The Well Tempered Guitar - Audio CD by Tom Stone

Click here to listen to a sample of the music from this CD

My first carerr was as a classical guitarist and composer. I studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and later also taught there. I also developed an invention for the guitar called Interchangeable Fingerboards. The idea was to be able to slide one finger board off of the guitar and replace it with another one that had the frets placed in different locations making it possible to have different fingerboards for the scales and tuning systems of different cultures, different periods of history and new experimental scales. I started a business to make these Interchangeable Fingerboards. This was my first business venture and was called Intonation Systems, Inc.

Althought the business eventually didn't make it we did produce some insturments and I used one of them to make a recording of pieces mainly from the Renaissance and Baroque periods but also including some classical and modern pieces that lend themselves to the type of temperment that I used for this recording. The system is called "meantone temperment." It was designed to make the major thirds of the chords be in perfect harmony with the natural harmonics of the strings. In our modern tuning system for guitars, pianos, etc. that is called equal temperment, the tuning of the third of the chords is somewhat "sharp" meaning higher than the natural harmonic interval. This causes a kind of "beating" or fluctuation in the sounds of the music giving it a more active, excited quality to all music played in this temperment compared to the older meantone temperment.

Meantone temperment was used for the tuning of harpsichords and organs during the baroque periods of European music history. Music played in this temperment has a settled, calm and harmonious quality unlike our modern system. This makes the music particularly soothing and pleasant. It is a subtle but powerful difference.

The Well Tempered Guitar - by Tom Stone

Program

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I guess you could say that I've been into changing the frequencies of things all my life. These days we tune up the harmony of our inner human software using Human Software Engineering. You can explore the rest of this web site to learn more about that it this is the first place you have landed.