Special Just It all comes down to the genetic code for all of known as the series

by John Schneider

he guitar has come a long, long way in the last five intervals that are actually, acoustically in tune. Sound obvious? centuries. Certainly the concept is shockingly simple, but its manifes- T History books brimming with instruments of all tation is anything but, as anyone who has ever tried to tune sizes, shapes & stringings scrupulously chart the a guitar can tell you. It all comes down to that innate growth of the body, the number & placement of the struts template for tuning which is inherent in every pitched note, under the soundboard, choice of woods for top, back & sides the genetic code for all of harmony known as the Harmonic etc. But oddly, one of the most important aspects of the Series. guitar – the actual notes produced – are rarely, if ever Every knows that plucking an open string that is discussed. The usual single sentence reads something like, touched lightly at the 12th will produce a note that is “…the strings were stopped by tied , like the , which one octave higher than the open string, and that after one were replaced by ivory or metal frets in the late 18th removes the left hand finger, the string continues to vibrate. century…,” and that’s it. When tunings are mentioned, it Both halves of the string vibrate at the higher pitch, creating is only the relationship between the open strings that is a sustained tone that can last longer than if the string were shown, because it is taken for granted that of the tuning actually fretted and only one half was sounding. Touching the 12-fretted notes in each octave was and has always been the string at the seventh fret creates the same effect, but modern . It turns out, as the Gershwins this time, the string divides into thirds, with the resultant would say, “…it ain’t necessarily so!” In fact, not only were pitch one octave and a fifth above the open string. The same the tied frets of instruments past rarely spaced equally, this pitch also can be produced by touching lightly over the 19th past century has also produced a surprising amount of fret as well, since that will also divide the string into thirds. for that have been refretted to play notes not possible This process can be repeated over and over again, each time on today’s standard instrument. dividing the string into smaller and smaller equal parts, So-called , which uses notes other than with the pitches being produced known as . those of 12-tone equal tempered scale, uses smaller intervals The great irony is that these equal divisions of a string do from two basic categories – tonal & atonal. The Atonal or not produce a scale of notes that are equal divisions of an ‘Divisional’ class of tunings partitions the octave into an octave. For a musical interval to be acoustically in tune, the increasing number of equally spaced intervals, the most pitch of the higher note must match one or more of the famous being quartertones = 24 tones per octave (imagine harmonics of the lower note. Try this experiment: play the one fret being placed exactly between each one of your harmonic G# just behind the 4th fret on the low E-string, existing frets). Mexican Julian Carrillo created a and compare it to the fretted G# found on the first string handful of solo and ensemble works using this instrument fourth fret. Surprised? if the two strings have been properly in the 1920s-30s. The Czech Alois Haba used quartertone tuned before hand, (the first string two octaves higher than guitar in the 1940s, having already composed a substantial the sixth), the fretted note will be sharper than the harmonic. repertoire for 1/5-tone and 1/6-tone , trombones, But which one is correct? and even a custom quartertone . There have Play an E- using that first string G#, then retune also been a few works for 19-tone equal temperament applied the high string so that the fretted G# matchs the harmonic to guitar, but what all of these divisional systems have in G# - now that’s in tune, acoustically that is. Welcome to the common, regardless of how they divide the octave, is the world of ! The fretted G# that is acoustically search for novel musical material – fresh new pitches to in tune with the low E-string is a tonal or ‘just’ microtone create & that have never fallen on because it has been flattened by a very small amount (14% human ears before. of an equal-tempered ) to match the 5th harmonic Tonal or ‘just’ microtones also seek to create original sounds, of the low ‘E’. Simply put, Just intonation matches the notes 42 but from a completely different premise, that of producing of a scale with the harmonics generated by the key or tonic of that scale. One then chooses how high up the to match the tunings of the harps and keyboard instruments harmonic series to tune. For example, if the -third-fifth of the day. Juan Bermudo went to great lengths to describe of the triads of a key are to be acoustically in tune, that is el arte de entrastar(the Art of Fret Placement) needed to often called 5-limit just intonation, since the fifth harmonic produce the pure fifths of Pythagorean temperament for the used is the highest used. (The E-major chord generated by six & seven course vihuela in his Declaracion de Instrumentos Ex. 1 is spelled E-G#-B, using harmonics #1-#5-#3). If an Musicales (1555), Marin Mersenne diagrammed frettings for E dominant seventh chord was tuned, it would be spelled pure major thirds and fifths in Harmonie Universelle (1637), E-G#-B-D, using harmonic numbers 1-5-3-7, and would occasionally resorting to 19 frets per octave to accurately Special therefore be a 7-limit, since the seventh harmonic is the reproduce the three genera of Ancient Greek music (diatonic, highest used in the chord. Try playing that E7 chord, properly chromatic & enharmonic). But when a fret moves, so do all tuned, on your instrument, using the harmonics of the bass of the notes determined by that fret, unlike the keyboards string to tune each note of the chord on each string. Quite or harps that have one string per note. The first breakthrough a difference! especially the note ‘D’ which is almost a third that allowed individual guitar notes to be tuned came in of a semitone flatter than the standard fretted ‘D’ (-31% of the 19th Century with the invention of the Enharmonic an equal semitone, or -31¢). Over the last century, a handful Guitar. In his Instructions for playing on the Enharmonic Guitar of have been struck by the absolute beauty of (1829), General Perronet Thompson describes an instrument these ‘natural,’ unadulterated kinds of musical intervals, which he invented in “…an attempt to effect the execution and have created amazing music with them, including many of correct harmony, on principles analogous to those of the gorgeous works for the guitar. ancient Enharmonic” (throughout European history, the pure But 20th century composers were certainly not the first to intervals of just intonation were invariably evoked by the use so-called ‘microtones,’ since modern equal temperament ancient Greek Enharmonic). In the great tradition of the has only been universally accepted in Western music since Victorian enlightened amateur, the noted Cambridge econ- around the 1820’s, virtually all music before that time could omist, ex-governer of Sierra Leone, Member of Parliament, technically be considered ‘microtonal.’ In fact, all early key- editor of the Westminster Review, and advocate of universal board instruments were tuned much more purely than today, suffrage created a scale using 53 notes/octave “…in a desire but with the great compromise that one could not play in to abate the untuneableness of the common guitar: which, all keys. Bach and his colleagues Werckmeister & Kirnberger though an instrument possessed of many agreeable qualities, famously went to great lengths to find tunings that allowed has the defect of being out of tune to a greater extent than performance in all keys – hence the creation of Well- any other that is played by means of either strings or keys…” Temperament in which the size of the major third was In order to achieve this extraordinary feat, Thompson devised different from key to key, creating an exquisite rainbow of a marvelous system of removable frets whereby the neck key coloration throughout the instrument. was pre-drilled with hundreds of holes, 53 pairs per octave Because the tied string frets of the Renaissance & Baroque for each string, into which staple-like frets were placed in were mobile, the gambists, lutenists, & vihuelists a pattern determined by which key was meant to be pro- that used them were constantly adjusting their placement duced.

Opposite page: Partche's Adapted Guitar II (close-up on 10-string Martin neck) Above: Example 1) Harmonic Series of the low E-string

43 I purchased my original guitar in 1934“ and spent several years (1934- 1942) in the effort to evolve effective frets in Just Intonation. The usual low, Special wire-type frets were not very satisfactory, and I eventually fitted high, stainless-steel frets into slots in a brass plate, which was then screwed onto the neck. Both Barstow (1941) and U.S. Highball (1943) were originally written for this guitar, and I played it in performing these pieces for some two years. ” depression up the neck, Lacote also decided to make each note individually tuneable. But rather than use discrete steps that were determined by predrilled holes, he shrewdly provided sliding frets, each mounted on a block of which could be infinitesimally adjusted to produce the required pitch. Of course he only provided 12 notes per octave, rather than Thompson’s 53, since he was only interested in aligning his instrument with the piano scale of the day. Even though the minor deviations from the intended equal scale were small, his sole surviving 1852 instrument (Cité de la Musique, Paris) set the precedent for a far more versatile system created over a century later that could accommodate dozens of notes per octave. The first half of the 20th century witnessed several unique musical refrettings of the guitar, predominately for quarter- tone music by the Mexican composer Julian Carrillo, and the Czech Alois Haba. But in 1900, an American inventor named Erickson took out a patent for a straight-fretted 53 notes per octave are needed if all of the G#’s, for example, tuned in Just Intonation in the key of A, though it is doubtful are to be in tune as the root, major & minor third and fifth that the idea ever made it past the patent office or out of in all chords of every key, and the 30-page pamphlet included the inventor’s workshop. By midcentury, four different just elaborate charts showing where to place the 12 frets/octave intonation guitars had been created to compose, perform needed for the most common keys. But what if the music and record over an hour’s worth of amazingly original music: modulates to another key? No problem! the proud purchaser the instruments and music were by American composer of the Enharmonic Guitar received 150 blue frets for simple Harry Partch (1901-1974). Though he trained as a concert keys, 20 white metal frets for ‘mutations’, and 20 brass frets pianist, Partch’s first ‘microtonal’ instrument was a for special dissonances! The author does warn that, “…(the that was customized in 1929; fitted with a neck & frets) should not be so loose as to fall out. It is necessary, fingerboard and restrung an octave below the , the however to keep the instrument at all times in a position Adapted Viola was played between the knees like a viola da which shall not risk losing the frets.” Also included were gamba. The guitar was the second instrument that he musical examples by William Byrd, Verini and an excerpt adapted to his newly devised ‘Monophonic Scale’ of just from Paisello’s famed chestnut ‘Nel Cor Piu non mi sento’. intonation. While the fingerboard of the Adapted Viola was Thompson’s Enharmonic Guitar could be purchased from peppered with brads to mark 29 of the dozens of inter- the famed Louis Panormo from his shop on vals/octave used for his groundbreaking song cycle 17 Lyrics the High Street in Bloomsbury. Luckily, one copy of the by Li Po (1930/33), his Martin parlor guitar posed other instrument still exists in the Instrument Museum of Karl challenges. Marx University in Leipzig. A less radical but no less ingenious solution to the “untuneableness of the common guitar” was invented by the renowned 19th century French luthier Renee The Enharmonic Guitar (1829) Lacote. Seeking to remedy the inherent mistuning of the fretted in Just Intonation in the key 44 standard scale caused by string falsity & increasing string of A & Enharmonic Fingerboard Special

This was the guitar that Partch used for his famed 1944 concert which included the trio versions of Barstow & Highball (guitar, chromelodeon & kithara), though he had also written a short song cycle December 1942 and Letter from Hobo Pablo (1943) in the years preceding. Though the body was original, Partch completely reconceived the instrument’s stringing, tuning and fretting. There were still six strings, but they grouped in three pairs of octaves, and tuned in pure thirds to Eb-G-B (low to high), while there were wide gaps between the fretted notes, which were tuned to scale of just intonation in the key of G. When I recreated the instrument in 1990 with luthier Greg Brandt, we used regular frets for ease of playing.

Partch was dissatisfied enough with the limitation of what must have been very uncomfortable replaceable frets, that in 1945 he created a fretless amplified version of Adapted Guitar I (now lost), and a Hawaiian-type with ten strings called Adapted Guitar II. The tuning of Adapted Guitar II’s open strings was mutable, alternating between a just dominant seventh chord (“Otonality” in Partch parlance) and its minor equivalent (“Utonality”). The color-coded triangles on the fingerboard indicates where to stop the slide to produce Partch’s infamous 43-tones/octave. The gliding tones of Guitar II were not new to Partch’s musical language: his earlier Kithara had two sets of hexads (six stringed open chords tuned to the 1-3- 5-7-9-11th harmonics) that were slid with pyrex rods held in place by the strings. Three Intrusions (1949) were the first of many compositions to use the Adapted Guitar II (as well as the newly invented Diamond Marimba), and the first of several subsequent groups to use the whimsical title “Intrusion” which eventually numbered eleven.

Harry Partch & Adapted Guitar I JS & New Adapted Guitar I with standard fretwire Adapted Guitars I & II 45 Just Strings with copies of the Guitar II, Diamond Marimba & the original Kithara (1938) John Schneider with Serenade (1978) fretting (MicroFest 2001) Mode for Serenade (1978) (next page) Novatone’s Guitar with Interchangeable Switchboards Special

By 1950, Partch had covered the brass plate of the original Guitar I and used it as a slide guitar with six equidistant unison strings, using both guitars in most of his larger stage works along with the ensemble of two dozen exquisitely unique instruments that he had either adapted or invented over the decades. Partch also scrupulously documented his musical evolution in the landmark publication (1949) which soon after inspired the first composer to apply Just Intonation to the . (1917-2003) was working as a reviewer for the New York Herald Tribune when his boss, American composer Virgil Thompson handed him a new book by Harry Partch, and said, “Here Lou, see what you can make of this…” A seed planted in fertile ground! Harrison had spent much of the 1940s rethinking the basic tenets of music, and was already extremely interested in tuning systems from other cultures - he immediately bought a tuning hammer and "never looked back." Diatonic), which is the “vocal” major scale. The piece will Some of Harrison’s first efforts in retuning the received sound lovely in that tuning.” Western scale of Equal Temperaent were piano studies using Years later, I asked him how in the world he considered such the “Pythagorean” tuning of pure fifths which he called a thing, to which he replied, “…the frets of & gambas Pastorales (1949/51), and a few years later the Incidental have movable frets, so why not guitars!” This, I might add, Music for Corneille’s ‘Cinna’ (1956) for a single strung tack- in an era preceding the Early Music revolution when such piano retuned to include not only pure fifths, but pure major instruments were virtually invisible except to the most thirds & minor sevenths as well. In the interim, a letter ardent researcher. He also admitted that the seed may have Harrison wrote to composer Frank Wigglesworth who was been planted by the strange guitars that he had seen in learning guitar in Rome that included in the letter Harrison’s Partch’s Genesis, though he had also reviewed Partch’s famous first solo guitar piece: Carnegie Hall concert in 1944 while on the beat for the “How wonderful that you are playing piano and guitar!!...I'm Tribune, and had seen him perform the entire cycle of The coocoo for it! A friend of mine, a painter. …was over during Wayward on the original Adapted Guitar I with its visually [the] Xmas holidays & played for me…what a pleasure! arresting replaceable frets. Those dulcet tones ringing through the house. Oh, I'm The fretting for Serenado (1952) was not fully realized for delighted you've taken it up!! I'll write some pieces for it another two decades, when San Francisco guitarist Tom soon & send [them] to you…Soon? Why not now? Here Stone invented the Guitar with Interchangeable , goes!…” inspiring Harrison to begin five Suites, each in a different What followed was a delightful binary serenade which the tuning. The first became the Serenade for guitar & percussion composer titled in Esperanto. In the eventual performance (1978), composed in an fascinating octatonic mode of alter- notes for Serenado por Gitaro (1952), Harrison included these nating half & whole steps, tuned so that the fifths and major hopeful directions: thirds are acoustically pure: "Anyone who just might own a guitar with moveable frets 46 should arrange these to play the “Intense Diatonic”(Syntonon The second suite Ditone Set was composed in the ancient agreed that interchangeability was indeed “An Idea Whose ‘Pythagorean’ system which tunes 12 pure fifths from Eb- Time Has Come,” as the 15-page pamphlet cheerily an- G#. This modal tuning renders the major 3rds far too sharp nounced. The company went bankrupt in 1985, but not for modern triadic music, but was standard in Medieval before supplying dozens of instruments that exist all over Europe and the Middle East, and its antique flavor permeates the world. Kits are still available from Mark Rankin, the last the suite. Beginning with a Plaint and aVariations on ‘Song of Novatone’s technicians: Mark [email protected]. of Palestine’ of German Minnesinger Walther von der Vogel- But switching an entire fingerboard is not the only way to weide (and part of an estampie), the suite was unfortunately play just intervals, thanks to the ingenuity of a German luth- Special abandoned, though these movements were subsumed by ier who, like his predecessors a century earlier, demand- the String Quartet Set (1979). ed his instruments to be able to play in tune, sliding frets After 1978, Harrison did not compose specifically for the are once again an elegant solution to an age old problem. guitar again for another two decades, but in the meantime Walter Vogt (1935-1990) became frustrated by the fact that I had fallen in love with his delightful pieces for re-tuned notes from different portions of the guitar’s neck seemed harp and arranged them for guitar, and played them for the to have different tuning problems, and decided that each composer in the spring of 1981. With his encouragement, note on each string must be tuneable to be able to produce I continued to perform & record many of his harp and a true equal temperament like the modern piano. To this keyboard works in their intended tunings on the Guitar with end, his original design allowed sliding frets to be adjusted Interchangeable Fingerboards (see Discography), occasionally within a narrow range, and held down by small set screws. receiving new works in the mail to consider. The solo reper- Eventually, the final design allowed the tiny U-shaped fretlets toire has been permanently enriched by so many arrange- to be moved anywhere along each string’s length, making ments of his various works that Harrison joked that he had any tuning possible. become a ‘baroque composer!,’ thrilled that so many guitar- As if the custom placement of individual frets were not ists have enjoyed his work, but saddened that they have enough, Vogt’s design also addresses the problem of pull- not taken the time to play them ‘properly tuned’ to the just ing/pushing a note out of tune by bending the string. Hence, intonation for which they were conceived. In the 1980’s,it each individual ‘fretlet’ is slightly curved in a gentle crescent would have been much easier to play Harrison’s music in shape, so if a finger accidentally bends an individual note tune, since Tom Stone’s Switchboards were commercially sharp by either pushing or pulling, the curve accordingly available through his new company Novatone. A willing lengthens the string to compensate, rendering the pitch player could either send their concert guitar to be retrofit- absolutely stable. The European Montes-Kircher Duo, who ted, or purchase a mid-range Japanese instrument already were close friends with Vogt, have used these instruments fitted with Switchboards: fretted to exact equal temperament for decades, and have Though most of Novatone’s business came from - even performed Bach in authentic Baroque temperaments. ists who prized the ability to play either fretless of fretted I have used my Vogt guitar refretted to 12-tone just intonation on the same instrument, evidently not enough customers to record many of Lou Harrison’s pieces, but the design need

47 not be limited to the standard twelve notes per octave. If a The score tells this story: "While played an afternoon player needs both a G# and a Ab to be acoustically in tune, of Mah Jong with friends, we children listened to records or why not have two frets? Inspired by this capability, the radio. We heard a lot of Hawaiian music - and the sliding & esteemed American composer (1926), whose waving tones of their guitars - I remember over a gap of ten just intonation string quartets and work with both John almost 80 years. The wonderful sculpture & architecture of Cage & Harry Partch are legendary, has written me a delightful Nek Chand, near Chandigarh (Northern India) set me to song cycle called The Tavern (1999) on a text by Jalal ad-Din composing three small pieces in admiration." [Created from

Special ar-Rumi that uses 15 notes per octave: the detritus of an urban renewal project, folk artist Nek Chand’s extraordinary five acre Rock Garden is populated

The tunes the open strings to harmonic series with hundreds of fantastic sculptures and structures that 7 11 7 11 of the A-string: E-A-C#-G -B-D (G = ‘G’-31¢, D = ‘D’ has enchanted millions of visitors since its opening in 1976] +51¢) and is fretted to also include notes based on the Though the piece was premiered by David Tannenbaum on thirteenth harmonic (C#-40¢ & F#+41). Since Vogt’s death an equal tempered instrument, the composer’s assistant Bill in 1990, the patent for “THE WORLDS ONLY FINE-TUNABLE Slye & I worked with the National Reso-phonic Guitar com- GUITAR” has passed into the hands of the esteemed luthier pany here in California to refret an instrument in the intended Hervé Chouard who creates superb “Fret Mobile” instruments tuning, and the just Scenes were premiered at MicroFest with either nylon or steel strings. http://www.chouard.de 2002, and recorded a few months later. The composer was so delighted with the instrument that he planned more works for it, but sadly, it was not to be. In Into the 21st Century! our last meeting, a few months before his death, we not only reconstructed the second Suite for Tuned Guitars, with This new century has already witnessed several new works the result that the Ditone Set for guitar & percussion & new instruments conceived in just intonation. Responding (1978/2003) was premiered at MicroFest 2003 in Los Angeles to a commission by San Francisco’s Other Minds Festival, (“Renaissance echoes & Middle East sonorities somehow Lou Harrison composed what was to be his final composi- blended beautifully…” LA Times), as well as the chamber tion, a guitar piece written for a National Steel guitar, custom version Quartet Set , but also created a Suite for National Steel fretted in Just Intonation. The Scenes from Nek Chand (2002) Guitar. uses a six-note mode based on the 6th through 12th harmonics While Lou Harrison & Ben Johnston were inspired by instru- generated by the note G, including the pungent 11th, which ments, music and theories of Harry Partch, Terry Riley’s is almost an exact quartertone: profound interest in just intonation began with his colleague

Vogt guitar Tuning for Nek Chand (score)

48 LaMonte Young and the vocal ragas of India. LaMonte Young’s with two slow movements and a rousing National Broadstreet first minimalist works from the 1950s [ & for Brass] March - all of which will be premiered in the Spring of 2004. used extremely long, sustained tones which highlighted There is also a for National Steel and being mistunings between equal tempered intervals. Subsequent completed by Lou Harrison’s colleague Bill Alves, and new investigations led the radical young composer to tune to works by Dartmouth’s , opera & glass harmon- just intonation, also inventing the Well-Tuned Piano, an ica (see Sony release Cristal) composer Garry Eister & Just instrument and composition that has been ongoing since Intonation Network’s David Doty in the works…but the the early 1960s. Meanwhile, both he and Terry Riley became best news of all is that the National Reso-phonic Guitar Special disciples of the Indian singing master Pandit Pran Nath, a company is now producing these wonderful instruments relationship which deeply effected both men’s music. After on request, or the instrument can be rented for concert performances. Now this wonderful new instrument and its rapidly expanding repertoire by Lou Harrison, Terry Riley, Dusan Bogdanovic and others is available to all players. The inevitable question arises, does one have to refret to play in just intonation? The short answer is “No”, depending on how many notes are needed. Playing any non-octave harmonics automatically produces tonal microtones, though the choices and are quite limiting. Several composers have sidestepped that restraint by using multiple micro- tuned instruments and combining their output to produce more abundant scales. In his Harmonium #2 (1977) for two electric guitars, tuned the instruments approx- imately 1/3-semitone apart (tuning the open D-string of one to the 7th harmonic of the low E-string of the other), with later works exploring smaller mistunings for other intervals, though more guitars are needed to perform them. His Septet (1981, rev.2000) uses six electric guitars, bass guitar, though the longer multimovement 'Water on the Mountain…Fire in Heaven' (1985) uses only the sextet of guitars. Of course the master of multiple electric guitars is , whose Symphonies for orchestras of retuned microtonal instruments are legendary for their spectral diversity as much as their ear-splitting volume [Speaking of electric guitars, they have decades of legendary compositions & improvisations on just also been refretted to just intonation, most famously by Jon intonation electronic organs [Persian Surgery Dervishes, Catler whose designs are commercially available from Rainbow in Curved Air, etc], Terry Riley retuned the piano for Leo Fender’s G&L Guitars. Catler’s music along his two-hour Harp of New Albion (1984), using a scale of pure with his guitar work with LaMonte Young is 3/2 fifths and 5/4 thirds. This tuning is called 5-limit just groundbreaking and worth seeking out]. Re- tuning standard fretted classical guitars to just C# D D# E E# F# G G# A A# B B# C# intonation is still relatively uncharted area, with 1 16 9 6 5 4 64 3 8 5 16 15 2 Jeffrey Holmes Five Micro-Tonal Studies (2002) 1 15 8 5 4 3 45 2 5 3 9 8 1 for two guitars being an excellent example, which coincidentally uses the same tuning as Tenney’s earlier Harmonium. How does this music actually sound? The harmonies intonation because the fifth harmonic is the highest prime, and melodies created by Just Intonation are re- and still produces an amazing 35 distinct ratios from12 freshingly new, yet somehow quite familiar. The notes of the octave. suberb clarity that common chords gain through accurate tuning makes their consonances all the Enthralled by this amazing music, I had a special fingerboard more vivid, like seeing colors more deeply satu- constructed to play this tuning, and have recorded two rated, or a picture more sharply in focus. And the movements from this modern masterwork, the Chorale and dissonances also benefit: they are far more pungent Cadence of the Wind on classical guitar (Just Guitars). Terry and emotionally charged, enhancing both the Riley has certainly been no stranger to the guitar: since his tensions and resolutions of standard harmonic son Gyan began learning the instrument, the father has relations, and creating entirely new ones. produced a prodigious amount of music under the title Book Remembering that since composers in this mar- of the Abbeyuzzud (1993), but always for equal tempered velously flexible musical language choose classical guitar - until now. which intervals are tuned purely, there Ever since the composer and I began discussing is no single just intonation, meaning New Albion, I had been after him to include just that each custom scale can be instruments in the Abbeyuzzud cycle, but it was the creation of the just intonation National Steel guitar that finally did the trick. In 2003, Riley JS and Lou Harrison, Scale & Switchboard for Harp of New Albion composed Encrucijada, a three movement suite 49 completely unique, offering unheralded freedom and possi- Records BCD 9041, 1993 bility for new language, new materials, and hence new LOU HARRISON: Music for Guitar & Percussion repertoire. Harry Partch used to complain that visual artists Etcetera [Holland] KTC 1071, 1991. had dozens of reds to choose from, and if they didn’t like - LOU HARRISON - HARRY PARTCH what they could squeeze out of a tube, they could mix Cambria Records - CAMBRIA 8806, 2000. pigments to make one that suited. All Partch wanted was SASHA MATSON : RANGE OF LIGHT (with Just Strings) the same freedom, to have any shade of C# he wanted, and New Albion Records NA 092, 1997. Special not be limited to the one handed him by an equal-tempered POR GITARO : Lou Harrison’s Suites for Tuned Guitars keyboard, or an equally fretted guitar. With these new Mode Records (in preparation, 2004) instruments, the composer can finally choose their own pitch colors. : Of course no amount of staring at a cookbook will ever let SETH JOSEL you actually taste the food, and describing music with words go guitars : Tenney ‘Septet’ & others is, at best, no better than trying to describe what it’s really Oodiscs 36, 1998. like to fall in love just using ink and paper. Seek out this LONG DISTANCE: Tenney ‘'Water on the Mountain … Fire in Heaven' music and find out about what Lou Harrison called “…a CRI 697, 1995. true garden of delights.” These are sounds that no guitar JON CATLER has played before - new colors, with fresh melodies and Evolution for Electric Guitar & Orchestra harmonies for a new century, even though the material is Freenote Records www.microtones.com thousands of years old. It’s a brave new world for the guitar: CRASH LANDING once you’ve been there, you‘ll want to return again, and Freenote Records www.microtones.com again. JUST STOMPIN’: with LaMonte Young’s Forever Bad Band DISCOGRAPHY Gramavision R2 79487, 1993. Classical guitar: GLENN BRANCA John Schneider Symphony No. 3 (gloria) Music for the first 127 Just guitars : Music by Harrison, Partch, Riley & Scholtz & Schneider intervals of the harmonic series (1983) Bridge Records Bridge 9132, 2003. ATAVISTIC, 1993. Just West Coast : Microtonal Music for Guitar & Harp by Cage, Selections from the Symphonies Partch, Harrison, LaMonte Young ATAVISTIC, 1997.

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