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~Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. microtonal microtonal Music Musical Technique Technique

A little temporary frets JI jam

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I’ve been preparing a guitar to make a version of Dante Rosati’s 21 note JI guitar You’ll see the pictures of the frets coming off and the back-fill with plastic wood and sanding in a later post. As an intermediate step after removing the frets Dante suggests tuning the guitar to your target tuning and letting that settle for a few days. I went a step further and put on some 8″ nylon cable ties I found at Myers – GE # 51213. (pictured on the guitar above)Though they are relatively expensive in packs of 20 they are very narrow and thin and quite an improvement from my previous attempt at Temporary Guitar Frets. And yes, you can make some adjustments to the exact fret board placement and no they don’t move around on you – even if you bend the notes. I followed Dante’s suggested tuning of CGCGCG – but my high string did break when I was adjusting it – that one will have to be strung, tuned and stay there to survive!

The frets were placed at JI intervals based on my ear. I have cable ties at JI major 2nd, Major 3rd, Perfect 4th, Perfect 5th, and Major 6th.

I made 3 tries at an improvisation recorded in Sonar all in one doubled up track. I obliged the obvious by running the end of the same improvisation through distortion – I mean if 3 parallel drop tuned 5ths isn’t meant for metal what is???

The complete improvisation
Only the end through distortion

7 replies on “A little temporary frets JI jam”

Chris thanks for the lead on the ties and this size. Really like this piece and not sure I have heard it. The tuning of fifth’s very pure but agree with Michael, very chill.

Jim

Dear Chris,

I really like this piece. You sound so mellow and chill on it. I love it and it is lovely.

Peace,

Mike

Thx! I’ll try to put something together when it’s calm here.

Do you think you might be up for hosting a simple homepage for me, just so I have a place on the Web to put information on a few small projects? (No worries if you’d rather not.)

Fretting your violin is a cool idea! Do share some music and pictures if possible. I’d be glad to put it in my blog with you as the author if you’d like. Contact me if finding a place to host your data is an issue.

I just happened to get the same ties & since seeing your earlier experiment decided to try this on my violin, to better learn tunings. Hopefully won’t mess the instrument up. I pushed one tie almost back to the nut in order to lift the strings and give clearance to the fingerboard. Seems to work pretty well.

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