the first video that convinced me -- but this is quite an extreme form -- seems like the now shown tt guitars are a compromise between sound and playability
@Sjejse Don't understand what you mean. You can only have the best intonation possible in one key at a time. In the limit as you try to get more and more keys in tune, you approach equal temperament.
@Sjejse Suppose you set the frets to tune an F major bar chord correctly, with the open E chord shape. Then the second fret under the G string will have to be set closer to the nut. Now what happens to an open A chord? The G string must be fretted at the second fret, and play the octave above the open A string, but it will have been set flat to get the third of the F bar chord right. Tater's am sure your system tunes some things pretty well, but none of these videos actually explains it.
@TaterGumfries This fretting used 1/4 comma meantone temperament, which means that all the major thirds are exactly in tune, the minor thirds almost exactly in tune, but the perfect fifths and fourths are a bit flat.
Since this has more than 12 notes per octave, you avoid the meantone "wolf" (the one fith in 12-tone meantone temperaments that is very out of tune)
@leakeg I think that if the stack of fifths (that define meantone tunings) were continued on, you would have a ton more notes than are here. In fact, you would have a different pitch for each enharmonic equivalent. (C# would no longer equal Db). What they did was pick the 12 you're most likely to use from the new tuning, and only include those. What then happened was that some keys that needed an F# only had a Gb which didn't sound good, so they added a few more notes per octave. So yes and no
NO! Playing in all 12-keys is IMPOSSIBLE in just-intonated/meantone-tunings!
(Thus, the development of even-temperment in the first place!!!) One must commit to only the few keys in which these intervals sound the most consonant when stacked...If that makes any sense?!? - LOL!
@billmeedog yeah I know that, my comment was kind of a polite way of saying "well your only gonna be able to play in one (?) key and that would be a real pain in the arse"
The sound is really good but the music is not the best to be played with such a tunning. It would be better to play sth of XVI or XVII century. (rennaisance for example)
personal opinion nothing more but i find this to be overkill. Given the subtle faults many if not all players have in there playing intonation. When you take into the account of adrenaline and live playing and its effect on your vibrato and the force you play the guitar with does this system then lose its benefits? I would say yes. If you play perfectly all the time and with precision then maybe you can hear the difference.
do the TT frets always make it sound so tinny and shrill? I mean this sounds good but i like to have different tones... and this was just on the neck pup... AHHH
That really does sound sweet and I would love to hear something like Hey Joe played that well with a full mean-tone group. Just like socialism is the equal distribution of poverty, Equal Temperament is the equal distribution of out-of-tuneness. I'd never seen a fretboard that looked like that and I'm really glad people are thinking this way.
this is kinda dumb, the only reason its in tune is because he intonated the bridge with the fret postions (which is what you do on any guitar, but my point is that this is really nothing special. if you pop one on your guitar without chaniging your intonation it sounds like shit right? so whats the point)
i geuss the difference is all in the look. because theres no way you cant tell me this is better than my gibson sg when its been intonated with a strobe tuner. it sounds the same
This is significantly different from simple intonation, what we have here is, in reality, a completely different scale structure. It may sound normal at first but I would say that is mostly due to the dearth of chromatic progression in this example. In fact, it should sound perfectly in tune because it is significantly closer to "pure" tuning than equal-tempered instruments in which every semitone is flattened ever so slightly to account for the acoustical anomaly known as the Pythagorean Comma.
This is the well-known musical paradox in which a stack of 12 pure-tuned open fifths does not land on the same frequency as seven pure octaves starting from the same note. In the 16th & 17th centuries the preferred tuning pattern, or Temperament, was the Meantone system. In this temperament, as the video says, the instrument is tuned so that the thirds of the most commonly used keys are pure, letting the remainder of the comma land on an normally unused interval, ex: Eb & G#; the Wolf Fifth.
This problem arises from the simple fact that in pure-tuned music Eb is NOT the same as D#, as Equal temperaments would have you believe. To overcome this problem, many keyboard instruments had TWO black keys between the naturals, one for each flat or sharp note (as the description kindly points out, perhaps you should have read it).
Look carefully at the average position of the frets on this guitar. They are not spaced evenly (or rather, logarithmically) as in a normal fretboard. Next, count the number of frets within an octave. There are 15 positions within the first octave on this instrument. This is in fact a translation of the same method used on Meantone keyboards adapted for a guitar fretboard.
The oddly-shaped frets are actually acting for what, in an ideal instrument, would be two separate frets, but which for the purposes of this instrument would be superfluous, and would probably be more in the way most of the time. Remember, it is tuned so that the most commonly-used keys are most usable. If you really feel the need to play in some ungodly transposition, then stick to an equal-tempered fretboard.
why go to all that trouble when i KNOW that every single fucking note is in perfect pitch? i mean if i want a blue note i just bend the fucker up to it. why should i buy a peice of shit that would make me out of tune with every other guitarist out there? i mean this fucker is only good when its by itself. can you tell me this when playing with a band would you opt for a perectly intonated gibson neck or a fucked up out of key meantone neck, and before you reply i HAVE a meantone
We're not talking about blue notes, we're talking about harmonic structure. Yes, it will not work with other tempered instruments. But that's the whole point. It's designed for solo work.
You have experience with it. Excellent. What made you think you SHOULD play it with other guitars built in a completely different temperament? That's like, oh gee, playing a mean-tempered harpsichord and an equal-tempered piano at the same time!
I ask if you've tried the Mark I for ensemble work.
Karlfalcon: I'd make sure I had my own facts right before berating other people.
The fifths in quarter-comma meantone temperament are flattened even more than in 12-tone equal temperament. A pure fifth is 702 cents, 12-tet is 700 cents, and quarter-comma meantone's is 697 cents.
The comma being dealt with here isn't the Pythagorean comma, it's the syntonic comma. 4 major fifths (C-G-D-A-E) does not equal one major third (C-E). The difference is a syntonic comma.
The point of quarter comma meantone is to temper each fifth a little bit flat so that 4 of them DOES equal a full major third and an octave. Each fifth is tempered a quarter of a syntonic comma flat (about 5 cents), so four of them will be a full syntonic comma flat of what it otherwise would be - so from C, C-G-D-A-E will land on the pure major third E.
31-tet is sort of the "completion" of 1/4-comma meantone by the way.
You're right. Got my commas confused. Chalk it up to a combination of hammering out a response at 2AM and fuming at "this is stupid, it's only good for solo work"
something not having been done yet doesn't make it wrong or useless, it makes it a wortwhile challenge. If you can't understand that get back to your equal temperament but don't knock ideas that are actually innovative out of ignorance. The opportunity to use this guitar offers the chance to be as innovative as people like Mark Stewart and Bang on a Can were when they first started writing classical music with electric guitars. I'm a guitar/music theory double major, I know what I'm saying.
FINALLY, very few of them play in meantone. I can't think of many guitarists that DO. Branca uses intervals derived from the harmonic series, but thats on a mass ensemble level, not on a solo basis. Larry Polansky plays fretless electric guitars to let him create some more interesting interval relationships. This is my whole POINT - this instrument is far from 'useless' - it just hasn't been used extensively YET. That's why it's cool. Open your mind a little bit -
doesn't really take well to classical-style picking. Metal strings and the thinner neck don't quite suit complex right hand patterns, which is one of the main reasons why classical guitars are the way they are. the interesting thing about this and the point i was making with that list of composers/guitarists was that they use ELECTRIC guitaris in an entirely CLASSICAL way rather than using classical guitars/classical guitar technique in classical music which is pretty obvious at this point,no?
there's nothing useless about playing by yourself. a large part of classical and pop repertoire are both based around solo playing.
but this guitar claims it not meant to be played with other because playing with a standard electric guitar or bass would just sound horribly out of tune.... pairing it with other just instruments (standard violin, viola, cello, horn, trumpet, trombone, any non-pitched percussion) would sound awesome and give you chords and sounds you can't get from standard bands
i get what the instrument does, but also wind instruments like that are tuned to one specific key and therefore this instrument really wouldnt be that much different from playing with a regular guitar with them. also id like you to give me both an instance where a classical artist uses afender style electric and an instance where someone plays in a pop group with just him/herself playing on an electric guitar.not trying to be a dick, just making my point.
Classical artists that include electric guitar? Michael Gordon, Mikel Rouse, Mark Stewart, Julia Wolfe, Nick Didkovsky, Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham, Virgil Moorfield, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Steve Reich. I could probably keep going. Solo pop artists I don't know as well, but off the top of my head Jeff Buckley used to play all his shows solo with electric guitar before he got signed to Columbia and formed a band.
19th century music isn't the only classical and top 40 isn't the only pop
Also, wind instruments aren't tuned to play in a certain key, they're just tuned to a particular fundamental. Certain keys are harder to play in than others (a Bb clarinet has a tough time playing in F# major), and with a guitar like this you'd have certain keys that would work better than other depending on which thirds were tuned purely - most likely this guitar would sound great in A, E, D, G, C like any guitar, and like any guitar would have a tough time playing in Db.
woodwind instruments most definitely have different intonation problems depending on the key because of the way they are tuned. in this you are wrong. also, when you said classical i assumed you meant classical style fingerpicking. MY next question: how many of them use meantone tuning?
read my post. I said woodwinds have difficulty playing in certain keys which is the reason for making them in a variety of keys - but that is precisely what is the proof of them not being EQUAL TEMPERED which is what we're talking about. There are elements of classical right hand style in most of the music i mentioned, but you specifically asked for classical music making use of 'fender style' guitars which usuaully eliminates classical guitar technique as standard electric guitar
Wow! Fantastic, albeit challenging, fix for an ancient problem... and nice playing... exposed yet very clean and tasty.
WallyJoiner 2 months ago
the first video that convinced me -- but this is quite an extreme form -- seems like the now shown tt guitars are a compromise between sound and playability
MoveOverCasanova 4 months ago
@MoveOverCasanova No, this is in a different temperament, meantone tempered. (check their site :D )
Guitareben 2 months ago
That guitar would confuse the heck out of me...
DamageIncM 5 months ago
@DamageIncM
Also, tell me, how could you even bend notes anymore?
How can you still comfortably bend the 3rd string on the 13th fret for example?...
You'd hit that bump of the fret on the side wouldn't you?...
DamageIncM 5 months ago
@DamageIncM
This is an old prototype, the final model is not that weird looking :)
ChristianNuse 5 months ago
Very fine! I had never heard about meantone blues!
padaneis 11 months ago
Useless
retepvosnul 11 months ago
what the hell is this..........(: (:
jorobone1 1 year ago
how are u gonna showcase how "good|" a guitar sounds with all that distortion? kinda like a handjob with mittens on.
nepalnt21 1 year ago 3
@nepalnt21 Its because dissonance is more easily detectable with distortion
Widmarkz 8 months ago 2
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How about exchangeable fretboards?
Remove it, snap in the other one.
MucusFelidae 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
How about exchangeable fretboards?
Remove it, snap in the other one.
MucusFelidae 1 year ago
Comment removed
MucusFelidae 1 year ago
It sounds incredibly consonant here in E.
KABRIS1 1 year ago
What a nasty tone...
nato101010 1 year ago 2
so every key is still available here?
leakeg 1 year ago
@leakeg Every key will not be in tune properly with these frets, but some will sound better.
TaterGumfries 1 year ago
@TaterGumfries The frets are made for the best intonation possiple..
Sjejse 1 year ago
@Sjejse Don't understand what you mean. You can only have the best intonation possible in one key at a time. In the limit as you try to get more and more keys in tune, you approach equal temperament.
TaterGumfries 1 year ago
@TaterGumfries Watch this video /watch?v=TwHv08587To it's called temperament fretting
Sjejse 1 year ago
@Sjejse Suppose you set the frets to tune an F major bar chord correctly, with the open E chord shape. Then the second fret under the G string will have to be set closer to the nut. Now what happens to an open A chord? The G string must be fretted at the second fret, and play the octave above the open A string, but it will have been set flat to get the third of the F bar chord right. Tater's am sure your system tunes some things pretty well, but none of these videos actually explains it.
TaterGumfries 1 year ago
@TaterGumfries This fretting used 1/4 comma meantone temperament, which means that all the major thirds are exactly in tune, the minor thirds almost exactly in tune, but the perfect fifths and fourths are a bit flat.
Since this has more than 12 notes per octave, you avoid the meantone "wolf" (the one fith in 12-tone meantone temperaments that is very out of tune)
kratanuva725 1 year ago
@leakeg I think that if the stack of fifths (that define meantone tunings) were continued on, you would have a ton more notes than are here. In fact, you would have a different pitch for each enharmonic equivalent. (C# would no longer equal Db). What they did was pick the 12 you're most likely to use from the new tuning, and only include those. What then happened was that some keys that needed an F# only had a Gb which didn't sound good, so they added a few more notes per octave. So yes and no
JLMoriart 1 year ago
@JLMoriart ah OK, cheers!
leakeg 1 year ago
@leakeg,
NO! Playing in all 12-keys is IMPOSSIBLE in just-intonated/meantone-tunings!
(Thus, the development of even-temperment in the first place!!!) One must commit to only the few keys in which these intervals sound the most consonant when stacked...If that makes any sense?!? - LOL!
billmeedog 1 year ago
@billmeedog yeah I know that, my comment was kind of a polite way of saying "well your only gonna be able to play in one (?) key and that would be a real pain in the arse"
leakeg 1 year ago
whow
kosmasolarius 1 year ago
The sound is really good but the music is not the best to be played with such a tunning. It would be better to play sth of XVI or XVII century. (rennaisance for example)
B10259 2 years ago
these necks are absolute works of art
GuitarsAmSuck 2 years ago
14 frets to an octave, oooh crazy.
Catsincages 2 years ago
What's the neck pickup???
It sounds really good!!
Lokar92 2 years ago
personal opinion nothing more but i find this to be overkill. Given the subtle faults many if not all players have in there playing intonation. When you take into the account of adrenaline and live playing and its effect on your vibrato and the force you play the guitar with does this system then lose its benefits? I would say yes. If you play perfectly all the time and with precision then maybe you can hear the difference.
Rick5150 2 years ago
do the TT frets always make it sound so tinny and shrill? I mean this sounds good but i like to have different tones... and this was just on the neck pup... AHHH
tubaeli93 2 years ago
@tubaeli93 It sounds like this because of the amp settings and the fact that he's playing a strat.
xHighPotencyx 1 year ago
Truly, never has a guitar sounded so plesant to my ears.
arsnovascholar 2 years ago
great sound! where did you buy this guitar??
arsnovascholar 2 years ago
he's the creator of it.
Fooanton 2 years ago
crazy guitar that was sick
DownFallofsatan666 2 years ago
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That really does sound sweet and I would love to hear something like Hey Joe played that well with a full mean-tone group. Just like socialism is the equal distribution of poverty, Equal Temperament is the equal distribution of out-of-tuneness. I'd never seen a fretboard that looked like that and I'm really glad people are thinking this way.
karlmahlmann 3 years ago
Comment removed
karlmahlmann 3 years ago
wonderfull sound
vafareinculo 3 years ago
I think the guitar sounds more "in tune" than a normal guitar, definately.
HottKarl777 3 years ago
:O
It sounds so pure.
nihil1 3 years ago 2
Why not, in that case, grab a couple more necks and actually put together a Meantone ensemble?
Problem solved.
Karlfalcon 3 years ago
this is kinda dumb, the only reason its in tune is because he intonated the bridge with the fret postions (which is what you do on any guitar, but my point is that this is really nothing special. if you pop one on your guitar without chaniging your intonation it sounds like shit right? so whats the point)
i geuss the difference is all in the look. because theres no way you cant tell me this is better than my gibson sg when its been intonated with a strobe tuner. it sounds the same
guitaraddict4life 3 years ago
Please refrain from commenting if you plainly have no fucking idea what you're talking about.
Karlfalcon 3 years ago 2
well then why dont you enlighten me?
since your so fucking smart
guitaraddict4life 3 years ago
This is significantly different from simple intonation, what we have here is, in reality, a completely different scale structure. It may sound normal at first but I would say that is mostly due to the dearth of chromatic progression in this example. In fact, it should sound perfectly in tune because it is significantly closer to "pure" tuning than equal-tempered instruments in which every semitone is flattened ever so slightly to account for the acoustical anomaly known as the Pythagorean Comma.
Karlfalcon 3 years ago
This is the well-known musical paradox in which a stack of 12 pure-tuned open fifths does not land on the same frequency as seven pure octaves starting from the same note. In the 16th & 17th centuries the preferred tuning pattern, or Temperament, was the Meantone system. In this temperament, as the video says, the instrument is tuned so that the thirds of the most commonly used keys are pure, letting the remainder of the comma land on an normally unused interval, ex: Eb & G#; the Wolf Fifth.
Karlfalcon 3 years ago 2
This problem arises from the simple fact that in pure-tuned music Eb is NOT the same as D#, as Equal temperaments would have you believe. To overcome this problem, many keyboard instruments had TWO black keys between the naturals, one for each flat or sharp note (as the description kindly points out, perhaps you should have read it).
Karlfalcon 3 years ago 2
Look carefully at the average position of the frets on this guitar. They are not spaced evenly (or rather, logarithmically) as in a normal fretboard. Next, count the number of frets within an octave. There are 15 positions within the first octave on this instrument. This is in fact a translation of the same method used on Meantone keyboards adapted for a guitar fretboard.
Karlfalcon 3 years ago
The oddly-shaped frets are actually acting for what, in an ideal instrument, would be two separate frets, but which for the purposes of this instrument would be superfluous, and would probably be more in the way most of the time. Remember, it is tuned so that the most commonly-used keys are most usable. If you really feel the need to play in some ungodly transposition, then stick to an equal-tempered fretboard.
Bitch.
Karlfalcon 3 years ago
why go to all that trouble when i KNOW that every single fucking note is in perfect pitch? i mean if i want a blue note i just bend the fucker up to it. why should i buy a peice of shit that would make me out of tune with every other guitarist out there? i mean this fucker is only good when its by itself. can you tell me this when playing with a band would you opt for a perectly intonated gibson neck or a fucked up out of key meantone neck, and before you reply i HAVE a meantone
guitaraddict4life 3 years ago
We're not talking about blue notes, we're talking about harmonic structure. Yes, it will not work with other tempered instruments. But that's the whole point. It's designed for solo work.
You have experience with it. Excellent. What made you think you SHOULD play it with other guitars built in a completely different temperament? That's like, oh gee, playing a mean-tempered harpsichord and an equal-tempered piano at the same time!
I ask if you've tried the Mark I for ensemble work.
Karlfalcon 3 years ago
Karlfalcon: I'd make sure I had my own facts right before berating other people.
The fifths in quarter-comma meantone temperament are flattened even more than in 12-tone equal temperament. A pure fifth is 702 cents, 12-tet is 700 cents, and quarter-comma meantone's is 697 cents.
The comma being dealt with here isn't the Pythagorean comma, it's the syntonic comma. 4 major fifths (C-G-D-A-E) does not equal one major third (C-E). The difference is a syntonic comma.
battaglia01 3 years ago 2
The point of quarter comma meantone is to temper each fifth a little bit flat so that 4 of them DOES equal a full major third and an octave. Each fifth is tempered a quarter of a syntonic comma flat (about 5 cents), so four of them will be a full syntonic comma flat of what it otherwise would be - so from C, C-G-D-A-E will land on the pure major third E.
31-tet is sort of the "completion" of 1/4-comma meantone by the way.
battaglia01 3 years ago
"Major fifths" should be perfect fifths, of course.
battaglia01 3 years ago
You're right. Got my commas confused. Chalk it up to a combination of hammering out a response at 2AM and fuming at "this is stupid, it's only good for solo work"
Well, DUH.
Karlfalcon 3 years ago
"The difference is a syntonic comma. "
I think you mean, the difference between the Syntonic and Pythagorean comma is the schisma. Hehe ;)
TheCrazyCello 3 years ago
Oops ignore me I misread the OP.
TheCrazyCello 3 years ago
something not having been done yet doesn't make it wrong or useless, it makes it a wortwhile challenge. If you can't understand that get back to your equal temperament but don't knock ideas that are actually innovative out of ignorance. The opportunity to use this guitar offers the chance to be as innovative as people like Mark Stewart and Bang on a Can were when they first started writing classical music with electric guitars. I'm a guitar/music theory double major, I know what I'm saying.
nicklesp 4 years ago
FINALLY, very few of them play in meantone. I can't think of many guitarists that DO. Branca uses intervals derived from the harmonic series, but thats on a mass ensemble level, not on a solo basis. Larry Polansky plays fretless electric guitars to let him create some more interesting interval relationships. This is my whole POINT - this instrument is far from 'useless' - it just hasn't been used extensively YET. That's why it's cool. Open your mind a little bit -
nicklesp 4 years ago
doesn't really take well to classical-style picking. Metal strings and the thinner neck don't quite suit complex right hand patterns, which is one of the main reasons why classical guitars are the way they are. the interesting thing about this and the point i was making with that list of composers/guitarists was that they use ELECTRIC guitaris in an entirely CLASSICAL way rather than using classical guitars/classical guitar technique in classical music which is pretty obvious at this point,no?
nicklesp 4 years ago
"Meantone Blues is not intended for use together with instruments in other temperaments." in other words its totally useless.
khbgkh 4 years ago
I don't think you understand just intonation. Do some reading please and see what you think then.
nicklesp 4 years ago
point being if it cant be used with other instruments its useless... unless he wants to play by himself all the time?
khbgkh 4 years ago
there's nothing useless about playing by yourself. a large part of classical and pop repertoire are both based around solo playing.
but this guitar claims it not meant to be played with other because playing with a standard electric guitar or bass would just sound horribly out of tune.... pairing it with other just instruments (standard violin, viola, cello, horn, trumpet, trombone, any non-pitched percussion) would sound awesome and give you chords and sounds you can't get from standard bands
nicklesp 4 years ago
i get what the instrument does, but also wind instruments like that are tuned to one specific key and therefore this instrument really wouldnt be that much different from playing with a regular guitar with them. also id like you to give me both an instance where a classical artist uses afender style electric and an instance where someone plays in a pop group with just him/herself playing on an electric guitar.not trying to be a dick, just making my point.
khbgkh 4 years ago
Classical artists that include electric guitar? Michael Gordon, Mikel Rouse, Mark Stewart, Julia Wolfe, Nick Didkovsky, Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham, Virgil Moorfield, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Steve Reich. I could probably keep going. Solo pop artists I don't know as well, but off the top of my head Jeff Buckley used to play all his shows solo with electric guitar before he got signed to Columbia and formed a band.
19th century music isn't the only classical and top 40 isn't the only pop
nicklesp 4 years ago
Also, wind instruments aren't tuned to play in a certain key, they're just tuned to a particular fundamental. Certain keys are harder to play in than others (a Bb clarinet has a tough time playing in F# major), and with a guitar like this you'd have certain keys that would work better than other depending on which thirds were tuned purely - most likely this guitar would sound great in A, E, D, G, C like any guitar, and like any guitar would have a tough time playing in Db.
nicklesp 4 years ago
woodwind instruments most definitely have different intonation problems depending on the key because of the way they are tuned. in this you are wrong. also, when you said classical i assumed you meant classical style fingerpicking. MY next question: how many of them use meantone tuning?
foxracer1090 4 years ago
read my post. I said woodwinds have difficulty playing in certain keys which is the reason for making them in a variety of keys - but that is precisely what is the proof of them not being EQUAL TEMPERED which is what we're talking about. There are elements of classical right hand style in most of the music i mentioned, but you specifically asked for classical music making use of 'fender style' guitars which usuaully eliminates classical guitar technique as standard electric guitar
nicklesp 4 years ago
sweeeeeeet as hell :)
vinta9e 4 years ago
ja ska slå Elias ;)
ynot02 4 years ago
How's other intervals like 7ths?
epiphoney 4 years ago