The 9-string Fanned Fret Harp Guitar Project

Sidebar on Transitioning from one tuning to another
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Some may be curious how a professional player can transition from one instrument type to another without taking a year off to practice. We were able to transition from the 2007 six-string guitars to the 2012 guitars in only a little over a month because the seven strings retained the tuning we already knew for six of the seven strings. Retaining the core tuning of the guitar meant that the repertory could be transported intact, the first task being only to learn to ignore the seventh string and play as usual.

Small improvements were then made a little at a time by incorporating the new string for short passages where it would have the most effect. This is how we proceeded in the transition from the six strings to the seven strings, and we were able to begin playing the seven strings in public in April of 2012, when we had had them for a little over a month. (We couldn't stand to wait any longer, even though we made many mistakes on stage at first.) We have played on the seven string guitars from 2012 to date, except that I began to perform on the 2013 9-string prototype instead in the late months of 2015 (although by that time I had modified it to an eight-string because of two of the design flaws discussed here).

The Dowland Tuning Experiment:

If a new extended range guitar were to have a completely new tuning, an entirely new repertory would have to be learned - that is, even very familiar tunes would have to be rearranged in new fingering positions. (Our arrangements are complex pieces of interlocking choreography that often take us months to compose, practice and memorize.) I tested this process by using a different tuning for the prototype 9-string for three months in January thru March of 2014, which was the tuning used by John Dowland in the early 17th century for his 9-course lute:

C2 D2 F2 G2 C3 F3 A3 D4 G4.

This tuning has certain specific merits, and is very attractive. However, it became apparent after three months that it would take as long for me to re-learn my half of the duet repertory in new positions as it did to learn it the first time, in other words perhaps as much as ten years. At the very least I would have to take a few months off to get up to speed, not something we really wanted to do. I was also not happy with the irregular fingering patterns on the low basses in this tuning. (Dowland used the low C2, D2 and F2 only as open strings, unfretted.) So I ended that experiment.

The errors in the prototype design took center stage:

I had hoped that it would be possible to proceed with the nine string just as with the seven, by porting my seven-string repertory and learning to ignore the extra strings for a time. However, as it turned out, the experimental aspects of the prototype design made that process too difficult to accomplish in a short time; instead I struggled for two years with understanding and coming to terms with the design errors which I had made. Only just before Christmas 2015 did I begin to play the Prototype 9-String Fanned Fret Harp Guitar in public playing duets on stage with Frances, after over two years of making adjustments and modifications and testing it out in informal solo performances. (Here I would like to express my thanks to the Shelter Theater of San Miguel de Allende for their ongoing Tuesday night Open Mic where I performed these tests. In case you don't know, the Shelter's Open Mic is the best variety show going on a Tuesday night in San Miguel, a very high-quality open mic as open mics go.)

I hoped that the 2016 Nine String Fanned Fret Harp Guitar would have fewer challenges to deal with than the 2013 Prototype, because (1) the four major design errors had been corrected (or, at worst, adjusted) and (2) I had already overcome the most obvious challenges of learning the grammar of the extra strings and playing on the fanned frets, by playing the prototype. The biggest forseeable challenge with the 2016 build was not the width of the fingerboard or the angles of the frets, but simply that the frets would be somewhat wider apart and be too big for my fingers. This turned out not to be the case: the new 2016 Nine String is very comfortable to play.

Edit 2018: I said that prematurely. After I had had the new build about six months, my left hand barre muscle gave out, and I had a full year of struggling to compensate and was not able to put in a full practice schedule, although I kept performing on it and have (in fact) not played any other guitar for more than about five minutes since I got it. Around the beginning of 2018 I was back up to speed, but the physical difficulty slowed me down much more than I expected and interfered with the completion of some planned projects.

  • My experience with the 2013 Prototype and with the finished 2016 build indicates that the perceived string length of a fanned fret guitar is equal to the average of all the string lengths, not to the longest string length as I had originally feared, a factor which had originally influenced my choice of unnecessarily short string lengths (as it turned out) for the prototype. (See design errors #2 and #3 on the history page.)

  • The average string length of the 2013 Prototype is 62 centimeters; this actually feels quite short under the hand, compared to the standard string length of the classical guitar at 65c, and once having gotten used to the fanned fret layout. The large stretches are only on the bass strings; there the technique is not different from on an electric bass. On the treble strings, the shorter scale makes requinto-style licks easy. (The requinto is the small guitar used for ornamental lead-guitar work in the traditional Mexican trio of bass, guitar, requinto and 3 voices.)

  • The average string length of all nine strings on the 2016 build is 66 centimeters, equal on average to the usual "long-scale" six-string, and not such a great challenge as it turns out.

  • On the 2016 build, the average string length of only the six strings that correspond to the normal and familiar tuning of the old six string guitar will be 65.25 centimeters, as compared to the usual six-string length of 65 centimeters: only two and a half millimeters more.

  • The average length of the six highest-pitched strings of the 2016 build, which we may call the "requinto range", disregarding the three low basses E2, B1, and F#1, will be only 63.75 centimeters, still quite short and comfortable for requinto-style passage work.

  • Even the longest string, the low F#1 at 72 c, will still be shorter than a short-scale bass at 76c (30") and bass players with ordinary sized hands play these all the time, and longer ones too.

The modifications which I made to the prototype of 2013 over the course of two years, stated briefly, were
  1. increase the string width to the maximum at the nut by eliminating the extra space at the edges of the fingerboard. This still left the string spacing uncomfortably narrow.
  2. Eliminate the low F#1 string. This was a painful decision. (See history.)
  3. Build a new nut with the left hand string spacing at 8.5mm.
  4. Build a new saddle bone with notches, spacing the strings at 11.5mm apart near the bridge. I built two of these, since the dimensions were not right on the first one. When I had made and installed the second of these, the guitar became comfortable to play for the first time. The notched saddle proved to be a benefit because it prevents the strings from sliding on the angled bridge when plucked.
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