Posted on March 12, 2020May 23, 2025 by Dale Phillips It’s a Kabosy It’s a Kabosy by Paul Hostetter Originally published in American Lutherie #35, 1993 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Three, 2004 Madagascar is a huge island about the size of Washington, Oregon, and California combined. Situated 180° around the earth in any direction from these three states, this single-language country lies in the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa. I shall probably recount more about music from Madagascar than about construction details of this delightful little instrument for this simple reason: the kabosy’s musical raison d’être exceeds in interest the technical complexity of the instrument itself. Nonetheless, it’s worth a long look because, like most things Malagasy, there’s nothing quite like it anywhere else. Despite obvious superficial appearances, Malagasy culture is not particularly African at all, but is an extraordinary mélange of Polynesian, Southeast Asian, Arabic, African, and, more recently, European influences. (Madagascar was a French colony until 1972.) Like the legendary flora and fauna of that far-away island, Malagasy culture and music bear but a passing resemblance to culture elsewhere on the planet. Fortunately there are numerous recordings now available of just about every stripe of this remarkable musical culture. A discography follows. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on November 1, 2019May 21, 2025 by Dale Phillips The Truth about Temperaments The Truth about Temperaments by Edward Kottick originally published in Guild of American Luthiers Quarterly Volume 12, #2, 1984 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume #1, 2000 There is a good deal of misinformation in print about consonance, dissonance, scales, harmonics, intervals, tuning, and temperaments. Even textbooks and scientific journals have gotten these subjects wrong, and I hope to correct the situation. Let us begin with the terms “consonance” and “dissonance.” These words have two separate sets of meanings, one musical and psychological, the other acoustical and physical; and they are often confused. From the musical point of view a dissonance is a combination of tones which, dictated by usage, projects a quality of restlessness, motion, direction, or instability. Dissonances want to go somewhere; that is, they want to resolve to consonances, which have, of course, the opposite effect. Consonances are combinations of tones to which we ascribe the qualities of restfulness, stability, and a feeling of arrival. Note that I have described the character of these terms as something dictated by usage, rather than as qualities inherent in the combination of tones. Since around 1450 (the beginning of the Renaissance) major and minor thirds and sixths, perfect fourths, fifths, and octaves have been considered consonances, although a distinction is made between perfect consonances (fourths, fifths, and octaves) and the others, which are imperfect consonances. Every other combination of tones is considered dissonant, including the fourth if it appears above the lowest sounding note. Music needs both consonance and dissonance. Without the latter it would be bland, dull, and lacking in direction. Although we may not think of composers such as Palestrina, Bach, and Chopin (to pull some names out of the air) as dissonant composers, there is an enormous amount of dissonance, as we just defined it, in their music. Furthermore, a dissonance is a dissonance only if we all say so. In the music of John Phillip Sousa a major chord with an added sixth (which makes a dissonant second to the fifth) is a dissonance; but in a jazz style that same combination of tones is treated as a consonance and is perceived in that way. In polyphonic music (music of more than one part) of the Middle Ages the third was considered dissonant, but around 1450 it began to be perceived as a consonance. This is an apparent contradiction only if the interval itself is considered in vacuo; but in the context of the music, medieval composers treated thirds and sixths as unstable combinations that needed to be resolved to perfect consonances, while Renaissance composers, and all those who followed up to the 20th century, considered thirds and sixths consonant and the building blocks of music. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on August 23, 2019May 23, 2025 by Dale Phillips Intonation in the Real World Intonation in the Real World by Mike Doolin from his 2006 GAL Convention lecture previously published in American Lutherie #92, 2007 Getting guitars to play in tune has been a major topic of interest for many years, both for guitar players and guitar makers, and it has been a major source of frustration as well. During our current “Golden Age of Lutherie” the bar has been raised for standards of craft, playability, and tonal quality, as players have become more sophisticated in their expectations and builders have become better educated and more demanding of their own work. Expectations for accurate intonation have come along with all that: it’s no longer acceptable for a guitar to only play in tune for the first five frets, or in a few keys. Modern players are using the whole neck, exploring extended harmonies, and playing in ensembles with other instruments. They are looking for instruments that play in tune with themselves and with the rest of the musical world. It turns out that guitar intonation is a huge can of worms, because it is really two topics: ▶ What does it mean to be “in tune?” ▶ How do I make a guitar do that? Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on January 6, 2010May 21, 2025 by Dale Phillips Review: 1/1: Quarterly Journal of the Just Intonation Network Review: 1/1: Quarterly Journal of the Just Intonation Network Reviewed by Edward L. Kottick Originally published in American Lutherie #3, 1985 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume One, 2000 1/1: Quarterly Journal of the Just Intonation Network Vol. 1, No. 1, Winter 1985 School of Music, The University of Iowa 1/1 is a new journal that is attempting to supply a support system for composers, performers, and instrument builders who are exploring the resources of Just Intonation. It is well written and nicely produced, and considering the subject matter, remarkably free of jargon. Just Intonation (the two words are always capitalized) is precisely defined by Editor-in-Chief David B. Doty, in his editorial, as “any system of tuning in which all of the intervals may be represented by ratios of whole numbers, with a strongly implied preference for simple ratios” (hence the 1/1 title of the journal). So far so good — simple ratios produce pure, i.e., beatless, intervals; but in the next sentence Doty declares that in a musical context such intervals are always recognized as consonant. Although he states that “this fact has been known since the third millennium B.C.,” he does not explain that he is referring to consonance in the physical sense, rather than in the musically-meaningful, perceptual or harmonic sense. In the first, consonance is defined in terms of the purity of the interval; but in the second, consonance is defined in terms of its relationship with dissonance. A tonic chord is a consonance, no matter how it is tuned, or even if it is out of tune. On the other hand, a dominant 7th chord is a dissonance, even if all its intervals are pure. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on January 6, 2010May 21, 2025 by Dale Phillips Review: Lutes, Viols and Temperaments by Mark Lindley Review: Lutes, Viols and Temperaments by Mark Lindley Reviewed by Edward L. Kottick Originally published in American Lutherie #2, 1985 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume One, 2000 Lutes, Viols and Temperaments Mark Lindley Cambridge University Press, 1984 Out of print (1999) This book represents a landmark of scholarship that cannot be ignored by those who deal with fretted string instruments, whether scholar, maker, or player. Mark Lindley, one of the world’s experts on this complex subject, summarizes everything that can at present be said about the ways in which theorists and performers viewed the problem of temperament on fretted string instruments between ca. 1520 and ca. 1740. He does a brilliant job of sorting out the writers. He explains how some of them misunderstood the mathematical principles involved in reckoning temperament, and he shows how many of them, in turn, have been misinterpreted by modern scholars. The information is laid out clearly. Quotations from original sources have the English translation in parallel columns: thus, if Lindley draws an inference from the primary material, you are free to disagree and draw your own. The mathematics of temperament are presented clearly and, in many cases, masterfully, as in his explication of the distinction between the ratio of 18:17 and 12th root of 2. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
