“Kertsopoulos Aesthetics” The How and the Why Part 2: The “Kertsopoulos High-Tuned Strings”

It’s a reality. The guitar plays successfully in the tuning range of the violin.

At 32.5 cm. (usual) string length, the violin tunes its strings an octave higher than the guitar. Antonio de Torres eventually settled on 32.5 X 2 = 65 cm for the guitar’s string length. Modern guitars range from 64 to a 66.6 or even 67 cm string length, but the 65 cm established by Torres is a often used as the standard scale length.

If one takes the violin string length as a standard and doubles the length, it’s acoustically natural and evident to end up with an octave lower tuning under the same – as the violin’s – applied tension. Thus we end up with our known guitar tuning, with parallel string tension approximations existing there.

The “Kertsopoulos” nylon, metalonylon, metalonymatic strings for normal, high and re-entrant tuning with multi-tuning & multi-timbre possibilities.

The violin bridge has a sound post underneath it, which sits tight in-between the top and the back plates, providing extra support to the bridge, which however is under a vertical applied force exerted by the tension of the strings.

This does not exist in a guitar (the top – soundboard and the back do not bond with any sound post) and the guitar’s bridge is under different torque tension vectors, exercising synthetic forces on the bridge and the soundboard (in turn) and in various directions in regard to the vertical position of the saddle.

The tuning is 9 semitones higher than normal to aim for a harpsichord related interpretation.

All these peculiarities make it an extremely difficult task to construct guitar strings, which will be capable of being tuned an octave higher than normal, meaning to play in the range of the violin, but with a doubled string length. Theoretically and practically it has seemed impossible, if one also considers the synthetic forces that are applied to the saddle and the bridge of the modern classical guitar.

Additionally to the above mentioned issues, we would like to be able to obtain this high tuning on the guitar without increasing the overall tension more than what the normal tension of the strings is expected to be. While providing a considerable mass for each string gauge so that the sound has the appropriate body, volume, sustain, attack and desirable timber.

One needs to have quality high-tuned strings in order to produce a high-pitched guitar.

It has been done successfully – first presented worldwide in 1994 – through a very especially applied technology by the maker. The acoustical and musical results are shown through the different interpretations in the videos presented in this article.

S.Gregoriadou interpreting on a high tuning 4 semitones higher than normal – a harpsichord aimed timber and sonority interpretation.

Attention: Please do not attempt to tune your guitar strings higher than normal because there is a danger of damaging your instrument. To get the high-pitched tunings for your guitar, it is necessary to use especially designed and constructed strings for this purpose.

The “Kertsopoulos” string construction uses a special application, where all the strings apart from the first are wound on the instrument itself, resembling the gut-string tradition of the past, with the exception being that the material quality of the strings is made with modern technological methods.

Apart from the special mass distribution and unique molecular structure, these high-tuned strings have an extremely balanced coefficient of elasticity, to favorably control the tension required for tuning them high. While at the same time providing them with rich vibrational qualities for producing sustain, roundness in the attack and added warmth within their brilliance.

Without these specially designed high-tuned strings, the high-pitched guitar would never have been a reality for guitarists, but only a transcendental fantasy for unrealistic dreamers. It is however, a reality for guitarists that can interpret works from many different styles and in various alternative tuning ranges.

The guitar is tuned 9 semitones higher than normal and the interpretation resembles a mandolin and a harp playing, which agrees with F.Tarrega’s vision of the specific work.

The strings can be used on any guitar that have a string length ranging from 64 to 67 cm. and all possible tunings from 0 (open strings) = 1st fret to 0=14th fret can be accomplished. An open architectural scheme is achieved because a guitarist might want to play a work in 0 (open strings) = 4th fret and play the same or another work at 0 = 9th fret or 0 = 12th fret (violin’s tuning).

Each set of strings can be used for tuning the guitar in four different ways. For example: the set of strings used for 0 (open strings) = 12th fret will provide successful tunings at 0 = 9th, 10th or 11th fret tuning etc. The other sets are the 5th to 8th fret tuning range and the 1st to 4th fret tuning range, while the 13th to the 14th fret range is the outermost high range set.

Since at the beginning we referred to the violin it is within our scope to ask:

Why is the violin the leading instrument in an orchestra or even why is the violin the leading stringed instrument in its own family of instruments?

What causes the high pitched instruments in every category of instruments to possess the lead?

Why is the soprano voice the leading part in all the types of music?

The usual answer to these questions is that in the general scope of things, the listener gives more attention and prevalence to the higher notes in any situation. OK got it, but then another important question arises:

Why is that happening? What are the actual reasons for this?

The answer lies in the ability of humans beings to comprehend the wider content of harmonic-partial range existing in higher sounding instruments, in contrast with the limited content of the harmonic partial range of lower sounding instruments. Making this simple in guitar language is the video below:

The guitar is tuned 14 semitones higher than normal, which is one tone over the violin tuning range.

A guitar tuned at the normal tuning has its 6th string E (Helmholtz pitch notation) at a frequency of 82.4 Hz and the 1st string at the 12th fret e” at 82.4 x 8 = 659.2 Hz. The 12th harmonic partial of the first string’s twelfth fret e” will be (theoretically, because in practice there is always an approximation occurring) 659.2 x 12 = 7,910.4 Hz.

In contrast to the above, a high – pitched tuning of an octave higher than normal on a guitar has its 6th string e at a frequency of 82.4 x 2 = 164.8 Hz and the first string at the 12th fret e”’ at 164.8 x 8 = 1,318.4 Hz. The 12th harmonic partial of the 1st string’s twelfth fret e”’ will be around 1,318.4 x 12 = 15,820.8 Hz.

Let’s now make the comparison: the normal tuning from the lowest fundamental note of the 6th open string to the 12th harmonic partial of the 1st string at the 12th fret gives a range of 82.4 Hz to 7,910.4 Hz, whereas for the same criteria the high-pitched tuning gives 164.8 Hz to 15,820.8 Hz.

The high-pitched tuning loses a lower octave within the range of 82.4 Hz to 164.8 Hz, but gains a higher octave not existing (as a whole) in the normal tuning with an extremely wide span of harmonic partial content ranging from 7,910.4 Hz to 15,820.8 Hz. The gain in higher frequency is more significant with regard to the loss of the lower octave in this tuning.

A wider, and in turn greater, span of the harmonic partials (existing mainly from the overall harmonic spectrum of fundamentals as they are related to overtones) provides a richer platform of information for the conception; hence more musical interest is promoted in the reasoning and understanding processes of the mind.

This can be said to account for the fundamental “how and why” of the high frequency lead that characterizes many, if not all, of the high-pitched instruments, from an acoustical and psycho-physiological aspect.

A guitar duet where the guitars are an octave apart.

A poly-stylistic platform is at hand today and many combination’s of modern arrangements, compositions (preserving authenticity in timbre or the original keys in transcriptions) can be done successfully, overcoming many interpretational obstacles and problems existing in the interpreter’s sphere.

The above is a “Kertsopoulos aesthetics” strings invention. A construction using all of the modern technological means to incorporate the rich historical tradition of the guitar, in all its aspects (past and present), and combine them to form an open architectural platform of a versatile all-frets system of guitar tuning, which in turn initializes a realizable evolution of the instrument. One that will do justice to the music and enhance the role and interpretational capabilities of the guitarists themselves.

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A classical-flamenco guitar soloist, composer, professor, luthier and string constructor, the Greek – Canadian Yorgos Kertsopoulos is also a researcher, inventor, author and founder of “the Guitar’s mathematic model and Geometric progression” (DAS MUSIKINSTRUMENT, Heft 9/ Sep. 1984, in German and English “The Physics of the Guitar”- Presentation of the same at the International Music Messe-Frankfurt, College of Furniture-London and seminars to respected luthiers and guitarists of England invited by GUITAR magazine)…. his work is so unique in its scientific approach but also so full of traditional truths, it includes everything…Jose Ramirez (at the press conference given by Y.Kertsopoulos at the Music Messe in Frankfurt-1983). His work as “Kertsopoulos aesthetics” involves the constructional revival of the different forms, tunings and sound timbres the guitar possessed in its history.

…These guitars possess antique sounds, sounds with an ancient charm. Amalia Ramirez 7 Feb. 2009.

Yorgos is the author of: “Space-Time Theory Vol. A’ The Philosophy of Space-Time“