despite any praise i could make to the artists, the sound is simply unbelievable. the engineering task behind such a reconstruction is memorable, thank you immensely for sharing.
Those friction pegs must be bitch to keep in tune.Getting good intonation with those block frets must have been tricky. The blocks will obviously wear out with the use of steel strings, so I hope they're easy enough to replace. I love the little "horns" on the instrument- like a modern electric guitar. "Bond"-brand electric guitars many years ago used a "stepped" fingerboard that worked in a similar manner to the stepped wooden "frets" on this. I like to see instruments like this escape from the historical re-creation world, and get used for more creative [and modern] musical purposes. I guess the problem is that a modern , say, mandola, covers a similar range, and is easier to obtain and play.
Tuning is in fact a challenge and takes some time and concentration, but with some practice it is possible and fairly stable. The blocks actually do not wear out easily. They are of maple and have a boxwood veneer. Also, the strings are not steel but brass and copper and the tension not extremely high. Furthermore, the action is very low, so that the strings are not pressed down very hard. The frets are glued onto the neck and could fairly easily be replaced.
😆They are a defining feature of the cetra in most of the iconography. Crawford Young has an interesting interpretation in his dissertation thesis (openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/64500), explaining the massive "block frets" as reminiscences to the kallopes of the ancient kitharas (the tunings "pegs"). The asymmetric neck has an afterlife in the neck design of the 16th-century citterns.
This very instrument was made by Julian Behr in 2012 (it is the prototype we conceived together). There are a few others out there, but often made after a different concept.
How are you using the block frets, do you stop the strings on the face of the block or press down just behind/between them? Did these instruments still use Pythagorean tuning?
This particular version of the block fret system was designed to fret on the face of the blocks (they are very lightly angled so that the edge towards the bridge is where the string is actually fretted). However, you can influence the pitch by where on the face of the fret you place the finger. The further you move away the higher the pitch it gets (curiously), because you are pulling the string tighter, to which the metal strings (copper and bronze) react very sensitively. We do not know what tuning systems were used for the cetra, but since the instrument favours "chords" I assume that at least some pure thirds might have been employed. There is still a lot left to try out with its usage and tuning.
@@EnsembleLeones Fascinating! Thanks for the info. So the player can somewhat adjust, say, the thirds, tempering them in the moment depending on, maybe, what key one is in or whether one needs a pure third or a wider one? Like an automatic just intonation adjuster? I suppose there's not enough information from written sources for this, but do you think frets were designed like that to allow for pitch bends too, like the bebung on a clavichord? What a remarkable design!
@@EnsembleLeones "...are of course limits" < I see what you did there (cue obscure music theory-reference joke) ;) ;) haha seriously thank you for that!
In the iconography the block frets are always perpendicular, but the stiffness of the lower metal strings makes them less difficult to fret as they react differently than the higher strings. A straight bridge would work mostly as well, as I do not really have to fret the lower strings much, but angling the bridge helps a bit with intonation.
It's for intonation. The vibrating length of a steel string is less than the physical length, due to the stiffness of the string itself, and the tension it's at. Angling the bridge compensates for this. This is true for most steel-string guitars, as well.
@@ice9snowflake187 That is absolutely so. But the block frets allow also for some fine tuning when playing: The further from the edge a note is fretted the higher the note becomes, because the string is pulled further down (and at the same time a certain buzzing effect can be exploited as well). Some notes require this. Also, my playing technique employs muting as well as fretting of courses.
