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Re: Ukulele string tunings


From: Choan Gálvez
Subject: Re: Ukulele string tunings
Date: Sun, 13 May 2012 16:23:17 +0200
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; rv:12.0) Gecko/20120428 Thunderbird/12.0.1

Hi.

On 5/13/12 07:38 , David Kastrup wrote:
Choan Gálvez<address@hidden>  writes:

On 5/12/12 16:51 , David Kastrup wrote:
Choan Gálvez<address@hidden>   writes:

On 5/12/12 16:08 , David Kastrup wrote:
Choan Gálvez<address@hidden>    writes:

In addition, I'd say those two tunings are weirly named -- from the
same file, all guitar tunings are named `guitar-something`, all banjo
tunings `banjo-something`.

But those are not tenor or baritone tunings of a ukulele, but rather
tunings of the tenor or baritone ukulele.  Namely different instruments.

Yes. And no. The most common tuning for ukuleles --soprano, concert
and tenor-- is<g' c' e' a'>   (C reentrant tuning).

The one which is currently defined as `tenor-ukulele-tuning` is used
in soprano, concert and baritone too:<g c' e' a'>   (C linear tuning).

And the most used tuning for tenor ukuleles is<g' c' e' a'>
(currently ukulele-tuning, that's fine).

The `baritone-ukulele-tuning` is used --as far as I know-- only in
baritone sized instruments, as the pitches are too low to sound nice
in small instruments. But... there is an "A linear tuning" for
baritone too.

I'd use the following naming strategy:

* Start with "ukulele-"
* Use "pitch-" when the tuning is other than the common C tuning (C6)
* Use "linear-" when the tuning is linear instead of the more common
reentrant tuning
* Finish with "tuning".

I find "linear" weird.  But it is not relevant what _I_ find weird if
that is what Ukulele players associate with it.

"Low G tuning" is more common among players than "C linear
tuning". For other pitches, I'd say the common term is "D with low
fourth". And "Baritone tuning" is more common than "G linear tuning".

But, there's no consensus --nor it is needed. Unfortunately, it's
impossible to extract a naming estrategy from the most common names,
and that's why I made my proposal.

But, I'd rather left the renaming out than abusing other users with my
(not so) highly opinionated terms -- I'll keep them for my include
files.

When in doubt rather pick names that you are likely to find written on
score parts than in music theoretical papers.

While one usually would want a somewhat good reason to _change_ some
names, you quite aptly observed that it is unlikely that the current
names have been in use, as they don't work.  So you can pick the best
names from scratch without needing to consider what is there already,
but the best names should be what musicians and composers for that
instrument are used to, not what appeals to your personal aesthetics
best.

Understood. I'll review published papers and ukulele forums looking for a reasonable and universally accepted naming pattern.


I did not want to suggest that the existing names are good in that
regard: I don't know the naming practices for the instrument family.

It's ok, no offense was taken.

Best.
--
Choan Gálvez



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