Between major and minor

[mrchips]

AHHH I get it now.

Naming it is one issue but how would you notate it on a lead sheet? I would just modify a normal chord notation by adding something to one like slash chord notation.

I dont think there is any way you could name it that would fit with the logic of our 12 note scale.

[Andreas]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the interesting references. The Four Freshmen are playing in the background now. I didn't realize the Western scale used to have more notes than it does now.

Wikpedia leads further on to what this ambiguous interval is called, here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_third

There is an example of a chord with it, to my ear at least, fine sounding, and not dissonant.

Andreas

[mrchips]

The western scale never had more than 12 notes that I know about. Others have and do.

That first link is what leads to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_intonation

And here is the physics involved. http://www.phy.mtu.edu/~suits/scales.html Note the table there. the important thing is the right 2 columns. The 12 note scale will almost always be " a tad off" from ideal.

I sorta think at times why bother with frets and go with a slide....



.

[Robin the Busker]

I sorta think at times why bother with frets and go with a slide....

As Muddy Waters infamously once said at a session in response to a question about the notes he was playing for a slide guitar riff:

"... most of the notes I play don't have names!"

Listen to old recordings of the blues and, indeed, any early recordings of Appalachian old time music and it puts all those D,A,dd players who geek about getting the intonation on their dulcimers 'perfect' into perspective You just need to know the difference between 'good' out of tune and 'bad' out of tune - and I'm affraid you can't teach or theorise around that as the 'knowledge' is only hard won through playing music - there are no shortcuts or roads to understanding - you just have to physically play, and play, and play, and play, and................ Until you can FEEL the space between major and minor.

[mrchips]

Got that right. All the books and theory stuff around by itself wont make you a good player. Its DOING music that does that. After all its all about the sound and and the feeling you put into it. Theory is only a starting point, not the real onjective in music.

[rendesvous1840]

It doesn't have to be old blues, it can be modern blues,rock, jazz, or country. Most lead guitarists bend notes regularly. Some banjo players do as well. I have heard a few banjo players use choking to imitate the barking of a dog. It's all around us now. It isn't as sharply tuned as the quarter tones Andreas is asking about, as each player bends the string to their own tastes.
Paul

[Chrisz]

Ah, one of my favorite topics.

I laughed at what Robin the Busker said: "...it puts all those D,A,dd players who geek about getting the intonation on their dulcimers 'perfect' into perspective. You just need to know the difference between 'good' out of tune and 'bad' out of tune"; those are indeed words worthy of being to spraypainted on an overpass. Incidentally I've never heard the noun 'geek' used as a verb before. Guess I'm farther out of the loop than I thought.

So anyway, we've got the same thing happening over here in Eastern Europe: it is indeed called a neutral third, as Andreas mentioned. Particularly prelevant in Hungarian bagpipe music and six-hole flute music from Moldavia, but it even shows up in the string band music of central Transylvania, which is played using standard bowed instruments. I kid you not, this is critical to traditional music around here, and it makes playing with a bagpiper a headache (I mean even more of a headache than usual). Fortunately for everyone involved, most people have the good sense not to combine a bagpipe and HD, but every once in a great while some deviant partier gets this brilliant idea...

In the spirit of gratuitous envelope pushing, there is also such a thing as a neutral seventh, but let's just not go there, ok? Agreed?

Chrisz

[Robin the Busker]

I was over at a friends house last night and had an old dulcimer with me that just has old wooden peg tuners and partial frets under the melody string only that seem to have been placed by ear. You really don't want to go near this instrument with an electronic tuner But played in noter and drone style with a strumming quill alongside an old fretless gut strung banjo and it all just seems to 'fit' - a match made in heaven (or should that be a match made on a front porch in Appalachia about 1870?). So here's a tune we recorded last night that's not sure if it is major or minor played on instruments that are not too sure if they are major or minor either

June Apple - fretless banjo and old dulcimer - 20 mar 12a.mp3
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