From: owner-wanderer-digest@smoe.org (wanderer-digest) To: wanderer-digest@smoe.org Subject: wanderer-digest V1 #11 Reply-To: wanderer@smoe.org Sender: owner-wanderer-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-wanderer-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk wanderer-digest Saturday, October 20 2001 Volume 01 : Number 011 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: How Joni creates a tuning... [Susan McNamara ] Fwd: Re: How Joni creates a tuning... [Susan McNamara ] Re: Fwd: Re: How Joni creates a tuning... [slarty ] Re: Fwd: Re: How Joni creates a tuning... [Susan McNamara ] Re: Fwd: Re: How Joni creates a tuning... [Susan McNamara ] Re: Fwd: Re: How Joni creates a tuning... [Les Irvin ] generic numerical tuning notation ["Marian" ] Re: Fwd: Re: How Joni creates a tuning... [Mark Domyancich Subject: Re: How Joni creates a tuning... >In a message dated 10/18/01 8:04:57 AM Eastern Daylight Time, >patti@pattiwitten.com writes: > > >> Ah, summer! As Sue and I know, we won't be outside listening to anything but >> howling wind until next June (I exaggerate). Maybe we can tune to snowplows, >> crows, wind gusts and trees cracking in the cold? Inside, we have these >> options: radiator clanking and hissing, refrigerator humming, window >> rattling, and the computer's continuous exhale. >> >> > >Hhmmm...sounds interesting guys, let us know what ya come up with. I've never >been too far upstate NY, but from what I have seen of it is so beautiful. >Lord I can feel it,,,, on a country road...... > >Rose in NJ >NP: the canadian geese barking > >rosemjoy@aol.com This fall is really beautiful but Patti is right, I can already feel the creep of winter coming. Ok, let's simultaneously break into a rendition of Urge for Going...I actually saw the geese in chevron flight yesterday morning. I also saw THIS AMAZING new moon rise Monday morning with a very bright Venus on its right side. I really feel sometimes like somebody's putting on a show it's so beautiful. Another song that came to mind when Patti was talking about radiators clanking... Suzanne Vega has a great song on her Days of Open Hand cd called Rusted Pipe! Does she alternately tune? Maybe on some songs. have a good one, sue - -- "Heart and humor and humility will lighten up your heavy load ... " - Joni Mitchell ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 11:17:48 -0400 From: Susan McNamara Subject: Fwd: Re: How Joni creates a tuning... Yes, Ken...I am trying to get together a website (i'm using HomePage which is like Websites for Dummies and still don't know what the heck I'm doing). You would think that after designing the original guitar site I would know how to do this but things have changed in HTML land since 1996. Anyway, I will also try to get some wav files of the way some of the tunings sound. Wouldn't that be marvelous! Hope I'm in TUNE! :-) thanks for the F tuning. That's a new one! sue - --- begin forwarded text Status: U Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 10:04:06 -0400 From: slarty X-Accept-Language: en To: Susan McNamara Subject: Re: How Joni creates a tuning... One of my favourite chords is a maj7th+9 so I tuned my guitar to this chord which gives FACGCE. It gives nice harmonics on the 12 fret and here are some patterns you can use. 000301 000303 055300 035500 000555 012300 I'm sure you could find many more. Try playing this. Sounds sweet. 000000 000301 000301 000301 000000 000303 000000 000301 000301 then strum 055300 for 2 bars I was thinking (DANGER DANGER) this being smoe, no binaries are allowed but it would be good if we had a place where we could post snippets of wave files so we could hear each others work/new tunings etc. Susan McNamara wrote: > I knew this would happen! I start a dang mailing list then I don't > have time to post!! The story of my life... so when Patti was > talking last week about the A tuning she came up with for one of her > new songs I thought, hmmm, I wish I could invent a new tuning! So > when I want to learn a tuning lesson I always go back to the master... - --- end forwarded text ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 12:03:37 -0400 From: slarty Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: How Joni creates a tuning... Thanks for posting that to the group. I meant to send it there in the first place. Another alternative to a web page, if we want to simply send files might be the news groups. Just playing around I converted a wav to an mp3 then sent it inappropriately enough to alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.sound-effects. Seems to work fine. The best is to find a news group that isn't being used by to many people as you don't have to want to search through 8000 posts. The one I mentioned had only 1 other post on it. Some others I found were alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.folk (55 posts but more apropos) and alt.binaries.mpeg.mp3 (11 posts) Also important to find a news group that everyone has access to. Susan McNamara wrote: > Yes, Ken...I am trying to get together a website (i'm using HomePage > which is like Websites for Dummies and still don't know what the heck > I'm doing). You would think that after designing the original guitar > site I would know how to do this but things have changed in HTML land > since 1996. > > Anyway, I will also try to get some wav files of the way some of the > tunings sound. Wouldn't that be marvelous! Hope I'm in TUNE! :-) > > thanks for the F tuning. That's a new one! sue > > --- begin forwarded text > > Status: U > Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 10:04:06 -0400 > From: slarty > X-Accept-Language: en > To: Susan McNamara > Subject: Re: How Joni creates a tuning... > > One of my favourite chords is a maj7th+9 so I tuned my guitar to this chord > which gives FACGCE. It gives nice harmonics on the 12 fret and here are > some patterns you can use. > > 000301 000303 055300 035500 000555 012300 I'm sure you could find many > more. > > Try playing this. Sounds sweet. > 000000 000301 000301 000301 000000 000303 000000 000301 000301 > then strum 055300 for 2 bars > > I was thinking (DANGER DANGER) this being smoe, no binaries are allowed > but it would be good if we had a place where we could post snippets of wave > files so we could hear each others work/new tunings etc. > > Susan McNamara wrote: > > > I knew this would happen! I start a dang mailing list then I don't > > have time to post!! The story of my life... so when Patti was > > talking last week about the A tuning she came up with for one of her > > new songs I thought, hmmm, I wish I could invent a new tuning! So > > when I want to learn a tuning lesson I always go back to the master... > > --- end forwarded text ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 12:13:16 -0400 From: Susan McNamara Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: How Joni creates a tuning... Interesting idea! So we can go to this group and listen to your wav file? I'll try it. how do you create the wav file? thanks, sue >Thanks for posting that to the group. I meant to send it there in the first >place. > >Another alternative to a web page, if we want to simply send files >might be the >news groups. >Just playing around I converted a wav to an mp3 then sent it inappropriately >enough to >alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.sound-effects. Seems to work fine. The best is to find >a news group >that isn't being used by to many people as you don't have to want to search >through 8000 posts. >The one I mentioned had only 1 other post on it. Some others I found were >alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.folk (55 posts but more apropos) and >alt.binaries.mpeg.mp3 (11 posts) >Also important to find a news group that everyone has access to. > > >Susan McNamara wrote: > >> Yes, Ken...I am trying to get together a website (i'm using HomePage >> which is like Websites for Dummies and still don't know what the heck >> I'm doing). You would think that after designing the original guitar >> site I would know how to do this but things have changed in HTML land >> since 1996. >> >> Anyway, I will also try to get some wav files of the way some of the >> tunings sound. Wouldn't that be marvelous! Hope I'm in TUNE! :-) >> >> thanks for the F tuning. That's a new one! sue >> >> --- begin forwarded text >> >> Status: U >> Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 10:04:06 -0400 >> From: slarty >> X-Accept-Language: en >> To: Susan McNamara >> Subject: Re: How Joni creates a tuning... >> >> One of my favourite chords is a maj7th+9 so I tuned my guitar to this chord >> which gives FACGCE. It gives nice harmonics on the 12 fret and here are >> some patterns you can use. >> >> 000301 000303 055300 035500 000555 012300 I'm sure you could find many >> more. >> >> Try playing this. Sounds sweet. >> 000000 000301 000301 000301 000000 000303 000000 000301 000301 >> then strum 055300 for 2 bars >> >> I was thinking (DANGER DANGER) this being smoe, no binaries are allowed >> but it would be good if we had a place where we could post snippets of wave >> files so we could hear each others work/new tunings etc. >> >> Susan McNamara wrote: >> >> > I knew this would happen! I start a dang mailing list then I don't >> > have time to post!! The story of my life... so when Patti was >> > talking last week about the A tuning she came up with for one of her >> > new songs I thought, hmmm, I wish I could invent a new tuning! So >> > when I want to learn a tuning lesson I always go back to the master... >> >> --- end forwarded text - -- "Heart and humor and humility will lighten up your heavy load ... " - Joni Mitchell ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 12:23:32 -0400 From: slarty Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: How Joni creates a tuning... If your server gives you access to that news group, yes. There are many programs to make wav files. The windows recorder program that comes with windows is one but a better one is called Cool Edit. Good for one track stereo recording plus has many effects. A much better one is Cool Edit Pro where you can make multiple tracks sort of like using a tape recorder with "sound with sound" but you can add up to 64 tracks and then there are many echo, reverb, chorus and other effects. It cost a cool $350. US. though you might be able to find it free on Morpheus but I wouldn't know anything about that. ;^) Susan McNamara wrote: > Interesting idea! So we can go to this group and listen to your wav > file? I'll try it. how do you create the wav file? > > thanks, sue > > >Thanks for posting that to the group. I meant to send it there in the first > >place. > > > >Another alternative to a web page, if we want to simply send files > >might be the > >news groups. > >Just playing around I converted a wav to an mp3 then sent it inappropriately > >enough to > >alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.sound-effects. Seems to work fine. The best is to find > >a news group > >that isn't being used by to many people as you don't have to want to search > >through 8000 posts. > >The one I mentioned had only 1 other post on it. Some others I found were > >alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.folk (55 posts but more apropos) and > >alt.binaries.mpeg.mp3 (11 posts) > >Also important to find a news group that everyone has access to. > > > > > >Susan McNamara wrote: > > > >> Yes, Ken...I am trying to get together a website (i'm using HomePage > >> which is like Websites for Dummies and still don't know what the heck > >> I'm doing). You would think that after designing the original guitar > >> site I would know how to do this but things have changed in HTML land > >> since 1996. > >> > >> Anyway, I will also try to get some wav files of the way some of the > >> tunings sound. Wouldn't that be marvelous! Hope I'm in TUNE! :-) > >> > >> thanks for the F tuning. That's a new one! sue > >> > >> --- begin forwarded text > >> > >> Status: U > >> Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 10:04:06 -0400 > >> From: slarty > >> X-Accept-Language: en > >> To: Susan McNamara > >> Subject: Re: How Joni creates a tuning... > >> > >> One of my favourite chords is a maj7th+9 so I tuned my guitar to this chord > >> which gives FACGCE. It gives nice harmonics on the 12 fret and here are > >> some patterns you can use. > >> > >> 000301 000303 055300 035500 000555 012300 I'm sure you could find many > >> more. > >> > >> Try playing this. Sounds sweet. > >> 000000 000301 000301 000301 000000 000303 000000 000301 000301 > >> then strum 055300 for 2 bars > >> > >> I was thinking (DANGER DANGER) this being smoe, no binaries are allowed > >> but it would be good if we had a place where we could post snippets of wave > >> files so we could hear each others work/new tunings etc. > >> > >> Susan McNamara wrote: > >> > >> > I knew this would happen! I start a dang mailing list then I don't > >> > have time to post!! The story of my life... so when Patti was > >> > talking last week about the A tuning she came up with for one of her > >> > new songs I thought, hmmm, I wish I could invent a new tuning! So > >> > when I want to learn a tuning lesson I always go back to the master... > >> > >> --- end forwarded text > > -- > > "Heart and humor and humility > will lighten up your heavy load ... " - Joni Mitchell ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 12:32:57 -0400 From: Susan McNamara Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: How Joni creates a tuning... >A much better one is Cool Edit Pro where you can make multiple tracks >sort of like using a tape recorder with "sound with sound" but you can add >up to 64 tracks and then there are many echo, reverb, chorus and other >effects. It cost a cool $350. US. though you might be able to find it free >on Morpheus but I wouldn't know anything about that. ;^) > Oh, of course not!! As a young friend of mine at Cornell says, "that's sketchy!" ;-) - -- "Heart and humor and humility will lighten up your heavy load ... " - Joni Mitchell ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 12:43:48 -0400 From: slarty Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: How Joni creates a tuning... Should have mentioned that after you have the wav file you need to convert it to mp3. The original 1 track 23 sec wav I made was 4143 kb in size. Converting it to mp3 shrunk it to a much more manageable 753 kb. Of course to do that you need another program. I use MuchMusic Jukebox to convert. And where did I find that, you may ask? Pretty sketchy now that I think of it. Susan McNamara wrote: > >> > > Oh, of course not!! As a young friend of mine at Cornell says, > "that's sketchy!" ;-) > > -- > > "Heart and humor and humility > will lighten up your heavy load ... " - Joni Mitchell ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 10:54:38 -0600 From: Les Irvin Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: How Joni creates a tuning... At 10:43 AM 10/19/2001, you wrote: >Should have mentioned that after you have the wav file you need to convert >it to mp3. The original 1 track 23 sec wav I made was 4143 kb in size. >Converting it to mp3 shrunk it to a much more manageable 753 kb. >Of course to do that you need another program. I use MuchMusic >Jukebox to convert. And where did I find that, you may ask? >Pretty sketchy now that I think of it. Also, "MusicMatch" is free software that will convert MP3 to WAV and vice versa. You can get it at: http://www.musicmatch.com/download/free/ On the recording side... Cool Edit is good but I think Sound Forge is better (sorry, PC only). It's what I use to produce the CDs I make. It's expensive to buy, but "sketchy" as well :-) Les ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 20:19:31 +0100 From: "Marian" Subject: generic numerical tuning notation I don't know why, but I find the letter names of tunings really totally confusing! My whole approach to tuning the guitar was always from the relative relationship of the strings to each other, most easily understood and represented by generic numerical notation. When I first learned to play guitar back in 1965, I learned how to tune it by tuning the bottom note to E, then tuning the following strings by fretting 55545, starting on the just-tuned E and working up. Is this how most of you learned to tune the guitar? I didn't always have a pitch finder for the bottom E, which was fine. I could still always tune the guitar to the relative/generic pattern of x55545 from any starting note. I often used the capo to bring the strings to the pitch where I found it comfortable to sing any given song or to tune to the pitch of a recording I was trying to learn. I never cared about actual letter names of the tones of the six strings until recent years when I started doing serious transcription. My sister Kate taught me about alternate tunings when she moved back home in the summer 1966. She had been living in San Francisco, CA, and had seen Dylan and Baez in concert, and showed me the basic alternate tunings of Drop-D (tuning the bottom string down a whole step), double-drop-D (tuning the top and bottom strings down a whole step), and DGDGBD (x57543) (tuning the top and bottom and 5th strings down a whole step). We played songs like Buffy St. Marie's Codeine (double drop-D), and Wild Mountain Thyme (drop-D). These tunings seemed very easy to remember just because of how they sounded, and I could tune to them without using numerical notation or fretting because I just knew how to get there from knowing somehow how they should sound. But also, certain tunings seemed to have the shape of standard tuning chords, like the tuning with the x57543 pattern seemed to me to have the shape of an A chord - the only strings not changed were the strings that you would play if you were playing an A chord shape (it's really a G tuning, though, if you look at the actual pitches if you start from standard tuning, but if you fretted up a whole tone it would be A). What I'm trying to say is that I saw the chord shape to which I was tuning, rather than the actual notes. It kind of helped me to remember how to get there by thinking of it visually that way. I don't remember when I discovered the tuning of DADF#AD (x75435), but I think it must have been when Clouds came out and I tried to learn Both Sides Now from the recording. And The Gallery and Marcie. In fact, Marcie is really in the tuning of x57543, but I found a way to play it with x75435 (which to me has the shape of an E chord). These tunings of x75435 and x57543 seem interchangeable to me. I can play almost any of Joni's songs in one or the other of these tunings by using one or the other. When I would tune to x75435, I thought about the shape of an E chord, but I also somehow understood how it should sound. From the time I first learned about alternate tunings, I fooled around with various tunings on the guitar and sometimes I would find something that seemed really interesting. In order to remember it, I noted down the fret positions (generic numerical notation) required to find that tuning in the future. I've got all kinds of tunings but they're all over the place in my various notebooks and I've never tried to collect them all together, but I always intend to go back to them someday to re-explore them. Until I discovered Sue's site, I was not aware of more than three or four of Joni's tunings, and I could get to them just from knowing how they should sound. But once I discovered that she had so many tunings, numerical notation, and specifically generic numerical notation (e.g., x55545), seemed the best way to move around in and organize them all. One thing that has been interesting for me in the work of transcription is that it's possible to play a song in more than one tuning (in an other tuning that what was originally used by the composer). I think this is a very interesting aspect of alternate tunings. Also the tunings and chord shapes of Jonatha Brooke are very interesting to compare with Joni's tunings. For example, she takes the tuning for The Wolf That Lives In Lindsey and Last Chance Lost (x78254) and uses some very interesting and more complex chords than Joni's simple barred chords. It is interesting to compare Jonatha's use of that tuning with Joni's. I don't know why I'm writing all this! I hope maybe it will inspire somebody to share their own experience of de-tuning the guitar and how they think of alternate tunings. Marian marian@jmdl.com http://www.jmdl.com/guitar/marian/guitar.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 14:29:22 -0500 From: Mark Domyancich Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: How Joni creates a tuning... There is a boatload of apps available for Mac that allow you to record from the 1/8in. mic input of your Mac and automatically saves it as an MP3. There is one I've seen around that's available on versiontracker.com that came out today. Seems like a good product. And I agree with Les - if you really want high quality recordings you'll need a soundcard capable of RCA input or coaxial digital input if you want to hook up your DAT to your computer. Then you'll need an app that can record from the soundcard into a waveform editor, like Soundforge or Peak (my personal favorite). But if you just want the open tuning recorded, a simple shareware or freeware app and an external mic will suit you just fine. Mark At 10:54 AM -0600 10/19/01, Les Irvin wrote: >At 10:43 AM 10/19/2001, you wrote: >>Should have mentioned that after you have the wav file you need to convert >>it to mp3. The original 1 track 23 sec wav I made was 4143 kb in size. >>Converting it to mp3 shrunk it to a much more manageable 753 kb. >>Of course to do that you need another program. I use MuchMusic >>Jukebox to convert. And where did I find that, you may ask? >>Pretty sketchy now that I think of it. > >Also, "MusicMatch" is free software that will convert MP3 to WAV and >vice versa. You can get it at: >http://www.musicmatch.com/download/free/ > >On the recording side... Cool Edit is good but I think Sound Forge >is better (sorry, PC only). It's what I use to produce the CDs I >make. It's expensive to buy, but "sketchy" as well :-) >Les ------------------------------ End of wanderer-digest V1 #11 *****************************