 059w
C3, 036w
D3, 032w
G3, 022w
A3, 020w
D4, 013p
These are from my hodgepodge collection of acoustic bronze strings, and if this tuning turns out to be useful for further study I may look into optimizing gauges and tensions. Of particular interest here is the octave interval on the fifth and sixth strings, which Hedges uses to dramatic effect with his percussive playing. This actually has me thinking about a generalized tuning employing the same concept but in reverse; that is, C3-C2-G2-D3-A3-E4, whereby the sixth string can be thought of as an octave effect for the fifth string, and the instrument in general then logically becomes a five-string guitar tuned in perfect fifths. I'm chewing on that one at the moment.
The other experiment is currently on the SoloEtte, and is an open Bb5 as follows:
Bb1, 059w
F2, 047w
Bb2, 036w
F3, 022w
Bb3, 016p
F4, 011p
Again, bronze acoustic for the wound strings. I'm deliberately interested in lower tension for improved tapping, and am thinking of some modifications to the SoloEtte to make it a general-purpose instrument for several of the directions I'm contemplating.
Thus far in a few brief experiments, this is indeed an interesting tuning approach. Since the intervals alternate between a perfect fifth and a perfect fourth, there is not the same sort of consistent general-purpose "logic" that there is for an all-fifths or all-fourths arrangement, and I think you'd have to approach improvisation as though this were its own beast. Now...within that limitation, there are some nice aspects to it, especially for including effective drones on both ends of the fingerboard. (I hadn't intended that, deliberately, but with a little improv, that's what I started to do.) Harmonics are kinda cool, too, especially the straight-across root-five-octave that you have accessible to any three adjacent strings.
More experimenting. For now, thoughts are documented. :-)
(There's not an actual list, understand...but if there were, this would probably make the top ten.)
Michael Hedges, Aerial Boundaries. A series of recent accidents led me to find the below video, and I still get the serious chills every time I see it. Spontaneous wet-eye syndrome is sometimes not avoidable.
I had run across Hedges' 1984 album of the same name some years before I saw him play live, and I had never questioned the idea that he would have (of course!) recorded multiple parts, overdubs, and done a bunch of "studio magick" to arrive at the incredibly beautiful array of sounds that you hear on the recording.
So, around 1989 I go to see him in a tiny little auditorium at Stanford, which was kinda "home turf" for him, and he walks on stage with a battered-looking, simple dreadnought guitar...and plays the entire piece live, not ten feet away from my unbelieving eyes.
It would be another dozen years before it even occurred to me that I could also make music instead of just listening to it, but nonetheless I walked around in an absolute daze for almost a week after that.
It's of course quite possible that others were doing what he did before he burst on the scene in 1981, but it does not seem out of place to compare his impact, his influence, to people like Paganini, Django, Hendrix, Jaco...in the sense that, before him, it just never occurred to most people that you could do things like that on an acoustic guitar. You know, on purpose. Now, of course, almost thirty years later, we have the evolution of that art in various forms, and if it seems more "normal", less "impossible" it's because our ears have been bent over that time.
Hedges left us too soon, in 1997, and my own path had been leading me toward other things even before that. Now, almost randomly, I run across his path again, this time as an aspiring player. I now understand the mechanics of how to make some of these sounds, and one could say that much of his technique is demystified and eminently approachable. But this in no way dampens or lessens the awe in which someone can hold his work, which is not just technique but also music. Perhaps it might for someone who only knows of a world in which these ideas have always been there, but not for me. As I hear some of the same sounds starting to come from my own hands, my admiration and appreciation is actually increasing.
I didn't realize quite how much I had been influenced, at a completely primal level, by this artist (and certainly this piece), until very recently when I saw the video. Everything came back in a flood--have you ever felt an actual detonation in your metaphysical self?--and I could see that many of the things I have been moving toward over the last few years have been leading me back that way already. Apparently it was time for me to see this. Now, of course, the question is: what do I intend to do with it? (Indeed.)
Here you go. The sound quality is not the best, the sync between video and audio is far from perfect, and the audio level is quite low. Ignore all that. Turn it up--you'll be rewarded.
Dang. Still can hardly believe it, after all this time. :-)
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.
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. :-)
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.
