Alembic Guitars Club
Connecting => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: john_judge on September 23, 2009, 08:32:16 AM
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I met up with a friend of mine from Florida yesterday and he had a guitar with him to show me, all I can say is read on and check out this site! if you haven't heard of this, a lot of the pro's are doing this now, interesting stuff and it really makes a difference! There have been many a nights that my frets looked like this at the end of the night, well maybe the Beer had something to do with it! but never at the beginning of the night, but who knows? hmmm for guitarist and bassist
http://www.truetemperament.com/site/index.php?go=0&sgo=0 (http://www.truetemperament.com/site/index.php?go=0&sgo=0)
(Message edited by john judge on September 23, 2009)
[moderator's edit: fixed link]
(Message edited by davehouck on September 23, 2009)
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Interesting Reading John !
Thanks ____
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...or, keep your beautiful Alembic neck and fretboard, and practice pulling and/or pushing intervals into just intonation... no doubt easier on guitar than bass.
Here's (http://www.guitarplayer.com/story.aspx?id=15212&terms=kimock target=_blank) a nice little piece to help you get started.
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This is really interesting _ new stuff to learn ( for me )
Thanks ___
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...then the fingerboard senses how hard you're pressing on the string & how far from the fret, and the fret moves to keep it's fancy intonation despite the changes....
Theoretically interesting. Practically, I'll stay old school, thanks.
Peter
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That's like crazy man...
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Looks like a load of bull to me..classical guitars have had straight frets for ages, so have lutes and either of them didn't have adjustable bridges.
As I said I think it is bullshit to the highest order to get money out of you..so who has made these statements about the playing..anyone famous??
Could you see Stan letting that company do that to his Alembics..I think not.
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I did get to play on the guitar version Terry and where the A chord versus the D chord and open E chord is concerned and on most guitars where you have to comprise the Tuning some what everywhere I played from open to high end the intonation was Perfect and Yes the non adjustable instruments back in the Days of Ol such as lutes well were just made as perfect as can be, I mean many instruments were discarded back then if the sound was quite right because of no adjustments, So the luthiers of new found ways to still make the sales without the loss by developing adjustments, thus is why you have the old Handmade crafters who put the time in their work and you pay for the cost versus the typical Assembly line.
Segovia The finest Classical Guitarist who ever lived, had some of the best brazilian Rosewood that money could buy and the luthiers would go to the woods locations with tuning forks just to see which piece would resonate the longest and pick that piece for his guitar body just to avoid from having the guitar turned down by him, Fretless is always a great way to go and rely on the human ear to train your hand positions for accuracy , but I was quite surprised by the harmonics and intonation were flawless sounding but paid $700 for the neck that he had replaced on his Strat, right now I am looking at the option for my Raven Bass to be fretted up to the 12th fret and Fretless 13th and up for more solo and harmonic techniques for a six string piccolo. Yep every morning I take a deep breath and in the music industry I can smell a pot of Bullshit brewing like a pot of stench Coffee, but somewhere in the world someone is going to drink that cup and say it's the best Cup of Bullshit they ever tasted, We just have to ask ourselves, 1 or 2 Lumps, Cream or sugar? but whenever something new comes along it is always hard, so I prefer just to sip on it for a while and sit back and wait.
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These frets wouldn't look out of place on one of brian eastwood's (http://www.brianeastwoodguitars.co.uk/bender.html) creations ;-)
Graeme
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Personally, I think this would suck unless your entire band adopted it. There could be some keys where you are playing and the instruments are intentionally out of tune with each other by enough to sound out of tune. Also, you would think they'd tune pianos that way if it were truly better.
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Yeah it's all interesting theory, I guess time will tell to see if it takes off like the Cassette tape to CD deal, I know one thing it takes a major change to really shift the face of tradition, but I sure wish I had all those acoustic instruments that got thrown away because of intonation problems, I mean luthiers back in the day when they made lutes and other string instruments, many were rejected, including Harpsichords, Bach suppose to have went through 23 of them until he found 3 that he loved, due to tone and tuning issues and plucking problems, it be nice to have one of those twenty and a few Lutes etc...many times they were scraped for parts or sold to peasants of villages for a lesser price, I can really dig listening to a Lute, Harpsichord, Harp, flute and even a Hurdy Gurdy can take you back to some simple times and help take your worries away, sort of like Gregorian chants are so mystical and soothing with the natural reverb of the Halls..
I am planning to take a trip possible to Europe by way of England, Scotland then Germany next year Late summer/early Fall and I hope to meet up with a few members over there and also I am looking to purchase a Lute while there.
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I know a LUTE player over in Marin county in California . I help him with his Protools system . He is also an ace antique car refurbisher.He helps me with my old truck We trade labour and craft skills a bit . I am going to play Bass on one of his 'Early Music ' projects as well. It will be a bit of ' Early music fusion.
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John.. if you get to england let us know and all the UK members can maybe arrange a meet.
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Ditto when you get to Scotland John.
Terry, on the subject of meeting up, are you planning on heading over to Manchester for Bass Day (http://www.bassday.co.uk/) on the 22nd November? There's a prett cool line up of artistes this year including Adam Nitti, Nathan East and poogie Bell.
Graeme
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quote:Also, you would think they'd tune pianos that way if it were truly better.
Roland makes the C-30 electronic harpsichord (http://www.roland.com/classic/c30/productinfo/index.html target=_blank) with a couple of built-in tuning schemes or temperaments - equal temperament, Werckmeister, Kirnberger, Vallotti and Meantone. These are a couple of ways how they tuned pianos before the well-tempered system was developed, and IIRC they are all mathematics-based.
I remember playing on a predecessor of that C-30 many years ago. Those old tuning schemes are just not very successful at catering for the different keys. Some keys will just go completely goofy in some temperaments ...
From the TT samples, I thought it all sounded a bit on the flat side.
With some lutes, the frets are strings of gut wrapped around the neck, so you can change the intonation ...
The curly fret is not an entirely new idea - I think Yamaha used a simpler version on some models, for a small number of frets.
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The Well-Tempered Scale (http://www.jimloy.com/physics/scale.htm)
[moderator's note: the text originally appearing in this post was copied in it's entirety from a page that had a copyright notice clearly marked where it could not be missed. As we obviously do not wish to open our hosts at Alembic to legal liability due to copyright infringement, such practices should be avoided. A previous guideline on posting copyrighted material can be found here (http://club.alembic.com/index.php?topic=1422).
(Message edited by davehouck on September 25, 2009)
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You learn something everyday - I always thought well-tempered was the current tuning method for pianos. Thanks Craig!
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Nice dissertation crobbins but it is Friday and my head hurts after a week of work..I just want o play bass and sound great!!
Maybe some electronics wizzard should design a pedal that does all this for us
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Thanks Craig, no matter how crooked the frets are I knew something straight would come out of this, I spent a lot of time listening to Bach's Fugue's and actually played some of his two part inventions on Bass and guitar, Fun and very Challenging stuff.
Thanks Terry and Graeme, I will keep you posted about next year, maybe we can all get together for a Alembic/Brewfest and have a tall one, A pint or a Yard suite's me fine!, but it would be great to get back over there, it's been a while since I crossed the Pond..Hmmmmmmm Bass Day, that might be a fun show to do or go, at least I'd know I wouldn't be alone LOL!
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Beat em to it..here is the design(although not the electronics)
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Is it a tuner or a pitch-shifter, Terry?
Peter
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F***..I don't know...just took the design brief from crobbins and 'built' it..LOL
Or maybe as the Ronseal Varnish ad says in the UK..
'It does exactly what it says on the tin'
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john..yeah that would be a great idea, sink some ales and tell stories..look forward to it
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Since a number of posts have been made since the post made earlier today that I had to edit, please allow me to once again remind everyone to be cognizant of copyright. We obviously do not want to open up our hosts at Alembic to legal liability over copyright infringement.
If a web page has been clearly marked copyright, then, in my view, it is not a good idea to copy an article off that page and post it here.
My experience of other discussion boards on the web has been that if you wish to share an article with others in the group, common practice is to write your own summary of the article, quote a few lines, or, for a longer article, even a few paragraphs, and then cite the author and link back to the source.
Copying an entire copyrighted article without attribution is, in my view, just not a very good idea.
In our fast changing on-line world, these issues of copyright are difficult, and reasonable people can have differing views; so it is understandable that it may not always be clear what is or is not acceptable practice. But I think generally accepted practice in this particular case is clear; and I would thus encourage our members to resist the temptation to copy articles written by others and post them in their entirety here.
(Message edited by davehouck on September 25, 2009)
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I sound horrible no matter how I tune
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I use a lot of chorus to cover up how out of tune I sound.
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Sorry. How could I be such a fool?
Just trying to help....
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funky..buy my pedal it solves all your tuning problems..pick a mode and a interval and stomp the switch!!!
Problem is I don't know what goes inside it, most probably a load of resistors and IC's that I cannot solder!
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No problem Craig; it was indeed a very helpful article; and your helpfulness is very much appreciated. I think a lot of us learned stuff we didn't know before.
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And i thought I was out of tune all the time!!!
Guess everyone is to blame in the band except the drummer
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I think the idea is great...if it actually works in practice. Radical, yes, and I suppose there may be refinements (or maybe they've already worked them out) over time.
I've always been frustrated by guitars that 'sounded bad'. Every now and then a 'good' one would come along and I would notice. But I didn't know why...
Waaay back when, I remember attempting to tune a Farfisa organ, trying to correct the horribly sharp-beating M3 interval. Fixing it was the easy part, but then the gremlin of chasing the next worst interval was ever-present and ever-elusive. I gave up in frustration, thinking something was wrong with the instrument. That was looong before I ever learned about temperament, and all its iterations. Suddenly the light went on, everything has to be equally out of tune! And then I could hear temperament. Wow. But I've always heard it. And maybe why I love choral music (Dale Warland) so much, along with symphonic pieces. They are constantly tuning on the fly. Even the dissonances are perfectly tuned ('cept for the occasional clunker).
Anyway, I think the idea is correct, and I understand that it is necessary and why. Maybe they've trumped equal temperament with a better mousetrap.
(Message edited by lenny_d on September 28, 2009)
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Interesting thread,
....needs more pictures : )
(http://club.alembic.com/Images/449/70927.jpg)
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Cool picture!
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Yeah E with a little color that make a great Logo!
very nice
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I just wonder how The Rolling Stones would sound with the True Temperament system on their guitars?or all the Blues musicians? maybe they get the flat third finally right?
I think its time for us to clean up the music production/industry once again like we did in the -80\s. The drummers do not play as tight as the machines as we know and so on??
OK seriously, I know guys who use the system on guitars and it seems that they like it (so far) one friend told me that it sounds so ?in tune? that it sounds almost ?out of tune?.
When I did study (double bass) classical music in the -70\s I did learn that with violin and other fretless instruments F# is sharper than Gb and when you play Gb its more flat than F# I was told that the ear is telling to do so and its always been like that.
So friends watch out for guitars and basses in the future with separate F# and Gb on the fretboard???OK sorry for the jokes but the violin thing is true.
J-O-S
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elwoodblue..nice pic..where was that obtained from??
jos..frets betweens frets..a possibility??
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I pointed my guitarists at the wiggly frets website and the first comment I got was...
what happens when I bend a string?.
Graeme
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jeeze..have you seen the Wiki entries on this subject??
It is a lot of heavy reading..do I really need all this info when I play 'Crossroads' with my blues band or 'Ran Kan Kan' with the Salsa band??(LOL)
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Graeme - to answer that question: it goes out of tune.
Indeed.
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Terry,
I forget which site I found that picture at,
I was searching for an Isaac Asimov article on how the standard western intervals were derived.
(Has anyone come across this article? I haven't found it online)
A search in google images of pythagoras monochord
will bring up many results with the drawing.
Graeme,
The true temperament website states string bending will not be affected ...I'd have to guess that it would be affected...might even be musical : )