Visions of the
enharmonic, and incursions in playing
And
building 31 tone equal temperament
guitars.
amplified acoustic 31
et guitars electric 31 et guitars
1978 seems to
have been an interesting year if memory can be relied on. The sixties were a fading memory and the
consumer economy seemed to have entrenched itself as not only the ‘american
way’ but also as the ‘american dream’ with a Madison avenue advert and a sea of
identical non-descript factory output.
However, just
around the corner would be the mad-cap oil embargo of 1979. Sort of a fitting
summation of the restlessness and hectic times, as well as the pointless
futility of a society living for today without regards for the bills to come
due.
Besides the
constant dread, anxiety and alienation, however, above all the desire to
actually be able to kick back and relax...
25 years later these words still resonate inside: “of all the scales possible to fret on the
guitar, the 31-tone is the calmest and most serene, and the chords are smooth
and harmonious”. ( Ivor Darreg, GUITAR
PLAYER MAGAZINE, Feb. 1978, pg. 88).
It would be
over a year later before my first 31et refretted guitar, as I happily
experimented with 19 and 22 ET guitars first.
For some reason, 12 string guitars were the only ones I could afford,
and it didn’t take me long to determine that stringing arrangement was
unworkable in 31 tone. Of course, there
wasn’t any reason not to settle for a standard six-string arrangement. But, actually, that experience would
eventually lay the ground work for 5 string conversions, and other efforts to
relieve the overcrowding of cramming nearly three 31 tone frets in the same
space of one ordinary semitone. The extra space caused by removing one string
and respacing the others does help.
Many years past
since I first realized that eliminating one guitar string and re- spacing the
other five would make 31et guitar playing a less cramped proposition. Although it is a rather hairy proposition,
since the bridge and/or tailpiece (depending on the style) need to either be
modified or replace with new parts. A new ‘nut’ at the headstock is made
preserving the placement of the existing high and low E strings, however the
four
< A D G B
strings and five gaps are reduced to three strings and four gaps. Actually, it turns out that making a new
tailpiece isn’t all that difficult in a modest shop, which I cut from a
smallish piece of aluminum angle iron. And, certain screws will make a
perfectly serviceable bridge for a single string, sometimes into a small block
of wood that is fitted to the curve of the guitar body, sometimes directly into
the wood body.
My very first
effort along these lines was to take that refretted 12 string neck, and make a
new body, a new nut, and string it up in a 5 string arrangement. I had been studying the bagalama saz, pipa,
and sitar; so, I naturally, strung it in the stacked tuning arrangement common
to these instrument, or C, G, C, F or G, C.
It was so wonderful, and I loved it.
However, the
stacked tuning seemed to be more suited to a non-western technique, of playing
one string as a drone, and sliding up and down another string for a
melody. Then again, I built another
body and put yet another refretted commercial neck and put it into a 5 string
tuning, but this time using the traditional tuning without the low E, or
simply, A, D, G, B, E. This worked out
well also, and made certain open chords much more practical.
Eventually, I
built a 31et guitar from scratch and made the neck rectangular, without the
usual taper, a full 2 ¼ inch wide. This allowed the best practical guitar
fingering with all 6 strings. I may
very well have been able to live without the 6-string instrument, but I did
miss the ability to play those bluesy-rock riffs, I had been weaned on! There
are a number of available books on guitar making, which explain how to build a
neck for a guitar, however, explains how a well-endowed factory with a large
number of special tools does it. For those contemplating such a project, when
written instructions are confusing looking carefully at a finished instrument
or photos can help, as well as, giving some thought to improvising existing
hardware to a new use.
At one point in
time, I got an unused Novatone/Rankin interchangeable fingerboard in
trade. Apparently, it’s not as much of
a do it yourself project as generally thought.
Eventually, I purchased a plywood classical guitar through the post and
proceeded to convert it, and happily ended up fretboards in 17, 19, 22, and 31
ET. And, with the neck of the
classical, being 2 inches, the fingering is rather tolerable. A rather uncanny turn of events when I was
horse trading with a local musician and flute maker, I was gifted with the body
of an acoustical f-hole guitar. It was
an ideal candidate for experimentation and I built a new neck for it that would
also take the interchangeable fingerboards.
However, having
all those frets still leaves a daunting task of navigating a 31 tone fretboard
and for the budding 31 tone guitarist, I will suggest several possible playing
techniques that could be helpful.
First, an alternate tunings, such as the double dropped D, (i.e. DADBGD),
and secondly, the utilization of sitar style fingerplay for melodies.
For the most
part I use the standard tuning, but the dropped D, where the low E string is
lowered a whole tone, provides the dreaded ‘power chord’, D A D, this simple
barre blend, can give you an instant rhythm section, the strength is the
simplicity, despite the sonic limitations. An application would be to strum
this barre blend on open strings, and use that as a background for improvising
melodies on higher strings and higher on the neck. In regular practice it is sometimes taught to use such blends
injected at times along with the melody.
This is more of a ‘songwriting’ technique than a performance method. But
it does allow one to hear many harmonic interactions.
At the other edge,
altering the higher strings to play a chord, again with the simple bares. There is a trade off, if a practice session
is somewhat stale and the muse hasn’t felt the need to drop by, besides ‘mixing
it up’, it is another way of tasting the feast of chords in 31et. What, I am
suggesting, is something like a nice seventh chord or it’s variants, i.e., EAD
F# AC. Other chords and inversions ought to be tried besides the many flavors
of seventh chords. And one may not want to overlook the various ‘neutral’ intervals,
or the ‘in-between’ intervals, i.e. those between the major and the minor. Most notably the neutral third and other
intervals that are closely associated with the balafon and gamelan scales of
Africa and Indonesia. There is no question that 31-tone guitar is WORK, plain
and simple, but, this is one way I’ve found to coax out some sonority when
things aren’t going well and the work has taken on shades of drudgery.
Another variant
technique somewhat similar to playing the sitar melody string, where the index
finger does most of the work, can be appropriated for the 31-tone
fretboard. Although, it is considered a
‘no-no’ is standard guitar practice to play all the notes of the melody on one
string, it is something to consider in 31-tone guitar practice. The real advantage lies in increasing the
accessibility of the ‘off’ enharmonic tones.
The larger number of frets on a 31 tone guitar seem too defy mastery as
using the standard guitar approach leaves each finger to cover 3 or more
individual frets. While arranging standard songs and pieces for 31 ET is far
from impossible, it can be a chore and sometimes a headache. It seems a rather
daunting task to get all the inter-chromatic (the other 19 tones) to fit into
place, and get the opportunity to try some of these rather unusual and
flavorful intervals. One of my favorite embellishments with a melody is to
slide up a single fret. In effect, making the interval of a single degree a
melodic interval. Sometimes this is not desirerable, but other times the
addition of these tones in moderation, or not, is refreshing. The 2-degree
interval is close to the quartertones of middle-eastern music and a rather
delightful and powerful melodic tool missing from the traditional western
palette.
For the most
part, I usually get as far as recording a particular improvisation, and then
move on. However, after 2 decades of exploration I’ve gone and mapped
traditional major and minor pentatonic scales onto the 31 fingerboards. There are several advantages; they make good
warm-up as well as foundation. There is
a certain amount of dexterity and limbness required, and these scales will help
loosen up the joints and provide a touch of deftness. One side benefit, which I
can only offer as a testimonial, is that simply playing 5 notes over and over
is a helpful way of removing mental block and artistic fatigue.
pentatonic guitar tab one two three four
The major and
minor pentatonic also provide the foundation for the stepping stones, if you
will, which provide a framework for the insertion of additional tones, or even
substitutions and additions. I believe it is beyond debate that with 31 tones
in the octave; clearly there are huge tonal resources, besides, the mimicry of
both meantone and 7-limit just intonation.
I am still bedazzled by the amazing selection of neutral intervals as
well as the uncanny collection of seventh chords. I suppose
one could spend
centuries describing them, but it would only take you a few hours with a
31-tone instrument to be equally bewildered-amazed.
Nov 2004 Update: Recently received a letter from Siem
Terpstra in Amsterdam, about his experiments and research into the “old lute
tuning” given as low D G C E A D high,
or transposed and similar to the standard tuning, but with a lowered G string, thus E A D F# B E.
I agree with
Siem, that scales are easier to finger and the stringing is
more
symmetrical. Also, all the standard open chords are now a fourth
lower, and if
you don’t adjust the old scale fingerings, I find that it is
easy to escape
the same old Pythagorean diatonic scale that is beat mercilessly on the CMT and
MTV.
