"Baroque Banjo" 19 Tones per octave (19TET) 

Banjo fretted to 19 Tones per octave instead of the standard 12; Put very simply notes in western music are based on a small part of the "harmonic series" – If you divide an octave into 12 equal parts you get "roughly" the notes we want; since each note is equal you can modulate easily with a minimum of notes – alas none of the notes besides the octave is exactly in tune (using the harmonic series as your standard); the 4ths and 5th are admittedly pretty damn close but others such as 3rds are actually about 15% out. Dividing the octave into 19 also approximates these same notes - in fact on the whole it does it somewhat better, as well as adding new notes such as the “subminor 3rd”. The main disadvantage/stumbling block has been the practicality of having extra notes of course For the history we have to go back approximately 500 years; Around this time and for hundreds of years after, a type of tuning called meantone became current - there were several forms but for the sake of this explanation they are damn near identical – meantone more or less detuned the 5ths a tad and used the “slack” thereby gained to better tune the rest of the notes in the scale (generally favouring 3rds) Such Meantones produced very sweet chords and a distinct flavour or tone, but had the drawback that modulation between keys was somewhat limited since the notes weren’t equally spaced It was worked out if extra notes were added one could modulate more freely – One form of meantone of interest here was called "1/3 comma meantone" - by adding seven 1/3 tones one effectively had an equal (sized intervals) scale of nineteen 1/3 tones to the octave or 19 Tone equal temperament which since you have 19 keys to modulate to, can pretty much be said to have tied up the meantone-modulation problem It also separates your #’s and b’s (as they were originally meant to be!) the 19 tone scale reading; C C# Db D D# Eb E E# F F# Gb G# Ab A A# Bb B B# - C To tie up after this came "well temperaments" (sort of halfway house) such as used by Bach (“The well tempered clavier”) before everyone finally standardised with our current admittedly convenient solution - 12 tone equal temperament

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2 comments on “"Baroque Banjo" 19 Tones per octave (19TET)”

mrussell Says:
Monday, May 28, 2007 @7:38:28 AM

Would love to hear a song that uses the extra notes to good use.

Mike

Uncle Tic Says:
Wednesday, June 20, 2007 @1:53:24 PM

Beautiful banjo, I'm a big fan of turkish music, and I love the microtones, or as a like to call them: notes.

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