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Full page: [ Ссылка ] | “Robert Fripp, of King Crimson and Brian Eno fame, devised his fifths-based ‘New Standard Tuning’ (NST) in the 1980s – chiefly seeking to open up a broader range of melodic movements. He stacked up four perfect 5ths, completing the tuning with a min. 3rd at the top to balance out the extreme wideness (and give parallel G tones on 5+1str). The resulting layout contains the open notes of the viola/cello (CGDA) and also the violin/mandolin (GDAE): which, together, form a reordered, register-shuffled C Major Pentatonic scale (tones in order: 6-4-2-5-3str). Sometimes called ‘Crafty’ tuning by associates of Fripp and his Guitar Craft academy, while Fripp has himself suggested that it “would be better named the ‘Guitar Craft Standard’ tuning, or ‘C [Major] Pentatonic’ tuning”. Intriguing in its multifaceted freedoms – but the huge width necessitates a restring to ring out cleanly (31 semitones: a full 5th more than Standard)...”

• New Standard (‘Crafty’) | C-G-D-A-E-G | Semitone pattern (i.e. 'what to press'): 7/7/7/7/3

“Fripp explained the tuning’s March 1985 genesis in a 2010 internet diary post (as collated by ixlramp on SevenString): “In the sauna of the Apple Health Spa on Bleecker & Thompson in NYC…the ‘NST’ flew by – over my head, going from right [to] left…low to high. Originally seen in 5ths, [but] the top string would not go to B. So, as on a tenor banjo, I adopted an A on the first string. These kept breaking: so G was adopted. This has worked well…in bringing ‘what is possible in an unconditioned world’ into ‘actuality in a conditioned world’…where Newtonian physics apply to thin strings, carrying too great a load.” But what led to this inspiration? In a top-drawer 1991 interview with Tony Bacon, Fripp goes into laudable depth in detailing how, really, such processes are ultimately unexplainable: “It’s difficult when examining any creative leap or insight to approach it rationally. You say, ‘Well, why did you do that?’ The answer is ‘I didn’t do it’. It presented itself, it occurred, and any flash of that, suddenly you know…Any kind of creative insight, whether it be a piece of music or a solo, or the solution to a problem, scientific, technical, artistic, whatever, there’s always this element of [claps hands]. It’s always in a flash. It’s a recognition [of] ‘this is right’…it comes from outside oneself…The rational equipment will come behind, and will perhaps explain to me why this was the right decision…but that isn’t why...” More info: [ Ссылка ]

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—Altered Tunings Menu: Explore 100+ tunings from around the world (notes, chords, songs, harmonies, histories, myths, & more): [ Ссылка ]

—Rāga Junglism's World of Tuning: A ‘global guitar’ project aiming to reinvigorate our peg-twisting rituals, examining new tuning horizons from multiple musical angles: practical, harmonic, historic, social, scientific, spiritual, and so forth. We take a global view, incorporating ideas from a worldwide variety of string traditions – India, Hawaii, Mali, Madagascar, Java, New Guinea, and beyond. See the full project: [ Ссылка ]

All resources on my site will stay 100% open-access & ad-free: above all, I want these pages to bring creative joy, and catalyse some fresh questioning around what we - and the guitar - are truly capable of. If you want to support these projects, hire me to play/write/record, or try out some online lessons: expand your sonic imagination with ideas from global music! Get in touch: [ Ссылка ]

—Rāga Junglism | George Howlett
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(rāga: ‘that which colours the mind’)

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