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I’m working with my contrabass guitar more now. The local guitar ensemble I’ve been nursing along has become popular in our town. We had to come up with a name for programming in cultural events. We picked Akune Guitar Circle, I wanted Black Zeppelin Iron Sabbath Redux, but was voted down.
Anyway we are going to work with a soprano during 2025, we’re going to mount her, I mean we are going to mount soprano and guitar ensemble works adapted from Japanese folk songs and classical music. Downside, she doesn’t sing in Spanish so that cuts out a huge swath of things I can bring. Upside, she’s a real smooth mezzo bel canto not a lazer beamer. She sings in Italian and German, studied in Vienna. So also upside we’ll be doing the first movement of Bachianas #5, Schubert’s Standchen ( aka Seranade) and some Monteverdi for starters.
I’m getting acquainted with the contrabass thing because we’re going to use it like a continuo instrument. I’ll just be laying down basic foundation chords.
It’s a guitar I built in 2023 with Magma Transpositor strings, Octave low E set.
sounds good. You can play some Carlos Montoya on that thing.
Curious, do you notate parts for that guitar as if it was tuned standard, or does the player adapt to bass clef?
The player reads standard guitar music in treble and the music sounds one octave below.
The low E is the least successful string, it’s a little loose, but it’s ok. I’m toying with the idea of raising the 6th string pitch to F to get away from the slack jawed yokel sound of Carlos.
The Schubert lieder I’ll be accompanying with this goes as low as F, no bass E needed. The scale length is 655, it should be 665 or longer to get that slack out of the low E, but it’s still ok.
I am sure you have looked this though way before I mention it now but nevertheless I will say it.
First of all the sound is captivating. Well done for that.
So my contribution about the slack of the 6th, which of course sounds super amazing already. Some string companies make strings that can be tuned differently. Aquila comes to mind. They have a special tunings section where low e is available, but of course they make these strings for normal guitars so they keep the tension as it were a normal string. So it might not be suitable for what you are making.
I have used the Aquila strings. I mentioned at the end of the initial post that I’m using Magnacore brand low octave E set. It’s an Argentine company and I get this brand through Strings by Mail in the U.S.
These are great strings, but have one issue, they don’t have enough windings to work on scales over 650mm. I want to make a contrabass guitar in the future with a longer scale ideally or a fanned fret scale because that’s the sure way to get the basses from being slack.
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