Music & Techniques by Chris Vaisvil

The DIY 11 notes per octave Stick

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I found a piece of oak at a local woodworking store for under $3. They said – board – I saw – instrument. That and a couple of $0.69 birch dowels and I went home with a design of a cheap instrument in mind. Since I’m in the 11 edo (equal division of the octave = notes per octave) class I thought is would be cool to make the instrument in that tuning. I used the dowels for frets. Fret placement was calculated at the Experimental Musical Instruments fret placement calculator and marked off the placement with a metal meter stick after gluing on the nut and bridge. I used a couple of the fret wires I pulled off of the 12 edo to fretless bass conversion to give a bit more support to the bridge and nut. Zither pins are used to tune the instrument. A light guitar string set is used and the strings are kept in place by running them through holes that catch the ball end.

As I was tuning to a synthesizer in 11 edo I broke the “A” string – but as it turns out that wasn’t all that bad of a happening. I tuned the “D” and “E” the same and used it as a drone. To record it I clamped a contact microphone to the 11 edo stick and this is a real roughly jam to demo the instrument.

Project cost minus the microphone is less than $20.

Comments

3 responses to “The DIY 11 notes per octave Stick”

  1. Mother Dropped 11 Nuts « Music & Techniques by Chris Vaisvil

    […] experiment with since it is an example of a cross-over rhythm. To that track I added 5 tracks of my homemade DIY 11-edo stick (with some bridge modification). Each stick track was run through guitar rig 4. I left Norm’s track alone because it was […]

  2. Mario Pizarro

    Chris,
    Two strings are separated by different distances, does it solve some problem?. This work only deals with the strings. What is its purpose, perhaps I need to reread it again.

    Days ago I forgot to tell you that I had prepared a room where two pairs of speakers and a three poles conmutator were installed to switch the alternate reproduction of Sonata 1, tuned to the first tuning and a source of 12 tet tones that were recorded by using the guitar. While I was doing the arrangements I noticed that the third pole of the conmutator was free and realized that a second Piagui scale could be connected to this pole if and only if your instrument is retuned to this second scale that works with a discrepance of + 6.5 cents. The theoretical threshold of 4 cents is a topic not sufficiently confirmed. Regards. Mario. March 18

  3. ranjit

    It may be just a rough jam, but I really enjoyed it! I love how the unusual tuning sounds weird at first and pretty quickly becomes natural.

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