source file: mills2.txt Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 15:42:27 +0200 Subject: Re: new instrument From: PErlich Neil wrote, >Hooray...at last, my 34 tone acoustic bass is finished. I must thank >the late Larry Hanson for the financial support which made this possible, >and John Starrett for a great job on the instrument itself. Between >Starrett and myself we now have: 34 tone electric guitar/bass, 34 >acoustic guitar/bass, 19 tone electric and acoustic guitar/bass, 31 tone >electric, and a fretless guitar as well. Upcoming projects are a 31 >acoustic guitar/bass, and a fretless acoustic. I believe Paul Erlich now >has his 22 tone guitar, so I would be interested to see what he comes up >with...again, Hanson needs much thanks, because he believed enough in his >dreams to make them a reality...Hstick Congratulations, Neil! That's exciting news. Are these acoustic basses uprights with frets or do they resemble acoustic guitars? John Starrett has refretted my 7-string guitar neck to 22-equal and sent it to me. Once I receive it, some work will still need to be done on the guitar. Then I intend to study and practice very hard. Although this means being a hermit for a long period of time, I am confident that it will pay off -- the music is already coming together on the keyboard, but I can't do very much when I can barely span a "fifth" with one hand. The last ten years of teaching myself 12-tone guitar have been very fruitful in that I can comfortably improvise in a wide variety of diatonic idioms, plus blues and the occasional octatonic stuff. As good as people seem to think I am, the world is already saturated with great 12-tone guitar players; who really needs one more? Hopefully I can carry over some of my aural and technical skills to this new instrument. But it will take some time to unlearn diatonic thinking, and to forge an improvisatory style that is musical without being derivative. Maybe after ten more years I'll be onto something! -Paul E. Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Thu, 22 May 1997 19:27 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA07868; Thu, 22 May 1997 19:27:47 +0200 Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 19:27:47 +0200 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA07864 Received: (qmail 12008 invoked from network); 22 May 1997 17:27:42 -0000 Received: from localhost (HELO ella.mills.edu) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 22 May 1997 17:27:42 -0000 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu