source file: mills3.txt Date: Sat, 6 Dec 1997 03:39:29 +0100 Subject: An Odd Clef for 88CET Guitar? From: mr88cet@texas.net (Gary Morrison) An interesting series of thoughts popped into mind recently regarding notation for my 88CET guitar. My 88CET-tuning notation system uses traditional notation symbols, although the pitches don't correspond to what they would in traditional tuning. Well, my notation system is another big topic in itself, but what matters for this discussion is that, in this notation system, the pitches that correspond to my 88CET guitar's practical pitch range aren't terribly practical for any traditional clef. And since this is a nonoctave-based tuning system, doing what in traditional tunings would be called an octave transposition, like the real guitar does, is kind of risky. That practical range works out to the A on the third ledger line below the bass staff up to the F on the top line of the treble staff. Notes above that F are feasible, but not terribly common. As you can see, it's also not centered nicely for a full grand staff. So, I'm toying with kind of an offshoot of the ol' Baroque-era movable clef approach, or perhaps kind of a hybrid of that with a grand staff. Here's the evolution of thought as it ran through my head: Of any of the traditional clefs, that range of notes centers best on the tenor clef: The low A works out to be five ledger lines below the tenor staff, and the high F works out to four ledger lines above the staff. But even still, four and five ledger lines is a little cumbersome, especially since it can play higher than that F. So I then said, I can cut that down to three and four ledger lines by employing a seven-line staff - one additional non-ledger line below and above the usual bottom and top lines of the tenor clef. That makes keeping track of ledger lines a little bit more tractable. Then I thought, you know, I'd almost bet money that it would be easy to lose your place on a seven-line staff. It would probably be easy to confuse for example, the A on middle (fourth down) line with the C on the third line down. That distinction will probably be a rather unfortunate additional complication when you're trying to also trying to monitor your tone, that your fingers are right behind the frets, remember where the beat is, which fingers (left and right!) you're going to play the next note, and all that in three part harmony in eighths and sixteenths at 100bpm! They'll probably both look like "notes buried somewhere in the middle of this big, fat staff"! So what popped into mind was, as a navigational aid, how about removing the center (A) line? The result would look something like this (in this dreadful ASCII-text graphics world!): -O- Highest typical note --- --- ++-^--------------------- ++o-/-------------------- ||<>-------"------------- 1st (D) ++o \ -O- 2nd (A) ++-v--------------------- -----------O------------- 3rd (D) ------------------------- -"- Open 4th string (A) --- -"- Open 5th string (D) -O- Open 6th string (A) So what you have is kind of like two three-line staves in a grand-staff-line structure, all built around the C clef. That except that the two staves would have no more space between them than that left by removing the center line, rather than the usual greatly enlarged space between treble and bass staves. Anybody have any thoughts on that, in terms of playability, for example? Or how about thoughts on extending that one line farther in each direction? -O- Highest typical note --- ------------------------- ++-^--------------------- ++o-/-------------------- ||<>-------"------------- 1st (D) ++o \ -O- 2nd (A) ++-v--------------------- -----------O------------- 3rd (D) ------------------------- -----------"------------- 4th (A) --- -"- Open 5th string (D) -O- Open 6th string (A) SMTPOriginator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu From: mr88cet@texas.net (Gary Morrison) Subject: Tuning-List Tape PostedDate: 06-12-97 06:32:49 SendTo: CN=coul1358/OU=AT/O=EZH ReplyTo: tuning@eartha.mills.edu $MessageStorage: 0 $UpdatedBy: CN=notesrv2/OU=Server/O=EZH,CN=coul1358/OU=AT/O=EZH,CN=Manuel op de Coul/OU=AT/O=EZH RouteServers: CN=notesrv2/OU=Server/O=EZH,CN=notesrv1/OU=Server/O=EZH RouteTimes: 06-12-97 06:31:07-06-12-97 06:31:07,06-12-97 06:30:57-06-12-97 06:30:58 DeliveredDate: 06-12-97 06:30:58 Categories: $Revisions: Received: from ns.ezh.nl ([137.174.112.59]) by notesrv2.ezh.nl (Lotus SMTP MTA SMTP v4.6 (462.2 9-3-1997)) with SMTP id C1256565.001E4BE8; Sat, 6 Dec 1997 06:30:55 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA07798; Sat, 6 Dec 1997 06:32:49 +0100 Date: Sat, 6 Dec 1997 06:32:49 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA07801 Received: (qmail 12767 invoked from network); 5 Dec 1997 21:32:45 -0800 Received: from localhost (HELO ella.mills.edu) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 5 Dec 1997 21:32:45 -0800 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu