Ten-string classical guitar of Yepes

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The modern ten-string extended-range classical guitar was produced in 1963 by luthier José Ramírez III in collaboration with guitarist Narciso Yepes, who intended it to be used with a specific reentrant tuning.

It has since been adopted by a number of classical guitarists, using both Yepes' tuning and others.

Invention

In the early 1960s, José Ramírez III, a luthier noted for his innovations to the classical guitar, was inspired by the viola d'amore to investigate the addition of sympathetic strings to the classical guitar. As was his practice, he sought advice from the leading classical guitarists of the time, notably Andrés Segovia and Narciso Yepes, both of them players of Ramírez six-string guitars.

Yepes was particularly taken with the idea, but both he and Ramírez were concerned with the problem of muting the extra strings when not required. Yepes at first suggested damping them with a mechanism similar to the sustain pedal of a piano, built in to the guitar, but Ramírez was not keen on loading the instrument with so much mechanism.

Then Yepes telephoned Ramírez and suggested that simply by adding four extra bass strings, accomodated by a wider than normal bridge, fretboard and head, and adopting a particular reentrant tuning, an instrument could be produced that had a unique balance of resonances throughout the chromatic scale. Yepes further stated that he had devised a technique for the right hand which would allow the player to damp the extra strings when not required.

Ramírez produced the instrument described, and after some initial struggles to master the technique, Yepes enthusiastically played and promoted this pattern and tuning of ten-string guitar for the rest of his life. Today ten-string instruments to Ramírez' original design remain available from the Ramírez Company, and similar instruments in a variety of designs are available both from the Ramírez Company and other first-class luthiers.

While Yepes' tuning continues to have a loyal following among some guitarists, other classical ten-string guitarists have used different stringings and tunings, some of them reentrant and some not. Yepes himself was always very particular to point out that only this one tuning would achieve the resonance which was his aim, and the question of to what extent these various other stringings and tunings compromise this aim is somewhat controversial.

Tunings

Yepes' reentrant tuning added four bass strings tuned to C, B-flat, A-flat, and G-flat. The harmonics of these at octave and perfect fifth intervals provided the eight resonances that Yepes claimed were missing from the standard six-string classical guitar. He did not consider other harmonics, and particularly those at major third intervals, to be sufficiently in tune to supply these resonances.

Some other tunings used on this instrument differ sufficiently from the Yepes tuning to require different string gauges, and so are not simple scordatura. For example, the five Marlow tunings (see below) require a lighter 7th string, as this is tuned about an octave higher than the Yepes tuning (depending on the exact tuning), which would double the tension on this string if the gauge were not reduced. Non-reentrant tunings similarly require heavier strings on the three lowest bass strings. Some but not all instruments from the Yepes era and tradition accomodate these stringings well.

A non-reentrant tuning with the additional strings tuned diatonically from D to A_I has been termed the "Baroque" or "Romantic" tuning.

Janet Marlow has proposed an alternative reentrant tuning system of five different tunings, in all of which the reentry takes place between the 6th and 7th strings, rather than between 7th and 8th as proposed by Yepes.

Repertoire

There are three main sources of repertoire for the ten-string classical guitar:

Repertoire for the conventional six-string classical guitar, using the four extra bass strings as sympathetic strings only.

Works specifically composed or arranged for this instrument, which may involve the extra bass strings being plucked either open or fretted.

Transcriptions of works for other instruments such as the thirteen-course lute.

The lists below are neither comprehensive nor intended to be so, but representative.

Peformance of six-string repertoire

Concierto de Aranjuez performed by Narciso Yepes with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, 1964.
Recuerdos de la Alhambra performed by Narciso Yepes, 1987.

Composers who have written for ten-string classical guitar

Trascriptions of lute and similar music

Bach works for lute transcribed by Narciso Yepes .

Derivative instruments

Main article: ten-string guitar

The ten-string extended-range layout has been adopted to several other styles of guitar, including the ten-string jazz guitar and the ten-string solid body electric guitar.

References

Most of the material in this section comes from Things About the Guitar by José Ramírez III, ISBN 9788487969409, see this online extract
See Professional guitars in the current Ramírez Guitars catalog. The Traditional Classic ten string is as designed by José Ramírez III, while the Special Classic ten string is a later design by his son José Ramírez IV.
Tunings for the Ten-String Guitar, giving the Yepes tuning, the "Baroque" tuning, and the five "Marlow" tunings
See here for details of a CD which includes this performance
See reviews of a CD of Yepes playing Bach lute works here.

Category:

Classical guitar

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