The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #126768 Message #2821620
Posted By: Stower
26-Jan-10 - 09:11 AM
Thread Name: Re-entrant tuning: why?
Subject: RE: Re-entrant tuning: why?
M.Ted, thanks for the links. From what I can see, the thumb plays a completely different role on the uke compared to the guitar, as the higher 4th string means the thumb can lead on the melody in both picking and strum patterns. Does that sound right? More to add?
Artful Codger, that's really interesting about Hawaiians developing the uke from the Portuguese guitar, which isn't a guitar at all, of course, despite the name, but a type of cittern, which does not have re-entrant tuning. But twice on the Portuguese guitar, we have the distance between courses being only a single tone which, from what you say, is mimicked on the uke with the pitch difference between first and fourth strings. Am I understanding this right, Artful Codger, and was that the historical thinking, do you know?
GUEST, 25 Jan 10 - 08:49 PM, I don't think you have understood this thread (and you should sign in under a consistent name, by the way). "Closed voiced chords are those where the notes are close together. Open voiced chords are those where the notes are further apart." That doesn't really make much sense, musically, since it is so vague and imprecise. Closer than what? Further apart than what? And such a description isn't pertinent to our discussion. "Re-entrant tuning involves tuning one or more of the strings an octave higher or lower [an octave *lower*?!] than usual. You reenter the string in question by retuning it either an octave higher or lower." It doesn't work quite mean that. That certainly is not how the re-entrant Renaissance cittern worked. And there is no re-tuning involved, as the instruments in question are re-entrant as standard. Re-entrant tuning means one of more string or course, at any point in the sequence from high to low pitch, is out of the high to low sequence. While it's true that the *relative* pitch of uke strings are the same as that of a guitar but with the fourth string an octave higher, and similar is true of lute/theorbo for the first two strings, the same cannot be said of the cittern, as there is no other instrument to compare it to to say that the third course has any pitch difference - octave or otherwise - to anything else. As for the banjo, there is such a wide choice of tunings, one cannot really say that the 5th string is an octave above anything, as there is no *single* standard banjo pitch in the first place to compare it to: there is only the banjo tuning you choose to play in.