A shamefully/lessly nerdy exploration of the guitar fretboard, its nature, language and futures. Adapted from my keynote lecture at the 2022 Guitar Foundation of America conference.
Dear Milton, one composer to another: your channel might be one the most interesting on RU-vid. I just love the way you explore such a diverse range of ideas about music. Always come away inspired from visiting your channel.
Only one question from a mexican nerdy guitarrist: Your research is my first reference with a "non trivial number"... how do you calculate the number of possible tunings for a six string guitar? Thanks for your videos!
So we must decide what's allowed in our calculations in terms of pitch divisions (12 notes in an octave? Quarter tones? Eighth tones? Even finer?), and we need to know the practical range of a string's tuning capability. We need to also ask if we can use any string type/guage in any position or are we just counting for one set of strings.l But let's keep it simple, basically for each string we work out how many tuning options are there (e.g. we can tune a string to one of 7 semitones, one of 32 microtones etc) and then multiply for each string. But even with a conservative constraint (e.g. each string has 7 tuning options - a 7 semitone range) then the number of possible tunings is 7 to the power of 6 (7 choices x 7 choices etc for each string) = 117,649. If you changed tunings once a day it would take over three centuries to get through them. Any micro tuning or wider tuning range brings this number up wildly.
Fascinating, (and please excuse this unsolicited comment) I think Ant law leaves the top two strings in normal tuning and drops the rest by one semitone. The tuning you describe, using C and F for the top two strings is utilised by Tom Quayle amongst others.
Ah thanks for the clarifying - I should know that. All the key stats (consistency, stretchiness, repetition profile, Goodrick) stay the same, but it's goof to know. Thanks for watching and the comment!
