Performing
Persian Music Microtones on Electric Guitar
by Salim Ghazi Saeedi, Dec 2012
Persian music scales incorporate quarter tone
type of microtones (See “Persian Modes: Reading
Between the Lines of Western Music” from the same author). Performing such
intervals on electric guitar could be tricky; but in course of composition and
recording my 2012 album, namoWoman, due considerable use of such quarter tones,
I devised practical methods for performing them on electric guitar that I have
put forward in this article.
Performing quarter tones on an electric guitar could be done in
two general ways:
Pre-bending notes into quarter tones
(not
recommended)
Pros:
Practical on all types of guitar
Cons:
Preventing unwanted sounds in
between played notes is almost impractical. When you want to play a
note in consequence of a bended note, the bended note may make
sounds in its way of bend release.
Not doable on open strings
Raising the pitch by pressing the right
hand on the bridge (recommended)
Pros:
More controllable than pre-bending
technique
Makes the performer able to
vibrate or bend from a quarter tone to another tone.
Cons:
Only doable on Floyd Rose tremolo
system
In both methods it is possible that between
shifting notes, some unwanted sounds are produced; but such chances would
considerably diminish if note shifting is done at the right moment. Here I have
described the recommended method of "raising the pitch by pressing the right
hand on the bridge":
Suppose we want to play (G-A)*
on D string. G is on 5th fret and A
will be resulted by raising the 6th fret’s pitch but 50% of semitone
or 50 cents (note
that the interval between G and A
is ¾ tone). Normally play the 5th fret and then immediately before
playing the 6th fret gently put your right hand on the bridge so that
you raise the pitch by 50%. Please note that at the moment of playing a quarter
tone by this method, the player is performing 3 actions approximately at the same
time: (1) Putting the left hand finger on the fret (2) striking the string by
right hand’s pick or finger (3) pressing the right hand on the bridge. Two
important considerations:
Note that pressing the right hand
should be done immediately before other actions, so that at the moment of
striking the note the pitch should have been raised to the desired quarter
tone.
Due difference in string tensions, the
required amount of pressure on the bridge to raise a note’s pitch by 50%
of semitone differs among strings. e.g. high E string requires more pressure in
comparison to G string.
You may do the following to help your ears and technique
to improve regarding playing Persian microtones on electric guitar:
Listen to quarter tone music will help
you build the skill of finding the right quarter tone pitch. (Check out Persian Traditional Music on Youtube
here and
here)
Practice with a tuner will help a lot in
finding the right amount of pressure required to make a pitch 50% of
semitone (AP
Guitar Tuner is highly recommended. It is the only precise and fast
responsive tuner I have found on internet)
As an example, I wrote and performed the
following piece. The motives are related to one of the songs in my 2012 album,
namoWoman: