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The Birth of the American 12-string Guitar (2013)
- pluc 2mo ago12 strings is one thing, but how about microtonal? That's instead of adding strings, you add frets! If you haven't heard them yet, you're in for a wild ride: https://www.youtube.com/@AnginePoitrine https://www.youtube.com/@AnginePoitrine
- jagged-chisel 2mo agoWhy frets? Orchestral strings don’t use frets.
- bilegeek 2mo agoFor plucked instruments, besides ease of use, it adds clarity and sustain. Orchestra AFAIK only has Pizzicato where that would matter.
- analog31 2mo agoFrets make chords possible. You only have to put your finger somewhere in between two frets to get a particular note, so you can play more than the tiny handful of chords that can be played on something like a violin. There are non-fretted guitars but they are rare, and I think early banjos were not fretted.
- ErroneousBosh 2mo ago> Frets make chords possible. What do you think double-stops are?
- amanaplanacanal 2mo agoWhimpy-ass chords. You need three or more notes for a serious(tm) chord.
- ErroneousBosh 2mo agoFive for the Hendrix Chord, E7♯9 ;-) That's E, G♯, B, D, F
- telotortium 2mo agoEvery jazz player knows you can drop the fifth, and the root too if the bass is filling it in. That gives your fingers room to add even crazier extensions
- ErroneousBosh 2mo agoOh man have you seen the Adam Neely video "Seven Level of Jazz Harmony"? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz3WR-F_pnM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz3WR-F_pnM If not, stop and watch it. But make a cup of tea to enjoy with it first, and maybe put a cloth over your keyboard for when you inevitably splutter tea all over it.
- anentropic 2mo agoI read a pretty good argument once that this chord should really be called a b10 (no one does though...)
- ErroneousBosh 2mo agoWe seem to have a pretty hardcoded preference for using sharp in everything that's not brass and woodwind, don't we?
- anentropic 2mo agoI think it's also ingrained that the chord starts from 3rd and 5th degrees so numbers above 7 are always adding in one of the other degrees. Or that a chord should have at most 'one of each'. The argument was that this chord is unusual in that it's best thought of as having a second modified 3rd, rather than a #9 (raised 2nd) The major-minor-7 chord is another example of the same degree twice... and we don't call that a maj-14 either
- bluGill 2mo agoThere are those who say it isn't a chord until you have 3 notes. I'm going to skip the complex music theory behind the arguments (I haven't studied them enough to understand much less form an opinion). Of course in most music contexts there is more than one instrument playing and so the others can fill in the missing note making a full chord. Only a "one-man-band" really feels the loss.
- ErroneousBosh 2mo agoPower chords only have two notes (although more than two octaves, I don't know if you count that)
- williamdclt 2mo agoIt's self-consistent: those who say that a chord must have at least 3 notes also say that power chords are not technically chords
- dahart 2mo agoWhat do you mean about more than two octaves? The basic power chord is 3 notes, for example E2 + B2 + E3. One of those is an octave.
- BigTTYGothGF 2mo ago"Power chord" sounds cooler than "power dyad".
- jagged-chisel 2mo agoFrets make chords easier
- BigTTYGothGF 2mo agoIt makes hard chords easy, and impossible chords possible (if not easy). Most barre chords, for example.
- anentropic 2mo agoIsn't it the curvature of the fretboard (to allow for bowing individual strings) that prevents chords on a violin rather than lack of frets?
- lebuffon 2mo agoI can play chords on a violin or viola and strum them. Keeping a four-finger chord perfectly in tune in rapid changes is really hard (near impossible) without frets.
- analog31 2mo agoChords can be rolled. Here's an all time favorite https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngjEVKxQCWs&list=RDngjEVKxQCWs&start_radio=1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngjEVKxQCWs&list=RDngjEVKxQC...
- xorcist 2mo agoFretless bass is quite popular though, and they play chords all the time. What would 80s music have been without them? And all uprights are fretless, too. And cellos of course. They can also play chords.
- ErroneousBosh 2mo agoWhat's the difference in sustain time between a cello played pizzicato and a plucked guitar string?
- lebuffon 2mo agoOn fingered strings the guitar sustains for about 10 seconds until the note is very quiet, but still ringing. On a Cello a fingered string is gone in 2 seconds.
- dmoy 2mo agoSustain in college a good friend was a very good Oud player (plucked, some number of strings.... more than 8? I forget), and it definitely sounds different from guitar due to less sustain. Clearer notes and chords, but they don't linger as long or loud. Edit: apparently it's 11 strings? ok.
- defrost 2mo agoA bit spotty, but alright; meanwhile the Italian instrument makers said guitar-harp? Hold our expressos, this'll take some discipline: * https://www.delta-harp.com/ https://www.delta-harp.com/ * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdUztFVwi3I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdUztFVwi3I
- swiftcoder 2mo agoNever having played a harp, whats the advantage here (beyond cool factor) over an equivalent electric guitar?
- AlecSchueler 2mo agoA harp can have more than 6 notes ringing out at a time. It's also a different instrument and if you've trained to play harp then a guitar is useless for you.
- defrost 2mo agoI'm a bit late on the reply, so to add to what has been said by AlecSchueler consider the piece I linked above being played on that guitar slung mini harp. It's a cover of an English prog rock piece, the titular Discipline from 1981 by the band King Crimson with the then line up of a drummer's drummer, Bill Bruford, and three top form guitarists, Robert Fripp (sitting on chair), Tony Levin (Chapman stick), and Adrian Belew [0]. One comment on the linked performance is simply: 3+2/4 vs 2+3/4 vs 9+8/16 vs 4+4+4+5/16 INSANE So, ... it's an instrument that allowed for a credible attempt at covering three "insane" polymeter prog rhythms by a single performer. I'm old enough to have got the album when it first came out- looking for a live performance I stumbled over a recent breakdown look back at a peer album track: Frame by Frame [1] [0] King Crimson: Discipline (Live Kani Hoken Hall Tokyo 30th April 1984) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOFkbDKsC9U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOFkbDKsC9U [1] These Guys Wrote The Most INSANE Polymeter in 1981 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYAa1JNCDFE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYAa1JNCDFE
- bilegeek 2mo agoThat's the first time I've heard microtonal work in a rock setting. Pretty good! I see your added frets, and raise "add frets on the fly using Lego": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPCEImSfCwc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPCEImSfCwc
- functionmouse 2mo ago> That's the first time I've heard microtonal work in a rock setting. Pretty good! Really? I highly recommend Flying Microtonal Banana.
- stronglikedan 2mo ago> Really? Really? Most people's first intro to microtonal guitar is recent and brought to them by Angine de Poitrine.
- dizhn 2mo agoAwesome band. Most of their songs sound so familiar to me because they are actually influenced by our folk music. :)
- adzm 2mo agoIt is still worth noting that the microtones used by Angine de Poitrine are usually just transient notes, and could instead be played portamento with smooth transitions between the notes (eg on a fretless board) in most situations. It still sounds really cool, though, and certainly a technical and musical accomplishment. But the music itself still follows the usual patterns closely.
- ofalkaed 2mo agoIn the early days of the guitar it had tied gut frets, it was microtonal by nature and you could move the frets for different temperaments. Then in the 19th century things changed and the guitar got fixed metal frets, ever since people have been trying to figure out how to have the benefits of both. 1852 is the first attempt that I know of. https://collectionsdumusee.philharmoniedeparis.fr/search.aspx#/Detail/(query:(Id:'38_OFFSET_0',Index:39,NBResults:42,PageRange:3,SearchQuery:(ExceptTotalFacet:!t,FacetFilter:'%7B%22_201%22:%22musical%20instruments%22,%22_204%22:%221850%20-%201899%22,%22_202%22:%22Guitares%22%7D',ForceSearch:!t,HiddenFacetFilter:'%7B%22_201%22:%22musical%20instruments%22%7D',InitialSearch:!f,Page:1,PageRange:3,QueryGuid:a204178f-673f-4dd7-96cf-2305920e96e3,QueryString:'*',ResultSize:25,ScenarioCode:MUSEE,ScenarioDisplayMode:display-mosaic,SearchContext:14,SearchGridFieldsShownOnResultsDTO:!(),SearchLabel:'*',SearchTerms:'',SortField:!n,SortOrder:0,TemplateParams:(Scenario:'',Scope:MUSEE,Size:!n,Source:'',Support:'',UseCompact:!f),UseSpellChecking:!n))) https://collectionsdumusee.philharmoniedeparis.fr/search.asp...
- babblingbrook 2mo agoWhat I love about links like this is that we see information being shared just for the love of it. This person has done a lot of work simply to share knowledge with the world about something they are passionate about. This is what great about the internet and is easily lost amongst all the commercial content.
- xorcist 2mo agoJust imagine, had this been a Facebook event instead, none of this information would have been available to us outsiders. The open web lives, even if bruised and limping.
- indymike 2mo agoThe author is Gregg Miner, and Gregg has an extensive library of harp guitar music. A long time ago I met Gregg when one of my friends Brad Hoyt (a keyboard and harp guitarist as well) hosted a harp guitar convention here in Indianapolis, and I got recruited to help. Gregg and the rest of the artists that were there were extremely approachable, and most of the crowd were musicians (some pretty famous ones, too) checking out one of the more interesting variations of the guitar... and what you could do with one. Fun times.
- faxmeyourcode 2mo agoApparently there was a gathering of harp guitarists here in North Little Rock at a guitar shop that recently opened just down the street from where I live last year: https://www.harpguitars.net/2025/11/29/hgg23-in-north-little-rock/ https://www.harpguitars.net/2025/11/29/hgg23-in-north-little... I was totally unfamiliar with harp guitar but I am sad that I missed such a special gathering!
- SloopJon 2mo agoI'm probably preaching to the choir in a story about guitars, but if you're looking for some good 12-string music, Leo Kottke's 6 and 12 String Guitar is a good start. If you haven't heard (or seen) Michael Hedges play a harp guitar, there's some background and links to videos here: https://michaelhedges.com/michael-hedges-the-harp-guitar/ https://michaelhedges.com/michael-hedges-the-harp-guitar/
- dhosek 2mo agoI’m a bit skeptical of the claims given that multi-course tunings are almost as old as guitar-family instruments.
- timdellinger 2mo agoagreed - America went through a "mandolin mania" in ~1880s, and even in the 1900s and 1910s, the guitar was by no means an established instrument. As a matter of fact, the "tenor guitar" was made for people who knew how to play the very popular four string banjo, but wanted to play a guitar without learning new chords. Instruments were in a state of change, and the "harp" nomenclature (and styling) for a 12-string guitar was more a marketing flourish than a family lineage.
- SoftTalker 2mo ago> the "tenor guitar" Would that be a ukulele? Or is that something different yet?
- bilegeek 2mo agoDifferent lineage[1] as (partially) mentioned above; the ukulele evolved from small Portuguese instruments[2], and is tuned about 3 full steps higher. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenor_guitar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenor_guitar [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukulele#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukulele#History
- ofalkaed 2mo ago>almost as old as guitar-family instruments. They are as old as we can trace it back, vihuela/viola de mano were multi-course, as was the baroque guitar which developed from them. The romantic guitar brought us single string courses and in the guitar family double courses died out other than in a few nooks and crannies. I don't think this has any effect on what TFA proposes and the author is well aware of this bit of information, but it has been years since I read it and maybe I am forgetting something?
- dahart 2mo ago