Jerry Rigged Tuning Wrench
I needed a longer handle to get some finer tunings, I didn’t want to spend $25, I had a tuning wrench already…
Concertina Tuning
A couple of videos, the first one a bit of an introduction to the concertina and the second one my first piece for this instrument in this tuning. Tuning chart with button layout is below.
Autoharp Tuning
Autoharps. I remember my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Trautman, pulling out her autoharp while we sang “What did Delaware?” I have two of them in my office now, both in need of repair (as you can see). The charm of the autoharp lies in its ability to tune every string (like all zithers) and in …
Jars
What with two harmoniums, a concertina, and a bowed psaltery, I already have a proliferation of long-sustain organ-y sounds in my ensemble … which is appropriate, since I am an organist at heart. But I’m also a carillonneur at heart, and I love bells of all types, so I’m looking to add more ring-y percussive …
Baritone Bowed Psaltery Tuning
The baritone bowed psaltery has a range of C3 to C6, fully chromatic. I tried to strike a balance between incorporating as many of the 33 pitches in my scale as possible and replicating reinforcement pitches at various octaves. For example, because 1/1, 31/16, and 253/128 (11×23) would each be tuned to a C string, …
Interval Approximations Chart
I am working with two different tunings, one consisting of the first 32 prime partials (“prime tuning”), the other consisting of 13-limit constellations over the 29-limit prime partials – and throwing 31 in for good measure, resulting in a 33-pitch scale (“constellation tuning”). Prime tuning is, for now, focused around my solo keyboard work. For …
Harmonium Trial Run
I’ll be a while getting my ears acquainted with the possibilities inherent in this tuning, especially given numerous intervals that I calculated through one path but ended up nearly identical with other meaningful intervals suggesting other harmonic paths (2233/2048, which is 29x11x7, is practically indistinguishable from 12/11). So here’s a bit of a test in …
Musings on the Harmoniums
I have always been fond of free reed instruments. In designing an ensemble that could be fixed in a tuning and that would feature simple enough instruments for students to join in the fun, Indian harmonium seemed the way to go: easy enough to tune, easy enough to play. I designed the tuning with a …
Harmoniums: Keyboard Layouts
Here are the layouts for the two harmoniums. Partials are indicated in large numerals, with factors in small numerals. The lower row shows alternative approximated partials on that given note. See my previous post for more information.
