Music theory and the JoCoeuvre

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  • going back to the idea of guitars and tuning. Here is one of the companies attempting to over come this shortcoming. The problem I always see with these approaches is that there are other factors besides fret placement that affect tuning.
    In the end, all instruments even pianos have to cheat to get an over all even tone. I think if you are in an ensemble fixing one instrument would only highlight the shortcomings of the others.
  • In the end, all instruments even pianos have to cheat to get an over all even tone.
    Counter-example: trombone. ;-)

    Do fretless stringed instruments (e.g. violins) have more flexibility here? Granted, they have intervals between the strings, but those can be adjusted, and with only four strings, it should be much easier to get an optimal tuning for a particular piece. Moreover, with a sufficiently small group, such as a quartet, it might even be possible to have several such instruments playing much more in tune than might otherwise be the case, arguably more than if a piano were involved. Of course, that assumes that the musicians are that good. Anyone in a position to comment?
  • Some of these difficulties are intractable problems to do with incommensurable magnitudes and such, but others seem to be practical problems with tuning specific instruments. The latter class of difficulties would surely disappear when using, say, an electric piano, or a MIDI controller, where a computer is making the sounds and can make them in whatever pitch it likes. So, does music software tend to use the equal-tempered system? Can it be 'tuned' the other way? I guess it depends on the software, but I wonder if there is a standard, a default, or whatever. I guess not, since there are some 'instruments' in GarageBand which have random sound clips assigned to the notes. I should probably look into this myself rather than asking here, since I can usually understand software standards.
  • going back to the idea of guitars and tuning. Here is one of the companies attempting to over come this shortcoming
    No Mike Oldfield or Steve Hackett amongst the artistes.. so I won;t be rushing to buy !!

    ;' )

    That said.. I expected them to be MUCH more expensive!
    (But since when is VAT at 25% !!??)
  • Violin players actually aren't called upon to play many chords alone, of course (it's possible, and examples abound of what's called "double-stopping", or playing two strings at the same time with one's bow). That's something I didn't completely agree with from one of Paul's earlier posts but forgot to reply to -- I'm not so sure that tuning violin (and viola, and cello, and bass) strings a fifth apart has to do so much with wider chords. Rather, at least in my limited playing experience, it makes it a lot easier to play melodies across strings -- using the four non-thumb fingers, a G major scale goes open-string, 1st finger, 2, 3, 4, open-string, 1, 2, 3, 4, open-string, 1, 2, 3, 4...

    As for orchestral works, yes, a fretless string player who's playing the third (no, I said, what's the name of the guy who plays double bass?) would indeed flat the note a little. But you'd never hear of a concert violinist tuning his / her violin to anything besides regulation GDAE, unless some Modernist piece called for it.
  • @Mark: I don't think the orchestral strings have any less flexibility because of the tuning of their open strings. This would only be an issue when open strings are played, since these are by definition at a fixed pitch; when stopped, the player has complete flexibility of intonation, as any victim of a young violinist can attest. However, because the timbre of an open string is so different from a stopped one, open strings tend to be the exception rather than the norm. In solo works one is far more likely to find open strings used in double-stops, but I'll stick my neck out here to suggest that the emphasis there will often be on "smoke and mirrors" virtuosity and not on purity of intonation. Certain "folksy" styles depend on an open string played against a melody below it, but the folksier it gets, the more we feel cheated if it doesn't have beer-hall intonation!
  • edited February 2009
    I guess I'm not asking about a tuning other than GDAE; I'm asking about alternative definitions of GDAE, more temperament than tuning, to be pedantic. Unison and octave are objectively defined, but precisely how a fifth is defined is a matter of convention. Am I right?

    ETA: I suppose that if no open strings are played, it's pretty much moot, and fretless strings are spared the tuning hell faced by guitars, pianos, etc. The notes are defined by finger placement alone, which allows a fully continuous range of tones, just like voice or trombone.
  • Colleenky is probably best placed to speak on having choice of intonation. I have often heard about how orchestral players do micro-tuning of notes, but having studied and hung out with a lot of them, I can attest that very few of them (okay, none of the ones I ever talked to!) are very scientific about it.

    On the singing front, in South Africa I experienced the cultural gulf between white and black choirs, whereby black choirs tend to sing very out of tune as perceived by prissy white ears. I heard various theories about it (e.g. they use Pythagorean intonation) but in my humble opinion it is down to the black choirs having an a cappella culture, whereas the white choirs were very piano-bound. And of course, on a different plane, the white choirs often scored on Accuracy, but were consistently devoid of Soul ;-) Wonderful how politics can polarise the arts...
  • The 5th being a perfect interval, there isn't really too much difference in concert tuning (although I know nothing about folk music / fiddling) -- everyone tunes to the same A, then tunes until all the 5ths are perfect fifths, which you can tell by something something mumble resonance.
  • Angelastic: So, does music software tend to use the equal-tempered system? Can it be 'tuned' the other way?
    The vast majority of synthesized instruments are gonna be tuned to equal temperament, but any decent synth software can be adjusted to less conventional tuning. My KORG synths have a global setting that let you change to just tuning for a specific key.

    You can dig up records by Wendy Carlos that are engineered for just tuning throughout, but I don't think those kinds of recordings are very common.
  • Bry: But you'd never hear of a concert violinist tuning his / her violin to anything besides regulation GDAE, unless some Modernist piece called for it.
    You are, or course, ignoring the advanced technique of scordatura, which dates from the 17th century to the present.
  • Ach, mein brain.
  • voidptr: Quite right -- wasn't familiar with it at all. Interesting, though -- I'd be curious to see how it sounds.
  • Here's an easy one: Sains-Saens's Dance Macabre, where the E-string of the solo violin is tuned down a semitone. And it nicely demonstrates the heavier sound of open strings. And (going for a home run here...) you might even call it folksy-sounding when it hits that tritone-to-5th pattern. I'd maintain in this case that perfect intonation ain't the issue though.
  • Colleenky is probably best placed to speak on having choice of intonation.
    Huh? Really? I have nothing to add here. Y'all are doing just fine. I'm enjoying the read. (Also, Borba, I'm glad to have surprised an old hat like you with some new info. :-) )

    Scorda-what-now? I suppose Bry might have ignored that because he's not an advanced string player. ;-)

    So I have a couple of dumb questions about guitar playing/tuning. Chords are fingered between the frets rather than on them, yes? (I rewatched some JoCo vids and a suuupaadave vid, and I think that's what I see. I'm wondering if I was doing it right back when I tried to teach myself some guitar several months ago.) Also, do guitar players correct pitch just by moving their fingers up or down a little like fretless string players? Are the frets guides, or are they integral to playing? (Like Ray Bradbury said, I throw my ignorance in other people's faces in order to learn!)
  • Scorda-what-now? I suppose Bry might have ignored that because he's not an advanced string player. ;-)
    I certainly am not -- if my E string was ever tuned to Eb, it was because I sucked at tuning.
  • Biber wrote a concerto for violin which seems to require a different scordatura tuning for each movement... the effect is quite interesting, but it's a pain to perform. The purpose being, of course, to alter the way different notes resonate, especially as a violin's open string notes are noticeably different to a fingered note (this is one of the differences with the viol - the viol's frets are supposed to help reduce this difference, although obviously you lose that when you realise your string is out of tune or your fret's in the wrong place and you have to start fingering off-fret to stay in tune...)

    So viol players, despite having frets, will play off-fret to stay in tune, and that would include dropping the third of the chord (although it's not quite so necessary to do it in velotti temprement, which is what my viol is generally tuned in). Although most of the time when we actually have to start thinking about that is the case when our strings are going out of tune, which happens much more often than it does for those smug classical violinists.

    I'm going to go over there and scowl and mumble about that for a bit.
  • Wow, this thread is seriously active and thus I am protected from the dangers of excess productivity. Thanks all!

    Colleenky: on guitar, you pretty much do place your finger _behind_ the fret so that the intonation is from the fret-string interaction. However, you have a little leeway. Play too far behind, and you'll get less forcible contact between string and fret, and possible buzzing. Play too far forward (right on the point of contact) and you'll tend to accidentally mute it or again cause buzzing. Playing closer or farther from the frets does not change the pitch although it may change the timbre a bit. On the acoustic I tend to play chords practically on top of the frets, which is kind of poor technique, although it gives me some left-hand technique options that I probably do mostly unconsciously. I can damp chords a bit more easily or deliberately make them buzz a bit for a raspier sound.

    You can bend slightly (pull the strings sideways) to alter the pitch. This is more often done with single-note soloing for effect although in blues playing it is also common to bend whole chords (which can be a little difficult). It is rare to be trying to correct intonation of, say, one string when playing a chord, although there are probably guitarists who do this. There are also some who play scalloped freboards, where the board is hollowed out between the frets. This allows you to bend notes just by applying more downward pressure to the strings, which always sounds interesting to try until you realize how expensive and irrevocable that alteration is to a guitar. I play a _little_ fretless bass because I love the tone they produce, but I'm not very good at it. I've been half-considering buying an instrument called a "Glissentar" -- an 11-string fretless electric oud -- just to experiment with.

    Although right now the thought of playing more guitar is making my head hurt. I've been overdoing it with the right-hand finger-picking and now my whole right hand, especially the thumb, feels like I'm having an arthritis attack. I wonder if JoCo has this problem? I am a few years older so maybe he hasn't started to really feel it yet.

    MaW: I had never heard of a viol having frets and if they do I have no idea how you would play "off-fret." So clearly I have more to learn!
  • edited February 2009
    Colleenky: you can hear/see my somewhat mediocre acoustic guitar technique here: Skullcrusher Mountain Acoustic Karaoke. It's actually full of minor errors that I tried to make sound like I intended them. Also, the acoustic is buzzing because Isaac forgot to fill the humidifiers for a couple of days. (It makes a noticeable difference).

    Interesting to watch my own left-hand technique -- I never see it from that angle! Some of the bar chords look like I'm playing right on top or even over the frets with my index finger (see "I'm so into you but I'm (B minor) way too smart for you)." I probably am doing that unconsciously because on that chord I want to mute the low E string.
  • I disagree a little Paul. You can alter pitch behind the fret based on where you place your fingers and how hard you press. That was one reason I said before that there are other factors besides fret placement that affect tuning.
    Fretting a string stretches it a bit causing it to sharpen slightly. Pressing close to the fret, increasing the break angle of the string over the fret, will amplify this effect, especially with tall and narrow frets. Also pressing really hard squishes more string against the fretboard which also sharpens the pitch.
    To what degree that happens has a lot to do with they type of string and the shape of the frets and fingers though.
    A classical teacher will spend a lot of time on technique in order to minimize this. I've never seen anyone do this deliberately as a playing technique though.
    Speaking of guitar technique...I'm going to go see this guy this weekend.
  • edited February 2009
    Rob: I think you are right -- and yeah, actually beginners _do_ tend to pull the guitar out of tune by squeezing the strings too hard. It takes some experience before you learn just how hard you actually need to fret the strings. And then of course it is different depending on the guitar, string gauge, nut height, fret height, fret width, action, all that -- many variables. It is probably more noticeable on nylon-string guitars.

    Wow, that guy is amazing -- just favorited another video. He really makes both hands look just effortless. I wish I had more time to practice!

    I was also just thinking how one of the things that makes it challenging to switch from fretted to fretless is how for fretless, you want your finger right on the note instead of behind the fret. So I'm always tending to play fretless bass a little flat.
  • yeah. i've experemented with fretless before too. One time I pulled the frets out of an old bass to make it fretless. Nice sounds, I love it but it was confusing because the fret lines were still there. Had I thought of it then I'd have put some lines on the fretboard just ahead of where real frets would be.
    oddly I have a friend who plays violin but had a problem trying to play mandolin because the frets got in her way.
  • Wow, rob, this guy is utterly awesome. Thanks for the link!
  • MaWMaW
    edited February 2009
    paulrpotts: all viols have frets - lengths of gut tied around the neck, which you're expected to move around as various factors muck about with the tuning (and for changing temprements, of course). Playing off-fret is easy - you just put your finger somewhere else! The frets are not particularly tall, so they don't stop the string by themselves - the tuning is still affected by the finger behind it, so we don't get as much change to sound from frets as perhaps a modern electric guitar does, but it's different to a fretless instrument like the violin family.
  • edited February 2009
    MaW so I'm still not really clear on this: the frets act more as markers or guides than as what I'm used to calling a fret? Can you feel them?

    OK, I looked at some pictures. They are definitely not like guitar frets. I guess it would probably make more sense to me if I had a chance to play with a viol and try to get some tones out of one.
  • Speaking of instruments without frets (and going slightly off topic), does this deal on eBay look too good to be true? There has to be catch somewhere, no?
  • the catch is that those instruments are mass produced on CNC machines using inferior woods with little attention to detail or quality. I like the word ebonized which i think just means stained black.
  • edited February 2009
    True enough. But for someone who doesn't really want to become an expert on those instruments, and is just looking to noodle around for a bit of fun intermittently... if they make a half-way decent sound, it might beat spending the equivalent price of a new cutting-edge computer (or more) for a high-quality, hand-craft instrument. Of course, I don't really have anywhere convenient to store them either... Alternatively, I was playing around with the idea of renting instruments that I don't play (yet) over the summer, just to play around with for fun.

    ETA: I think I know what it is... If I spend a lot of money on something, then I'm committing to it, and I have to take it seriously, which takes the fun out of it (and which I'm really not willing to do). But if it's just a cheap piece of junk then I can't take it seriously, so I can just relax and have fun with it. I know that's how it worked when I got the uke.

    I guess that means I have commitment issues. :-)
  • Paul: They're like guides, yes, but they do have a tonal purpose as well. It's evidently just a lot more subtle than you're used to. You only get the tonal benefit from a fret when you're fingering on-fret (well, finger goes just behind the fret), so for the best sound your strings need to be bang in tune and all your frets in exactly the right place... which rarely happens. Gut strings do not hold their tuning well.
  • I also like the word "ebonized". Can you say that JoCo de-ebonized "Baby Got Back"?
  • You could, but would you be imparting any useful information?

    Something I was reminded of at my recorder group this morning: unisons and octaves are incredibly hard to tune.
  • Maybe hard to tune because there is no room for interpretation, and we're in strict mathematical territory there.
  • I also like the word "ebonized". Can you say that JoCo de-ebonized "Baby Got Back"?
    You could, but let's take the broken analogy a step further - he "ivorised" it.
  • @BorbaSpinotti: Possibly correct. I think all tuning systems agree that octaves are doubled frequencies, so you have no wiggle room at all - every piece of music you ever heard has conformed to this.

    Well, every piece of music that was played in some sort of in tune sense, anyway...

    This particular set of unisons and octaves came at the end of a fairly fiddly (but very good) arrangement of a Welsh folk song (don't ask me to spell the title - something about hunting hares though) for five recorders. It's in 6/8, with the melody exploiting the two in a bar compound time sense, and the rhythmic accompaniment (which moves around between the parts) contrasting it with occasional diversions into three in a bar - while the melody's still going two in a bar. It's lovely, but at the end there's this point where all the harmonies start collapsing into unisons or octaves, and the tuning just goes completely crazy unless we're concentrating really really hard.

    All good practice though!
  • edited February 2009
    I should probably put this in the "other music" thread but since I brought it up here let me continue. I saw Andy McKee last night and it was a great show. He is an incredible guitarist. I was pleased to find out he's somewhat of a geek. He talked about his love of sci-fi in the introduction to this song. And about how much he liked Lord of the Rings and "all that kind of stuff" during the introduction this song. If you are in Austin he is playing there tonight at The Cactus Club, the same place JoCo played last time he was in Austin.
  • So now that I know what a key is... would I be right to think that if I were to, say, make a mash-up of two or more JoCo songs using the source tracks (like I did for 'Code Monkey Like...' but longer), I would be better off picking songs which are all in the same key? Would it sound awful (to people who know about these things) if I didn't? Is it complicated by, perhaps, some backing vocals being in a different key?

    Also, is there a simple way to determine the key from the guitar tabs for the songs? I guess certain chords only exist in certain keys so I could probably figure it out from what you've already told me but I wonder if there's a shortcut.
  • Starting with question 2, there isn't a simple answer that addresses all possibilities. Quite often some of the delightful tension in music derives from ambiguity in that department - think of a song like Shop Vac that doesn't start on the tonic chord (chord corresponding to the key name).

    However, this is not bad news vis a vis question 1: There is a lot of mileage to be had in mashing up things that don't fit 100%. Let your ears be the judge, and I'm sure your natural analytical talents will let you form a mental model that works for you.
  • Yay, I can just go nuts then. :D (I'm glad you said 'natural analytical talents' and not ' natural musical talents', I'm fairly sure I have some of the former.)
  • edited March 2009
    Angelastic: one of the things you often hear in mash-ups is pitch shifting applied to some of the samples to make them fit into the same key. This tends to make them sound funny, but in a mashup you usually have a lot of noisy samples mashed together anyway, so it isn't like the audio quality usually remains completely pristine.

    My absolute favorite album of mash-ups is the Dean Gray "American Edit" album -- Google it if you have not heard it! It takes a slightly dull, slightly bland punk/pop Green Day album with whiny, maudlin, predictable lyrics, and makes it magical.
  • Angelastic: Regarding determining what a key a piece is in from guitar chords can be tricky at times, as Borba pointed out. One thing to do is look for chords that are repeated a lot. Another is to look at the first and last chords of a piece. This isn't always an accurate indication, because JoCo in particular likes to end songs on non-tonic chords, to give a sense of incompleteness. A perfect example is Blue Sunny Day, but Chiron Beta Prime and The Future Soon also come to mind. Another possibility is to look for three frequently-used chords (probably all major) that are adjacent on the Circle of Fifths. In this case, there's a good chance that the song is in the same key as the middle chord. Another thing you can try is just listening to the piece and ask yourself "if the music ended on this chord, would it sound complete?"

    And then there's the whole problem of modulation -- you've just figured out what key a piece is in, and then it goes and changes. A lot of songs change key during the bridge. And Still Alive and DSJD alternate keys between chorus and verse. Blue Sunny Day changes back and forth between A and C all over the place.
  • Quite often some of the delightful tension in music derives from ambiguity in that department - think of a song like Shop Vac that doesn't start on the tonic chord
    This kind of thing amazes me... I guess I could imagine a musician on the edge of their seat wondering which key a piece is going to turn out to be in. But this tension can also be felt by somebody who knows nothing of the concept of keys, and just hears some notes. How is this possible? I can see how something would feel unresolved if, let's say, it started on the tonic but didn't end on the tonic, because then you only need to compare the start with the beginning, and hear that they're different, without knowing anything about keys or tonics. But how can ambiguity at the start create tension? I'd say that a background of listening to music which is clearly in one key or another would do it, but obviously somebody's listening history would also include songs which have this ambiguity, so it wouldn't seem unusual. I'm not saying it isn't possible, I'm just wondering how it happens.
  • I'm not an expert on theory by any means, but one of the reasons "Shop Vac" starts out with a little tension is that the opening chord is a B7 -- the 7th is a "leading tone" which makes it sound a little bit on edge, like it wants to go somewhere else.The notes in the major scale in B are B, C#, D#, E, F#, G#, and A#. In a B7 chord you have B, D#, F# -- the major triad -- and then a dominant 7th, meaning a flatted A#, or just A. This is a whole step away from B as opposed to the wider intervals you get between the intervals in the major triad, so it sounds a little more "tense." But you are right that just hearing a B7 by itself doesn't fully clarify what key you are in. I'm sure Borba can talk about inversions and how they can create tension too, and ambiguous naming of chords, but when I get into that I have to start counting on my fingers and toes so I will leave that to someone with more musical education.
  • When you're starting on a non-tonic chord you have to have something that indicates that it isn't the tonic, and it has to be either right there at the start or happen pretty quick because otherwise people will think that you're establishing a different key than the one you intended, and your objective will have failed (although maybe you'll have gotten lucky and come up with something you like anyway - a lot of good music is probably at least half accident).

    So as Paul said, doing something in the opening chord like adding the seventh disrupts it a bit, the 7th really wants to resolve, and an ordinary triad with the 7th added resolves very strongly to the tonic of which that chord is the dominant, so when you do move to the tonic, which you would normally do very soon after pulling a dominant seventh, it feels like the tonic, like an arrival and everything feels right and good. Of course, adding the 7th isn't the only thing you can do to indicate that the opening isn't the tonic.

    On a similar line, a lot of melodies begin on the dominant of the key, although they may well be harmonised with tonic chords at that point.

    Personally I rather like ambiguity - there's a fair amount of baroque consort music where the composers decided to leave the thirds out of some of the important chords - say, the one at the beginning, or even sometimes the one at the end. An open chord that's just the tonic and the dominant is very ambiguous - it could be either major or minor, without the third it's very hard to tell, and you can only really make guesses based on how the piece proceeds from there. As an effective device, it's marvellous for creating a sense of uncertainty, of questioning, and you can move on from there into a piece that leaves the listener sort of uncertain - they know that something's going on, but they're not sure if they should be happy or sad about it. You could then move more firmly into major or minor (or one then the other of course) and finish the piece on a solid chord that leaves people in no doubt, but having ambiguity at the end can be fun too - as JoCo demonstrates, in a different way, by, not always resolving to the tonic at the end.

    As for the reason this works on people without them having to analyse from a theoretical perspective - somehow it just does. A combination of hardwired stuff in our brains and expectations gained from exposure to Western music from our earliest childhood gives us these automatic emotional reactions to various tonal constructions. I don't really know the reasons, but it certainly doesn't depend upon an understanding of how the music works. I would suspect, however, that it's related to the sounds of our speech.
  • So now that I know what a key is... would I be right to think that if I were to, say, make a mash-up of two or more JoCo songs using the source tracks (like I did for 'Code Monkey Like...' but longer), I would be better off picking songs which are all in the same key? Would it sound awful (to people who know about these things) if I didn't? Is it complicated by, perhaps, some backing vocals being in a different key?
    I think you're going to have a much easier time mashing up two songs if they are the same key and tempo. You can get some interesting results by experimenting with songs in different keys. "Twenty-five or Sixty-four" is actually a really good example of this. It's also a song I don't really enjoy listening to because they disparate scales don't match up very well in some parts.

    I'd guess that more than half of JoCo material is in E-major, so it should be pretty easy to find two songs that mash up well in that key. When I started stringing songs together for my little piano medley, I ended up grouping songs together by key so the transitions would be smooth.

    Here's how it worked out:
    • Still Alive (chorus) - Bb
    • Future soon - D
    • Todd the T1000, Mr. Fancy Pants, Skullcrusher Mountain - E
    • De-Evolving, Tom Cruise Crazy - Em
    • Code Monkey, Mandelbrot Set - E
    • Chiron Beta Prime - A
    • Re: Your Brains, Over There, Creepy Doll - C (or Am, which is the same scale)
    • Still Alive (verse/chorus) - D/Bb
    And regarding ShopVac, even though the chorus starts with B7, it seems to me that the two intro bars really establish the song in E.
  • @MaW: I'm suddenly having a vision of a Tierce de Picardie* as the dramatic revelation at the end of a comic skit that the man is actually a woman.

    * = a device whereby a piece in a minor key ends on a major chord. Quite cliched in church music.
  • 'quite' clich
  • For me, the term "church music" basically means hymns (and some choruses), which are almost universally in a major key, making it impossible for them to end with a Picardy third. A lot of Baroque music uses the technique, though. My favorite example is at the end of the second movement of Brandenburg Concerto 2 (you're probably familiar with the piece, MaW, since it features a recorder), where the movement is mostly in D minor (with the obligatory modulations), and ends with a Dsus4 with a trill in the violin that resolves to a Picardy third to make D major. Then the next movement starts in F.
  • Yes I'm familiar with it, although I've never had the opportunity to attempt to play it. Wonderful use of imitation, and that lovely continuo that walks its way through the entire piece, carrying everything else along with it. Recorder + oboe + strings == win. I need to get a decent set of recordings of the Brandenburgs at some point.
  • @MaW: I can heartily recommend this recording. It lives on my iPod and makes me happy on demand - gorgeously played and a lovely recording to boot.
  • Does anyone know if JoCo is a tenor?
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