Regularly, during his solos (or sometimes all the way through them, as on "Someone Else Is Steppin' In") he played small, melodic, single-note figures on one or two strings, but they were barely audible: At the same time, he was strumming all of the other strings, leaving them open and unfretted, letting you experience dissonance — or confidence — as a main course.
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All harpejjis use an electronic muting system to dampen unfretted strings and minimize the impact of sympathetic vibrations.
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Disadvantages include a smaller volume, even though many or most unfretted instruments tend to be significantly larger than fretted instruments; and many more strings to keep in tune. Unfretted instruments tend to have a sweeter, less incisive tone due to the greater load on the bridge resulting from the greater number of strings, though the large, late (early 19th century) Swedish clavichords tend to be the loudest of any of the historic clavichords.
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Frets may be fixed, as on a guitar or mandolin, or movable, as on a lute. Fingerboards may also be unfretted, as they usually are on bowed instruments, where damping by the finger is of little consequence because of the sustained stimulation of the strings by the bow. Unfretted fingerboards allow a musician more control over subtle changes in pitch than fretted boards, but are generally considered harder to master. Fingerboards may also be, though uncommon, a hybrid of these two.
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Some clavichords have been built with a single pair of strings for each note. The first known reference to one was by Johann Speth in 1693 and the earliest such extant signed and dated clavichord was built in 1716 by Johann Michael Heinitz. Such instruments are referred to as unfretted whereas instruments using the same strings for several notes are called fretted. Among the advantages to unfretted instruments are flexibility in tuning (the temperament can be easily altered) and the ability to play any music exactly as written without concern for "bad" notes.
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Traditional instruments in Turkish classical music today include tambur long-necked plucked lute, ney end-blown flute, kemençe bowed fiddle, oud plucked short-necked unfretted lute, kanun plucked zither, violin, and in Mevlevi music, küdüm drum and a harp.
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200n17, Popular Music, Vol. 14, No. 2. (May, 1995), pp. 185-201. Commonly used in both popular and classical music, Barre chords are frequently used in combination with "open" chords, where the guitar's open (unfretted) strings construct the chord.
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There are two North German instruments, both made in Hamburg by Johann Adolph Hass: an unfretted clavichord dating from 1763, and a single-manual harpsichord made in 1764. There is also a small German triple-fretted clavichord from about 1700.
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Traditional instruments in Ottoman classical music today include tanbur long-necked plucked lute, ney end-blown flute, kemençe bowed fiddle, oud plucked short-necked unfretted lute, kanun plucked zither, violin, and in Mevlevi music, kudüm drum. Older instruments still in use include lavta.
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Some information on the daxophone by Hans Reichel (19 MB) The frequency interval between each fret in the succession will change due to the difference in pitch range between tongues, which is why the unfretted side is more frequently used for playing tonally in known compositions.
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A lute (Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. lute or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted. More specifically, the term "lute" can refer to an instrument from the family of European lutes.
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The rebab is a spike fiddle played with a bow. It is only sometimes used in kebyar as it is often drowned out by the metallophones. Its melodic line is similar to the suling, sometimes reaching pitches on a septatonic scale. It has only two strings tuned a Western fourth apart which never touch the unfretted fingerboard.
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This was one of the three usual sound hole shapes for viols as well.The other two sound-hole shapes being f-holes for viols with "violin shape" and C-holes or flame holes on the "viol shaped" viols. It is unfretted, and played much like a violin, being held horizontally under the chin. It is about the same size as the modern viola.
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Many musical instruments are capable of very fine distinctions of pitch, such as the human voice, the trombone, unfretted strings such as the violin, and lutes with tied frets. These instruments are well-suited to the use of meantone tunings. On the other hand, the piano keyboard has only twelve physical note-controlling devices per octave, making it poorly suited to any tunings other than 12-ET.
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Alfred Karnes played the harp-guitar, a seldom recorded instrument from the Edwardian Era. The harp-guitar had a large guitar body with an extra set of strings above the main fretboard which were unfretted. These were struck along with the regular guitar strings to produce the effect of two separate guitarists. Karnes accented this effect by playing the fretted strings with a distinctive slapping effect.
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In his Kitab al-Shifa (Book of Soul Healing), he proposed another taxonomy, of five classes: fretted instruments, unfretted (open) stringed, lyres and harps, bowed stringed, wind (reeds and some other woodwinds, such as the flute and bagpipe), other wind instruments such as the organ, and the stick-struck santur (a board zither). The distinction between fretted and open was in classic Persian fashion.
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For his 1607 opera L'Orfeo, Claudio Monteverdi lists duoi (two) chitaroni among the instruments required for performing the work. Musicians originally used large bass lutes (c. 80+ cm string length) and a higher re-entrant tuning; but soon created neck extensions with secondary pegboxes to accommodate extra open (i.e. unfretted) longer bass strings, called diapasons or bourdons, for improvements in tonal clarity and an increased range of available notes.
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The tonkori, an onomatopoeic description of the sound the instrument produces, is a plucked string instrument and generally has five strings made out of gut. Unfretted and played open, the tonkori is limited in tones by the number of strings. The tonkori is played by both men and women and commonly serves as musical accompaniment to yukar or dances and rituals, although solo-performances have been noted as well.
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This facilitates playing melodies in the Ionian mode (the major scale). The melody is played on the top string (or string pair) only, with the unfretted drone strings providing a simple harmony, giving the instrument its distinctive sound. To play in a different key, or in a different mode, a traditional player would have to retune the instrument. For example, to play a minor mode melody the instrument might be tuned to D3-A3-C4.
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He then integrated computers into his work, via the programming language MAX. His experimentation with computers continued, in 2003, with the creation of an instrument he calls the BassComputer, an electric bass with 5 fretted strings and 4 unfretted strings, as in the harp guitar. The instrument is intended to be interfaced with a computer. In 2004, he commissioned a piece from Eliane Radigue called Elemental II, which he interpreted for the BassComputer.
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Playing a chord with the barre technique slightly affects tone quality. A closed, or fretted, note sounds slightly different from an open, unfretted, string. Barre chords are a distinctive part of the sound of pop music and rock music. Using the barre technique, the guitarist can fret a familiar open chord shape, and then transpose, or raise, the chord a number of half-steps higher, similar to the use of a capo.
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The harp guitar (or "harp-guitar") is a guitar-based stringed instrument generally defined as a "guitar, in any of its accepted forms, with any number of additional unstopped strings that can accommodate individual plucking." The word "harp" is used in reference to its harp-like unstopped open strings. A harp guitar must have at least one unfretted string lying off the main fretboard, typically played as an open string. This family consists of many varieties of instrument configurations.
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Soviet postage stamp depicting traditional musical instruments of Georgia. Panduri, a Georgian traditional instrument. A rich variety of musical instruments are known from Georgia. Among the most popular instruments are blown instruments, like the soinari, known in Samegrelo as larchemi (Georgian panpipe), stviri (flute), gudastviri (bagpipe), string instruments like changi (harp), chonguri (four stringed unfretted long neck lute), panduri (three stringed fretted long neck lute), bowed chuniri, known also as chianuri, and a variety of drums.
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The shahi baaja ("royal instrument") is an electrified and slightly modified version of the Indian bulbul tarang, a type of Indian zither to which have been added typewriter keys which depress several of the strings to change their pitch. The modifications also include the addition of 12 additional unfretted strings which serve as an attached swarmandal (drone harp). The instrument is currently used in everything from semi-classical and popular Indian music to ambient techno, and psychedelic rock.
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In January 2006 Fender introduced the Tony Franklin Fretless Precision Bass , a distinctive instrument, with an alder body and modern C-shaped maple neck with an unfinished and unfretted ebony fingerboard with side dot position markers. Other features include vintage tuners, Hipshot Bass Xtender drop-D tuner on the E string, and three-way pickup selector switch that controls an American Series Precision Bass mid pickup and a Tony Franklin signature Jazz Bass bridge pickup with hex-screw pole pieces and ceramic bar magnets.
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Like unfretted string instruments, the trombone relies on the musician precisely positioning something, in this case the trombone's slide. The slide's pitch adjustment on a single partial is approximately the interval of a tritone on a slide length of over 80 centimeters. The trombonist may use his/her ear to minutely adjust pitch on sustained notes. By coincidence, the position of the bell on most trombones provides a reference for fourth position, but this is not accessible during fast passages and is massively unreliable as intonation varies by instrument make and model.
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A bent note is a musical note that is varied in pitch. With unfretted strings or other continuous-pitch instruments such as the trombone, or with the human voice, such variation is more properly described in terms of intonation. Bent notes are commonly played on fretted instruments, literally by bending the string with excess finger pressure, or on free reed instruments such as the harmonica, by using excess air pressure to overblow the reed. On brass instruments such as the trumpet, the note is bent by using the lip.
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The frets of the Appalachian dulcimer are typically arranged in a diatonic scale. This is in contrast with instruments like the guitar or banjo, which are fretted chromatically. As early as the mid-1950s some makers began to include at least one additional fret, usually the so-called "six and a half", "6½" or "6+" fret a half step below the octave. This enables one to play in the Ionian mode when tuned to D3-A3-D4 (the traditional tuning for the Mixolydian mode), where the scale starts on the open (unfretted) string.
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The instrument is generally strung with the melody string (or string pair) on the player's side of the instrument, and the bass string on the outside. In traditional play, fretting is achieved with a "noter"—typically a short length of dowel or bamboo (see photo at left)—on the melody course, while the middle and bass strings ring as unfretted drones. This style of play is now referred to as "noter-drone" play. In some traditions, players use a feather quill with the barbs removed to strum the instrument.
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Unlike the short-necked unfretted oud, the buzuq has a longer neck, smaller body and frets tied to the neck, which can be moved to produce the microtonal intervals used in the many maqamat (musical modes). Typically, it is furnished with two courses of metal strings which are played with a plectrum, offering a metallic yet lyrical resonance. Some instruments have three courses and up to seven strings total. The name of the instrument may come from Turkish bozuk (broken or disorderly), it refers to Bozuk düzen bağlama, a tuning of Turkish baglama.
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The leftmost strings of the instrument unite into a single course to form a doubled-string which is tuned to a unison that is lifted slightly from the bridge. This is where all melodic playing takes place. The rest are sympathetic strings numbering from 4 to 6 which are tuned to the octave, fifth and/or fourth of the main doubled-string. Due to the special nature of the instrument, the neck behaves as though it was unfretted despite the ordinary placement of numerous frets (anywhere from 24 to 34 or more to the octave).
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There are two basic types of Russian guitar: the "classical" model and the "gypsy" model. The classical model closely resembles the western 6-string classical guitar, and has nylon or gut strings. The gypsy model is steel strung, and resembles the western 6-string steel-string acoustic guitar, although more size and shape variations are found among gypsy guitars. A two-necked version of the Russian guitar was also once popular; these guitars usually had 11 or 12 strings—one neck with seven fretted strings, and another with four or five unfretted strings.
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A wide variety of musical instruments are known from Georgia. Among the most popular instruments are: blown instruments soinari, known in Samegrelo as larchemi (Georgian panpipe), stviri (flute), gudastviri (bagpipe), sting instruments changi (harp), chonguri (four stringed unfretted long neck lute), panduri (three stringed fretted long neck lute), bowed chuniri, known also as chianuri, and variety of drums. Georgian musical instruments are traditionally overshadowed by the rich vocal traditions of Georgia, and subsequently received much less attention from Georgian (and Western) scholars. Dimitri Arakishvili and particularly Manana Shilakadze contributed to the study of musical instrument in GeorgiaManana Shilakadze. 1970.
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Various kinds of partial capos A capo is a tool which clamps across all the strings of a string instriment, to raise the pitch of all the strings. This is done to achieve a brighter timbre, or to transpose the music to a higher key. Guitarists have also used many alternate tunings to change the pitch of the open (unfretted) strings. Recently, guitarists have begun to use capos that only clamp some of the strings, usually called a "partial capo", which offer similar options to guitarists as alternate tunings, with drone strings and new chord voicings.
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Violinists stop a string with a left-hand fingertip, shortening its playing length. Most often the string is stopped against the violin's fingerboard, but in some cases a string lightly touched with the fingertip is enough, causing an artificial harmonic to be produced. Stopping the string at a shorter length has the effect of raising its pitch, and since the fingerboard is unfretted, any frequency on the length of the string is possible. There is a difference in timbre between notes made on an 'open' string and those produced by placing the left hand fingers on the string, as the finger acts to reduce the number of harmonics present.
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Lutes are an extremely important part of Badakhshani music, especially the three-stringed shortneck lute played with a wooden plectrum; this is called the Pamiri rubab. Other varieties of lute in Badakhshan include the komus, a three-stringed but unfretted lute played by the Kyrgyz of eastern Badakhshan, the tanbur, a seven-stringed lute with sympathetic strings, the setar, with three melody strings and a number of sympathetic strings; the imported Afghan rubab and Azerbaijani tar are also a major part of Badakhshan's lute heritage . Other instruments include the ney, a kind of flute, and the Ghaychak, a spiked fiddle; the circular frame drum daf is also common, as is the accordion, brought by Russians.
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Under the strings of tanpuras, which are unfretted (unstopped), and occasionally under those bass drone strings of sitars and surbahars which are seldom fretted, cotton threads are placed on the javari bridge to control the exact position of the node and its height above the curved surface, in order to more precisely refine the sound of javari. These cotton threads are known in Hindi as 'jīvā', meaning "life" and referring to the brighter tone heard from the plucked string once the thread has been slid into the correct position. This process is called "adjusting the javari". After a substantial time of playing, the surface directly under the string will wear out through the erosive impact of the strings.
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That is to say, the fingers can press down on unfretted parts of the neck to achieve the same effect as stopping the frets. This allows the glissandi and portamenti to be executed flawlessly which constitute the primary characteristics of yaylı tambur. Moreover, the frets can be moved about depending on the tastes and choices of the player to achieve correct intonation of a given makam. Dr. Ozan Yarman has proposed an alternate 24-tone tuning and fretting for the tanbur that he has applied to his own instrument, which replaces the Arel-Ezgi-Uzdilek tone-system in use for Turkish Art music while also relying on the same array of accustomed microtonal accidentals to notate.
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The unfretted stringed instruments from the violin family (the violin, the viola, the cello and the double bass) are quite flexible in the way pitches can be adjusted. Stringed instruments that are not playing with fixed pitch instruments tend to adjust the pitch of key notes such as thirds and leading tones so that the pitches differ from equal temperament. Trombones have a slide that allows arbitrary tuning during performance. French horns can be tuned by shortening or lengthening the main tuning slide on the back of the instrument, with each individual rotary or piston slide for each rotary or piston valve, and by using the right hand inside the bell to adjust the pitch by pushing the hand in deeper to sharp the note, or pulling it out to flatten the note while playing.
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The double bass is closest in construction to violins, but has some notable similarities to the violone ("large viol"), the largest and lowest-pitched member of the viol family. Unlike the violone, however, the fingerboard of the double bass is unfretted, and the double bass has fewer strings (the violone, like most viols, generally had six strings, although some specimens had five or four). The fingerboard is made of ebony on high-quality instruments; on less expensive student instruments, other woods may be used and then painted or stained black (a process called "ebonizing"). The fingerboard is radiused using a curve, for the same reason that the bridge is curved: if the fingerboard and bridge were to be flat, then a bassist would not be able to bow the inner two strings individually.
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The "Machine Music" of George Antheil (starting with his Second Sonata, "The Airplane") and Alexander Mosolov (most notoriously his Iron Foundry) developed out of this. The process of extending musical vocabulary by exploring all available tones was pushed further by the use of Microtones in works by Charles Ives, Julián Carrillo, Alois Hába, John Foulds, Ivan Wyschnegradsky, Harry Partch and Mildred Couper among many others. Microtones are those intervals that are smaller than a semitone; human voices and unfretted strings can easily produce them by going in between the "normal" notes, but other instruments will have more difficulty—the piano and organ have no way of producing them at all, aside from retuning and/or major reconstruction. In the 1940s and 50s composers, notably Pierre Schaeffer, started to explore the application of technology to music in musique concrète .
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Early clavichords frequently had many notes played on each string, even going so far as the keyed monochord—an instrument with only one string—though most clavichords were triple- or double-fretted. Since only one note can be played at a time on each string, the fretting pattern is generally chosen so that notes rarely heard together (such as C and C) share a string pair. The advantages of this system compared with unfretted instruments (see below) include relative ease of tuning (with around half as many strings to keep in tune), greater volume (though still not really enough for use in chamber music), and a clearer, more direct sound. Among the disadvantages: temperament could not be re-set without bending the tangents; and playing required a further refinement of touch, since notes sharing a single string played in quick succession had to be slightly separated to avoid a disagreeable deadening of the sound, potentially disturbing a legato line.
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A trombone playing a glissando Musical instruments with continuously variable pitch can effect a portamento over a substantial range. These include unfretted stringed instruments (such as the violin, viola, cello and double bass, and fretless guitars), stringed instruments with a way of stretching the strings (such as the guitar, veena, or sitar), a fretted guitar or lap steel guitar when accompanied with the use of a slide, wind instruments without valves or stops (such as the trombone or slide whistle), timpani (kettledrums), electronic instruments (such as the theremin, the ondes Martenot, synthesizers and keytars), the water organ, and the human voice. Other wind instruments can effect a similar limited slide by altering the lip pressure (on trumpet, for example) or a combination of embouchure and rolling the head joint (as on the flute), while others such as the clarinet can achieve this by slowly dragging fingers off tone holes or changing the oral cavity's resonance by manipulating tongue position, embouchure, and throat shaping. Many electric guitars are fitted with a tremolo arm which can produce either a portamento, a vibrato, or a combination of both (but not a true tremolo despite the name).
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