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10-string guitar in classical guitar entry

If you feel this sub-section is too long, by all means condense it, provided you are able to summarise the theoretical information without reducing it to nonsense. (You will have to refresh your understanding of acoustics.) Viktor van Niekerk (talk) 14:23, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

last word

There are some serious theoretical and practical flaws in your suggestions about 11+ string guitars, Archeoix. At first I started to write a seething denouncement, explaining meticulously where you go wrong. But I have decided that this is really not worth my time. Instead, I make this statement:

This sort of medium, like most of the internet, has little epistemic value. Informed as it is too often by armchair research, lay opinion and propaganda instead of thorough academic research and empirical investigation, its outcome is ultimately obfuscatory. (An example from elsewhere: "Therefore, there are four missing sympathetic resonances on the six string guitar "!!?? I wish I could laugh, but it's not funny.) There is only so much room for "democracy" and post-modern relativist garbage before it all turns into a mishmash of lay, populist opinion based in no actual knowledge. "Respect others' opinions" you tell me. I say, NO. I am under no obligation to respect anything unless it is True or Excellent. Certainly no one should be obliged to respect opinions founded in a dearth of knowledge and a stubborn refusal never to admit that one's initial beliefs may have been mistaken.

I put a challenge to those individuals who question the significance of the singular tuning of C, A#, G# F#: prove empirically that it is over-rated; prove through empirical investigation that other systems are equally valid; and get these finding published in a peer-reviewed journal of musicology, acoustics, or musical psychology (not just a guitar magazine that calls itself a “journal”). Then we will have something worth talking about, or then I will shut up.

Similarly, where you will in future find my challenges will be never again on the internet, but in media that carry actual academic weight: my forthcoming Doctoral theses and journal articles. There (among many other things related to the arts) you will find my EMPIRICAL challenges to 1. the claim that chromatic resonance is insignificant, 2. the claim that 10-string tunings other than C, A#, G#, F# (or 6-string guitars) produce significant resonance for the whole chromatic scale, 3. the claim that guitars with more than 10 strings produce resonance that is as linearized, as balanced, over the chromatic scale as that of the 10-string guitar with the singualr tuning C, A#, G#, F#. That is it. Response forthcoming in media that actually mean something. Viktor van Niekerk (talk) 09:51, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

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Ten-string Guitar

Hello. Please don't do copy and paste moves. We must preserve the edit history of pages to conform to the GFDL. Also, this move seems to be ill advised or without consensus. Please gain consensus on the talk page or through an RfC before moving a page in a way that may be controversial. Thanks, Dlohcierekim 13:41, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

PS Please let me know what's going on with this. I fel like I've been drawn into an edit war. I feel like the original title for the deleted article looks reasonable. Dlohcierekim 13:49, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi there Dlohcierekim!

I'm glad you asked! The "Modern 10-string guitar" (mentioned here: Ten-string guitar) is a guitar with 10 strings and has an original standard tuning: the Modern/Yepes Tuning (I'll call it MYT). This is where Viktor van Niekerk and I agree.

However the guitar can be tuned differently (I'll call it DT) as well and indeed it IS tuned differently by various players who have published CD's etc. (Stephan Schmidt's Bach recording, Perf De Castro's recording, Janet Marlow, -- they knew about the MYT, but decided on other tunings that they considered suitable: nothing wrong here !) Yes, conveniently leave out the fact that Stephan Schmidt largely uses the "modern Yepes tuning". You think he plays Ohana any other way? (While Bach, on the other hand, requires no specific tuning; there are many ways to approach Bach on the guitar.) And lets overlook that, while Janet Marlow may have been aware of the standard tuning, she only started playing the 10-string guitar AFTER breaking ties with her former teacher, Narciso Yepes, or the fact that tenstringguitar.com explains that Yepes added strings C, A#, G#, F# because only these four resonances are wanting. What about C#? What about D#? What about F? I think this speaks for itself about the reasons behind not using the standard tuning. As for Perf's system - good musician, nice guy - as far as I can tell it's basically similar to the Yepes system with two differences: 1. some naturals instead of sharps/flats, 2. a low 8th. Actually this is pretty much the system Janet Marlow once used . In fact, it is the system I myself used for a number of years (as a teenager) until I started collecting the sheet music manuscripts of original compositions for modern ten-string guitar (as well as manuscript transcriptions of Yepes) and came to the realisation that I hadn't understood what the modern 10-string guitar was really about. I remember, in my ignorance/arrogance, writing the composer Robert Keeley to ask WHY he had written a piece ("Two Ways of Looking at a Spider" for Jonathan Leathwood) requiring the tuning C, A#, G#, F# and not C, A#1, G#, F#!!! Of course, the natural first reaction is to be irked by the person who brings one into contact with "the other" (in this case, an idea that was previously alien to one's way of thinking). Facing this "other" can be threatening. (I deliberately make the sentence ambiguous.) One necessarily has to be transformed by "the other", in the sense that one's understanding, one's way of thinking about something, is challenged, or else one has to commit violence against this alterity. In my case, my resentment soon changed into a hunger for knowledge, an insatiable curiosity. For example, I started to devour all the books I could find on acoustics (also on the pianist's use of the pedal). Confirmation upon confirmation. Day by day I began to appreciate more and more the beauty in Yepes's discovery.

Since many players originally did not know all-that-much about the Modern/Yepes Tuning (MYT), the information about that tuning got a bit mangled up over years. (Viktor even seems to claim that falsehoods were propagated, but the end-result of a mangled understanding is the same.) Viktor has cleaned a lot of this misunderstanding of the MYT; in fact right here on wikipedia and elsewhere. (This includes things like its origins, the *idea behind* the particular tuning, i.e. resonance issues, etc.)

• Unfortunately he feels so strongly about the misunderstanding of the MYT, that he wants to undermine the fact that a DT (different tuning) can be used on that instrument. This can be seen when Viktor wrote on your page: This modern instrument IS, in fact, its tuning and the particular, singular, properties of this tuning; it cannot be divorced from it. Information on both the above is in print. ref.

Yes, and I'll try to restate it in another way. The modern 10-string guitar is defined as an instrument not by the number of its strings, but by its resonant properties. That is to say, by definition the modern 10-string guitar (as conceived by Jose Ramirez III and Narciso Yepes) has resonance linearized (or balanced) over the 12 tones of the Western chromatic octave. The modern 10-string guitar has this number of strings, NOT FOR ITS OWN SAKE, in which case it could be tuned any way, but it adds to the guitar 4 strings TUNED A SPECIFIC WAY, for a very logical acoustic reason. The guitar normally lacks strong sympathetic string resonance for the EIGHT tones of C, C#, D#, F, F#, G, G#, A#. Yepes (not Ramirez, who had more than 10 strings on the prototype) discovered that by adding only 4 strings tuned in such a way that each possesses 2 of the 8 wanting resonant frequencies , the problem of resonance would be solved without introducing duplicate/redundant resonances. Secondly, by definition, the instrument features an extended bass range. So, the raison d'être of the modern 10-string guitar is sympathetic string resonance linearized over the chromatic octave, first, in addition to extended bass range. That there existed previously 10-stringed guitars is an arbitrary numerological similarity, further proof of which is the fact that the tuning of such instruments (even more so than 6-string guitars) favours the tones of D, B, E, and A over others. This is exactly contrary to the concept behind the modern 10-string guitar.

SO, a so-called different "tuning" can be used (really, be honest, you mean a different stringing method or string configuration), but, since it no longer meets the primary reason for and definition of the Modern 10-string guitar, it is not simply a different "tuning", it is a DIFFERENT INSTRUMENT altogether in the way that an alto-guitar, or the Decacorde or the 10-string guitar of the 19th century are different concepts, different instruments. How - please explain it to me - how can you call, say, a Marlow Method instrument and the instrument Yepes played one and the same? You cannot play the music written for Yepes on the Marlow Method instrument. (Don't believe me? Lets see Ohana's "Si le jour parait" or Maderna's "Y despues" done on another system.) You cannot play any of the numerous transcriptions Yepes made of lute music (Bach, Weiss, Falckenhagen, Straube and others) on the Marlow Method, or so-called "baroque" tuning for that matter, or any "different tuning" for that matter. You would have to start from scratch, re-fingering and re-arranging the music. Also, the technique of playing these "different tunings" is mainly one that favours the open string. Yepes used both fingered and open basses, but predominantly fingered basses rather than open strings. (For various reasons I am not going into now.) This difference in technique is most problematic in the case of the 7th string. Most of the basses that are lower in pitch than the open 6th string are fingered on the 7th string when using the standard modern system. In contrast, most "different tunings" have 10 as the lowest string, not 7. The Marlow Method has an especially useless 8th string that adds a redundant B resonance, while the open string, B, is already playable on fret II string 5 and fret VII string 6. Yepes, on the other hand, made total use of that 7th string. Even if it meant using his left-hand thumb to finger a bass note on 7 while playing chords, arpeggios or a melody in a high position on the trebles. If this was called-for, it was done. None of this nonsense of arbitrarily taking individual bass notes up or down an octave simply because that would put them on an open string. So, problems number one and two: Mutual Repertoire and Mutual Technique. Is there mutual repertoire between 10-strigned guitars of different "tunings"? Only if you consider 6-string guitar music, otherwise, in terms of original repertoire and transcriptions that make full use of the instrument: NO. Is there a Mutual Technique? No, because the one requires a number of new and advanced techniques and the other, for the most part, simplifies technique by the avoidance of barres and stretches. Then, of course, there is the already mentioned difference in resonance. So, if we are dealing (as we are) with different resonant properties, different technical approaches, and different (incompatible) repertoires - how can you talk about these contradictions belonging to one and the same instrument? I'll tell you why. Because of a totally arbitrary and coincidental numerological similarity; because of the limitations of language. By this method of reasoning we could call an organ or a harpsichord a piano if the organ or harpsichord happened to have the same number of keys as the piano. By this level of reasoning the words "three trees" are the same as a sculpture of three trees, all of which are the same as three of those things with leaves and roots and bark that exist in the soil outside.

Obviously that cannot be true, since the guitar has 10 strings and players can tune them in any way they want. (It remains the same instrument, just with a different tuning. Like one shoe that can have different coloured shoe laces!!!) See above. Anyhow, I wouldn't recommend painting your shoe-laces green to try to prove this one, let alone your guitar strings!

The information in print is information on the original tuning (MYT), and its original ideas; information in print does not and cannot forbid different tunings of the "the Modern 10-String guitar". Additional opinions are similar: ,, original: ,

In fact the 10 strings are tuned differently by various players of the instrument (most notably Stephan Schidt on his Bach recording, and Stephan Schmidt certainly knew about the MYT!! and others).

In any case, neutrality calls for the existence of different tunings to be acknowledged.

This can be a simple sentance such as "the Modern Ten String guitar" can also be tuned differently. Tuned differently, as in occasionally using appropriate scordatura, YES. But stringing differently, NO. And, lets be honest, STRINGING or 'string configuration' is really what you mean by 'tuning'. So don't say 'tuning' if this is not what you mean. At the same time I would like to say mine is NOT an objection to something along the lines of what Dominic Frasca does, changing ALL the strings (even adding metallic strings) and pushing the boundaries of what a 'classical' guitar is and is capable of. This is so utterly individualistic that there is no possibility of it being confused with the Standard method of tuning or playing. Its aim (and I'm making an assumption here) is to be inventive, individual, other, outsider, NOT to colonize the (10-string) guitar world. The same cannot be said of other systems that insist on publicity (even inappropriately in a medium such as an encyclopaedia). Or it can be a more detailed paragraph revealing that there are strings that can be bought for different tunings, in particular the strings for a socalled Romantic Tuning are readily available

• Modern/Yepes Tuning (MYT): e' - b - g - d - A - E - C - Bb - Ab - Gb
• Romantic Tuning: (DT): e' - b - g - d - A - E - D - C - Bˌ - Aˌ

and revealing possible motivations behind different tunings (e.g. Stephan Schmidt used a different tuning to record Bach!) and naming individuals who use different tunings, etc.

Thus there should be a page on the 10-string guitar; and it should show all its facets; and not try and overcompensate for past misunderstandings, by shunning certain information. (In fact if there were misunderstandings in the past, it might perhaps be interesting to include this as information in the article!) This was included already in commenting on how instruments constructed to be modern 10-string guitars have been appropriated by proponents of the Romantic 10-stringed guitar (which is correctly supposed to be a harp-guitar). To say any more about it would be to start pointing fingers at the individuals who initiated misleading information (including the false idea that there is no standard tuning of the modern 10-string guitar) because of personal grudges. I won't say more, but that individual who once said "Yepes has no creative bone in his body" knows they have done wrong. But as it stands, I take issue with misleading information, not persons.

What do I suggest should happen:

• the existence of different tunings to be acknowledged

Yes, and it IS acknowledged that some individuals choose to disregard the standard modern tuning. However, an encyclopaedia is not the place for propaganda and PR of an individual's personal preference that has NO HISTORICAL significance, that has not been used by figures of historical importance, for which there exists practically no repertoire .

• Information that is still needed is that the guitar discussed, is a type of classical guitar - I do believe the article should be renamed "Classical ten-string guitar"!

The concept in no way is limited to classical guitars (and the term classical is a misnomer that can be disputed separately). Folk or other musicians can adopt the tuning C, A#, G#, F# to improve the resonant balance of their instruments and take advantage of its interpretative advantages. There is no logic in your desire to associate guitars with 10 strings (whatever their tuning) exclusively with classical music, or even with nylon strings. And I will say that I myself am a classical musician and I have no particular fondness for popular musics, but I see no problem with non-classical musicians adopting the Yepes system to their own guitars. In fact, this has already happened in the sense that there are 'non-classical' guitars with additional string resonators.

• The following link should be included Multi-Bass 7-string, 8-string, 9-string, 10-string and 19th Century Harp Guitars

I have never objected to the inclusion and expansion of information on instruments of actual historical significance. In fact, I have welcomed this numerous times.

• The following article versions should be discussed: (Some information there seems good and could reused. The beginning might need to highlight more clearly that the Modern/Yepes Tuning was e' - b - g - d - A - E - C - A# - G# - F#. It just says "adding four strings tuned in a certain way" - the reason is probably that phrase is a verbatim copy of the reference , )
• A paragraph on available string should be included.

This is an encyclopaedia entry, NOT a space for advertising string manufacturers. And the same argument of mine (you mentioned earlier) holds, that the instrument has been so badly misunderstood that, frankly, most string manufacturers produce a product that does not meet the practical requirements. (An exception is the 7th string by Aranjuez, which can be tuned to any pitch from the standard C up to D, or down to A1.) and let me mention here for anyone who is not clear about how I can talk about re-tuning yet, at the same time, object to other tunings. 10-string guitarists seldom define honestly what they mean by "tuning", by which they really mean what I have elsewhere called "string configuration" or "stringing". That is to say, the Marlow method of "tuning" uses a string of very thin diamater for 7 (B), while the standard system (as used by Yepes) uses a very thick string for 7 (C, which can be lowered to B1 for the bass range in baroque music). Obviously, if Yepes's transcriptions of baroque lute music make extensive use of stopped/fingered basses on the 7th string (C, C#, D, D#), this is impossible on a "tuning" like Marlow Method, where the lowest string (10) cannot be fingered while chords/arpeggios or melody is being played on the trebles. The solution is to use open basses wherever possible. But this is NOT what Yepes did. It is NOT appropriate in baroque style because it treats the music as harmony rather than polyphony, as vertical rather than horizontal, and it introduces stylistically inappropriate and disruptive melodic intervals in the basses. (See the Weiss recordings on this system.) So, the existing transcriptions (and Yepes alone made thousands) are incompatible with these new systems that must start a repertoire from scratch. What else? Many great composers have written for the modern system. Where in the guitar's history can it claim to have enjoyed the support of the leading composers of the day? Yepes's instrument enjoyed the support of Bruno Maderna - a giant of the music world before his untimely death - as well as Leonardo Balada, one of the most significant living composers. And is their guitar music (not to mention that of Maurice Ohana - also a great composer) playable on any system except that of Yepes? NO. Because on other systems, not only is the tuning all wrong (and there is not chromatic resonance), but the intervals between the strings are wrong, the lowest strings are in the wrong place (which leads to technical limitations), or the order of the strings is different, or the open strings are an octave lower than they should be (all problems that arise in various different individuals' systems). So let's throw out the baby with the bath-water!!! Lets just get rid of all the great compositions, all the great transcriptions, all the technical possibilities and all the interpretative possibilities so we can have our basses all on open-string-crutches and don't have to think about fingering, appropriate scordatura (if absolutely required), transcription or transposition. No, lets start from scratch with no original repertoire, butcher some baroque music by transposing the basses willy-nilly, so we can all be democratic and postmodern and respect that everyone is right all the time! But if you want to follow this mentality to its logical conclusion, then WHY DON'T YOU FOLKS JUST ALL GET 14-STRINGED GUITARS? Then you can have REAL 'baroque' tuning and play every single bass note on its own open string without any difficulty whatsoever. Because, lets be honest, there ain't no such thing as "baroque" tuning on a 10-string guitar, and since you only have 10 strings and not 13 (or 14, for Bach), you cannot play baroque lute music exactly as written relying on open strings. You have D, C, B1, A1...but what about G/G#, F/F# when this is needed in a high position on the fingerboard? The modern system has the G# and the F#, but only one open low-bass, not 4. But then, the lowest string is 7, which can easily be fingered (unlike 10). You're in a high position and need a G-bass and your 9=G#, finger G on 7.

• Personally I would also like to include the fact that the idea behind the 10 string guitar's Modern/Yepes Tuning, is in no way limited to only 10 strings Archeoix(talk) 20:22, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Because you don't understand the idea behind it! It is about BALANCING string resonance. If you add to the guitar, as it exists and is tuned today, any number of strings tuned any other way than C, A#, G#, F#, you will be adding redundant resonances. This means that some notes are more resonant than others. This is NOT the idea behind the Modern ten-string guitar, which adds ONLY wanting resonances, and no redundant resonances.

Viktor van Niekerk (talk) 09:25, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Edit war

It looks like an edit war/content dispute to me. I'm sorry if I was overly hasty in deleting the one. However, it looks like a POV fork to me. Hopefully, y'all can resolve this. Please see WP:DR. I really don't see why there couldn't be enough room in the article for all available information on the subject. Cheers. Dlohcierekim 20:32, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh, if the other party again slaps you with a vandal warning for good faith editing, please take the matter to WP:AN/I. I felt that was way out of line. Cheers, Dlohcierekim 20:34, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your quick reply. Yes I think all the info can go into one article (that's OK); even if there might still be a bit of a POV issue...Archeoix (talk) 20:38, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

"Appropriate" resonance

Archeoix, I've already responded in full below, but I will add only this (since you insist on changing what you have previously written): There is no such thing as "appropriate resonance" or "appropriate keys"!! You seem to be suggesting that provided you play in a so-called "appropriate key", say, E-minor, you won't encounter any problem with resonance. Rubbish! Come on, let's be honest, please. Surely I don't have to teach you your scales?! If you are playing a piece in E-minor on a 6-string guitar: What about resonance for F#? (Which is in the key of E-minor.) What about resonance for G? (Which is in the key of E-minor.) What about resonance for C? (Which is in the key of E-minor.) And you deliberately (or ignorantly) leave out the fact that such things as transpositions, modulation, chromaticisms are stock elements of the overwhelming majority of Western art music (and we haven't even set a foot into the realm of atonal composition). I suggest you actually have a look at a piece of sheet music and see for yourself that no western art music is as limited in tonal range as you would like to paint it, and we're not even talking of extreme cases such as the chromaticism in Bach's keyboard Sinfonia 9 in F Minor, BWV 795, or the 12 notes of the chromatic scale Luys de Narvaez includes within the first 19 bars of one of his sets of variations. Whatever type of music your so-called "appropriate" resonance is suitable for, it is a Modal music, and one based on fewer tones than the heptatonic scale that is the basis of most Western art music. You have absolutely no argument that can hold any water when it comes to this so-called "appropriate resonance" or "appropriate key" mumbo-jumbo. For heaven's sake, man, just actually LISTEN. I'll even give you an example that often plagues my own ear. In order to achieve certain chordal effects in Granados's "Danza Española no. 5" (a piece that is in the "appropriate" key of E-minor), one necessarily has to apply a scordatura to the 7th string, Standard (modern) tuning, taking it from C to B1. This means sacrificing the resonances for Cs and Gs. This sacrifice is painfully evident in the case of the c" from the melodic line, bar 13. No, I'm sorry to inform you. There are no such things as "appropriate keys" or "appropriate resonances" - not to mention that music would be utterly dull if it did conform to what you consider "appropriate". And, in any event, strings only resonate when energy is induced at their resonant frequencies. In simple-speak, sympathetic strings don't resonate unless you are already actively producing their resonant frequency on adjacent strings (by playing the notes as written in the sheet music!). So, there is no such thing as "inappropriate" resonance, which (let's be honest) is actually the idea you are trying to introduce into the discourse with this propaganda. It is a rather obviously invidious linguistic ploy. You introduce the term "appropriate" resonance (with its ividious antonym skulking in its shadow). What is the alternative? No one wants "inappropriate" resonance, just like no one wants to be "inauthentic" or historically "uninformed". But just like these shibboleths, yours is utterly specious! I expose it right here for the fraud it is. No resonance induced (as it always is) by a note that is present and appropriate to the musical text, can be called "inappropriate" unless it sustains to a point where it causes harmonic confusion. However, in such cases - as in all cases pertaining to resonance/sustain - the Modern 10-string guitarist (that is to say, s/he who tunes the 4 last strings C, A#, G#, F#) has the choice, the option, the authority, the possibility to damp a sound or to sustain it, as the MUSIC dictates, not as the GUITAR dictates. To which you may raise the objection that it is not always possible to damp the resonance; to which I respond that these limitations are entirely your own personal limitations and not shared by other individuals, and certainly not the limitation of the instrument. I'm sorry, but truly appropriate resonance means having it for any tone of the chromatic scale when/as the music requires it. If anything, it is the Modern 10-string guitar with the tuning C, A#, G#, F# that has appropriate resonance.Viktor van Niekerk (talk) 06:24, 24 March 2008 (UTC)