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The Guitar + Microtonal Tuning = Raga-Style Guitar
The interest I have as a guitarist and composer in microtonal music concepts is in experimenting with exotic, random, and unusual tunings and string tensions to discover new timbres in the strings themselves, the guitar’s physical shape and body. And during the recording process, the most fascinating of all techniques I like to use is where I compose in different and overlapping tuning systems from several sound sources.
For now though, I’d like to get into an approach to the acoustic and electric guitar that makes use of Classical Indian tuning techniques (a microtonal music tradition) and applies them to the guitar. This technique is called Raga-Style Guitar. First, let’s go over at least one definition and then deal with some key points about this approach which include, and are by no means limited to, the following:
Definition
A raga is a pattern of intervals where what’s important is the relationship between the notes, not absolute frequencies.
Key Points
The Major/Minor tonal system is not strictly used.
Ragas are often associated with particular moods, specific times of the day and year.
Indian scales (or ragas) are not fixed in pitch.
Any raga may actually begin on any pitch.
Not all of the notes in a raga must be used.
Altered tunings can cause the strings to interact with each other in complex ways where a shimmering or buzzing effect occurs.
Any of the notes in a raga can be flattened or sharpened to better suit the mood and effect of that raga.
The number of possible ragas is practically limitless, with hundreds in common use today.
The timbre of a microtonal tuning can vary greatly ranging from bright, bold, deep, rich, heavy, light, dark, thin, smooth, murky, clear, reedy, brassy, piercing, mellow, hollow, transparent, breathy, or full.
Since microtonal tunings only alter the frequencies in a composition, all other musical elements such as arranging melodies, harmonies, and rhythms can still be used for writing music.
The rhythms of Indian music are organized in long rhythmic cycles called talas. There are more than 100 different talas.
With wide tuning, the sound of many people playing near the same pitch is perceived as full, lively, and more interesting. Some music traditions have an aesthetic preference for the sound of instruments playing near, not on, the same pitch. Here the objective is to produce impressive feats of tuning.
Experiment with the 6 types of tonality: sounds and silences, atonal, chromatic, diatonic, polytonal, and any mixture of two or more of the above.
And lastly, experiment with new sounds, ideas, and even new or evolving instruments.
Technical Guitar Issues
When attempting to incorporate these ideas into your practice sessions, composition, and performance you will first need mastery over knowledge of all intervals on the fretboard, especially those which have an unstable sound or provide a quivering effect. A quivering effect can be achieved with heavy uses of the minor second, minor third, tri-tone, minor sixth and major seventh intervals. The reason you’ll need mastery over this knowledge is so when you’re working in a microtonal tuning, you’ll be able to ‘feel’ your way through the strings, find a raga, then shape a piece out of the sounds. To this you can add knowledge of how to construct chords using these intervals.
The next prerequisite you’ll need to conquer is knowledge of modes. Although there are many more modes that are available, the basic idea of a mode is that each mode begins on one of the seven notes in the Major scale. So if there are 12 Major Scales each with 7 notes (minus the octave note), this gives you a total of 84 scales. However, the reality is that in Equal-Temperament, this means you’ll only have access to just a few scale ‘flavors’ – minor, major, diminished, and augmented. Using the ideas in the Key Points I mentioned earlier, the microtonal tunings you come up with will greatly expand the quantity of sounds you have access to. To help you overcome any difficulties you’re having with mastering modes, here is one of the best practical books on the subject I’ve found so far…Tom Kolb’s Modes for Guitar.
Although, this next step isn’t really required, it’s certainly highly recommended for you to have a good understanding of the ethos of a Mode. One of the most interesting features about ancient Greek theories about modes or scales is the consideration that different scales had different effects, which affected a person’s mood, character, and morality. This idea is known as the “ethos” or mood associated with a Mode. For example, according to the ancient Greeks, the Dorian mode was viewed as virile and warlike; the Hypodorian, majestic and stable; the Mixolydian, pathetic and sad; the Phrygian, agitated and bacchical; the Hypophyrigian, active; the Lydian, funeral; the Hypolydian debauched and voluptuous. Among them, the Dorian mode—virile, grave, stately, warlike, instructive, severe, keeping the soul well-balanced—was considered the national mode; it was the mode which was suited for the perfect citizen.
And finally, you’ll definitely need to open your mind to the possibilities alternate tunings (microtonal tuning) will force you to consider in regard to your string tuning and tensions. There are six categories to cover when dealing with microtonal and alternate tunings. They are: Drop tunings, Open tunings, Modal tunings, Unison tunings, Slack tunings, and Hybrid tunings.
Drop tunings entail lowering the pitch of one string, usually the sixth. The first string is another good option.
Open tunings consists of tuning all of the open strings to the notes of a major or minor chord.
Modal tunings are similar to open tunings except they replace the third of the major or minor chord tunings with the second or fourth scale degrees resulting in sustained chords. Modal tunings can be used for playing melodies and open chords in a variety of modes.
Unison tunings harmonize two or more strings to the same pitch. Such an example is the tuning EADAAE, which is one of my personal favorites.
Slack tunings lower the pitch of one or more of the strings with a resultant “slack” on the strings.
Hybrid tunings combine any of the fore mentioned tuning categories such as a slack/open tuning or a unison/modal tuning.
To help you with alternate tunings, here's a resource that I have found to be of immense usefulness...Alternate Tunings for Guitar
Influential Microtonal Musicians and Guitarists
Here is a short definitive list of musicians from around the world who greatly influenced the spread of these ideas as well as the guitarists who expanded that influence even further in recent years with experimentation of their own. This list is by no means exhaustive.
Ravi Shankar – sitar
Nikhil Banerjee – sitar
Hamza El Din – oud
Brij Bhushan Kabra – Indian slide guitar
Ali Akhbar Khan – Indian sarod
Robbie Basho – originally a blues player, later developed the “impressionistic guitar school” that evolved into the New Age guitar movement. Many consider his second album “The Grail and the Lotus” (1965) pure American raga. Influences: Matsuo Basho, Max Ochs, Bill Roberts, Ravi Shankar.
Steffen Basho-Junghans – further developed the achievements of Robbie Basho, raga-style guitar. Watch the video below for a short video introduction to the artist.
John Fahey – steel string guitar, founder of Takoma label.
Davy Graham – British/European acoustic guitar movement, experimented with fusing rock, folk, blues, jazz, and Indian music, later known for recording with the sarod, oud, and bouzouki.
John McLaughlin – from the band Shakti, added resonance strings to the acoustic and electric guitars to achieve a sound closer to the sitar (sitar-guitar), and the coral guitar.
Garny Niss - Hawaïin guitar, teacher Hawaïin steel guitar master Tao Moe, taught Birj Bushan Kabra.
Mike Hutchinson – from the band Clarck Hutchinson, Indian improvisation on electric guitar from the album A=MH2
Kamala Shankar - Hawaïin guitar
Prasanna – Karnatic music and jazz fusion on electric guitar
Varanasai - Hawaïin guitar
G. Jaywant - Hawaïin guitar
Barun Kumar Pal – Indian slide guitar.
Sanjay Kumar Verma - Hawaïin guitar
Debashish Bhattacharya – inventor of the Dev Veena (which is a synthesis of veena, sitar, sarod, and Kannur). It has 22 strings and is played flat on the lap.
By far however, of all the raga-style guitarists I’ve heard, I fell in love with the music of Sandy Bull and Peter Walker from the very first moment I heard them.
In the All Music Guide, Richie Unterberger wrote:
“Long before Ry Cooder, Leo Kottke, Richard Thompson, and others were impressing listeners with their ability to hop from genre to genre, Sandy Bull glided from classical and jazz to ethnic music and rock & roll with grace and verve on his first two albums. Accompanied on his first two albums by renowned jazz drummer Billy Higgins, Bull produced some of the first extended instrumental compositions for guitar that incorporated elements of folk, jazz, and Indian and Arabic-influenced dronish modes. Not "rock" by any stretch of the imagination, it's nevertheless easy to see that it could have had an influence on the rock musicians who began incorporating eclectic and Middle Eastern sensibilities into their music a few years later. After his debut, Bull expanded his arsenal from the acoustic guitar and banjo to include oud, bass, and electric guitar. After his second album, however, his recordings were less focused and less impressive.”
And in the same publication, Steve Leggett says the following about Peter Walker:
“Although he only released two albums in the mid-'60s, Peter Walker influenced a whole host of subsequent guitarists with his modal drone explorations of Eastern musical forms and his experiments with raga and flamenco. Walker took up the guitar early, although he didn't begin to play in public until around 1959. During a stint in San Francisco he heard the legendary Ravi Shankar perform and Walker's lifelong fascination with Eastern raga was formed. He studied with Shankar for a time in Los Angeles and also studied with Ali Akbar Khan in San Francisco. Returning to the Boston area, he became a regular on the 1960s Cambridge and Greenwich Village folk scenes, where he became close friends with guitarist Sandy Bull. Walker released the influential Rainy Day Raga LP on Vanguard Records in 1966, following it with a second Vanguard LP, Second Poem to Karmela or Gypsies Are Important, two years later in 1968, and then dropped away from the music scene, settling in upstate New York to raise his family. Rediscovered by Joshua Rosenthal of Tompkins Square Records, Walker contributed four new guitar pieces to A Raga for Peter Walker, which was released in 2008 on Rosenthal's label and featured tribute tracks from the likes of Jack Rose, James Blackshaw, Steffen Basho-Junghans, Thurston Moore, and Greg Davis.”
Walker’s compositional approach took the Indian concept of starting with a drone, adding a scale based on the drone, then a melodic line based on the scale, then weaving, reweaving, and interweaving the melodic line so that a freely improvised piece is constructed. And when playing ragas on the guitar, he set up a drone pattern, and then worked a melody line in based on a popular American folk song or whatever other melody he found appealing.
Microtonal Music Concepts and Raga-Style Guitar in Popular Music
Here are a few more examples of artists who have experimented with microtonal music and raga-style guitar techniques:
The guitar introduction to the The Doors' song "The End."
Jon and Brad Catler play microtonal electric guitar and bass in their work.
Greg Ginn, guitarist of American hardcore punk band Black Flag, made use of microtonal intervals in songs such as "Damaged II," from 1981's Damaged LP and “Police Story.”
Elliott Sharp's groups Carbon, Tectonics and Terraplen make extensive use of just intonation microtonality to intensely dissonant and vibrant effect.
Los Angeles guitarist Rod Poole has produced a number of rock-oriented xenharmonic CDs.
And the band Crash Worship made use of Ivor Darreg's megalyra subcontrabass for both xenharmonic and industrial noise purposes.
Elaine Walker of Zia has released several albums making use of the Bohlen-Pierce scale and other equal temperaments such as the 19tet and 10tet. Zia performs on electronic instruments that specifically do not reference the standard 12 tone tuning.
Jonny Greenwood, of the alternative rock band Radiohead, has experimented with microtonal music in both his solo material and his work with the band; for instance, the song “Climbing Up The Walls
,” from the band's 1997 album OK Computer
, includes a recording of sixteen violins playing quarter tones apart from each other to create a droning, atonal 'white noise' effect.Another prominent rock artist who uses microtonality in his work is Glenn Branca who has created a number of symphonic works for ensembles of microtonally tuned electric guitars. The two examples below illustrate the ensemble work (The Ascension) and the other is a rock example (Carbon Monoxide).
To read Part 1 of this article, click here.
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Marc
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