Die Wohltemperirte Gitarre

I often find myself browsing through online guitar forums, I find it’s a great way to experience new ideas and I also love to help other guitarists out with their technique issues (why do you think I got into teaching in the first place?!).

Anyway, the other day something caught my eye that I thought I should share, an apparently new guitar design called “True Temperament”- which claims to make the guitar more “in-tune” than the standard system. How is that supposed to work?! How is it “more in-tune”?! So many questions, I just had to check it out…

First, What is Temperament?

Well, “Temperament” refers to how an instrument is tuned, or more specifically for guitar, where the frets are placed. You see, the problem with ordinary frets is that they are not perfectly in tune all along the neck for every string (due to complicated maths and physics about harmonics, read here for more). Of course, this isn’t just a problem with guitar design, because we divide the octave into 12 semitones, whereas (due, again, to science) it actually splits into 24 “quartertones”. For example, in reality, F# is slightly lower in pitch than Gb.

This is where temperament comes in. Over many centuries there have been many different ways invented to divide our 12 semitone octave (i.e. different temperaments, some where the F#/Gb note is closer to F#, some where its closer to Gb)- the most famous of which being popularised by J.S.Bach’s “Das Wohltemperirte Klavier” (Which translates as “The Well-Tempered Keyboard”- hence the post title which means “The Well Tempered Guitar”).

Nowdays it’s standard to use “Equal Temperament”- which means that the octave is divided into 12 equally-sized semitones (i.e. F#/Gb is exactly the same distance from both F and G). Equal Temperament means that there aren’t certain keys that are closer to being “in-tune” than others, which is a common problem with other temperament systems.

The Well Tempered Guitar

So what does this mean for guitar? Well, as I mentioned before, it’s very difficult to place the frets on a guitar so that each note is exactly in tune. The closest your guitar probably gets is when its set up- i.e. comparing the harmonic at the 12th fret with the fretted note (a method that leaves the frets around the 12th fret being perfectly in tune, but as it gets down to the 1st fret it’s only an approximation). This is the problem that the makers of True Temperament claim to have fixed.

The Future of Guitar Design?

Is this the future of guitar design? I’m not so sure. I think this might be a bit over the top, I mean, the guitars just looks kinda broken. Does the small advantage of having better intonation than most people can tell, outweigh the odd-looking “wobbly” frets?

Despite the slight geekiness of the idea, it seems to have a lot of support. The video section of the site includes demos from none other than Steve Vai, and they claim to offer temperaments based on those used by Mozart and Beethoven (to name just a few). Yes, the idea that you can play a note on the 17th fret against an open string and have the two harmonise perfectly sounds appealing (play the B on the 4th fret G string against the open B, and compare it to the B on the 16th fret G string against the open B to see how this doesn’t happen on a standard guitar).

Conclusion?

I don’t really know what to make of this system. It does sound like a great idea, and the website is quite interesting to read (check it out here). I would love to be able to play one myself, but until then I’m not sure this is the way forward- especially if you look at how “wobbly” the frets are, this must have an impact on the technique you would have to use? I mean, what if you miss a fret?

A much better system would probably involve adjusting the fret heights, but then they would surely just wear down over time?

Please comment on this, I would love to know what people are thinking…

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October 8, 2009 at 2:29 pm | Music News and Opinions | No comments