3rd bridge guitar
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A third bridge guitar is a guitar with three bridges, instead of the usual two (counting the nut as a bridge).
Standard guitars have two bridges, the first near the tuning pegs (called the "nut"), the second at the other end of the strings, near where they are normally plucked or strummed. But by adding a third bridge, one can create a number of unusual sounds vaguely reminiscent of chimes, bells or harps.
Both electric guitars and acoustic guitars can have this feature, though electric amplification makes the usually quiet third bridge more audible. A third bridge can be a "prepared guitar" modified with an object—for instance, a screwdriver—placed under the strings to act as a makeshift bridge, or it can be a custom made instrument.
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History
Guitars with tailed bridges
Leo Fender designed two guitars, the Fender Jaguar and the Fender Jazzmaster, which unintentionally had a primitive third bridge mechanism in their floating bridge with limited timbre when used in an extended technique. When the strings are played behind the bridge, a chiming tone is created.
Several guitar manufacturers from the 1960s, such as Univox (USA), Teisco (Japan), Egmond (Holland) and Eko (Italy), made inexpensive guitars with long bridges suitable for this playing technique.
Screwdriver technique
Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth are well known for using the screwdriver technique on their guitars. Confusion Is Sex contains a lot of music with third-bridge sounds. Other musical examples of this technique are the intros of the song "Bull in the Heather", again from Sonic Youth, "Good Morning, Captain" from Slint's album Spiderland and during the intro and outro of "You Know You're Right" by Nirvana, using a Univox Hi-Flier.
Tunde Adebimpe of TV on the Radio about Aaron Hemphill of Liars: "I remember coming home one day and Aaron was on the floor with a guitar, like there were a bunch of pencils in it, and he was tapping on it. I was like, what's he doing? And Dave said (whispers), "Playing something on 'Blind'.''"
Custom made instruments
Dissatisfied with the limitations of the preparation of a normal guitar, several people began building instruments to improve the technical possibillities. One of the first guitarists who began building third bridge instruments was Fred Frith.
Glenn Branca
Guitarist and composer Glenn Branca has created several primitive but effective working models of third bridge guitars for his first symphonies.
Hans Reichel
Since the 1970s, German guitarist and luthier Hans Reichel has created guitars with third-bridge-like qualities.
Moodswinger
In 2003 experimental luthier Yuri Landman created his first third bridge zither. In 2006 he built a 12-string third bridge guitar for Aaron Hemphill of the Liars he called the Moodswinger. The pickup and electronics are built into the neck instead of in the body like typical electric guitars. The tuning of this instrument is a circle of fourths:
- E-A-D-G-C-F-A#-D#-G#-C#-F#-B, arranged in 3 clusters of 4 strings each.
In contrast to its predecessors, the Moodswinger is more focused on an easy non-atonal playing technique. A mathematical scale is added to specify 23 harmonic positions on the strings. Because the 12 strings are tuned in a circle of fourths, it's always possible to play every note of the equal tempered scale. However some positions have a + or - indication, because the equal tempered scale is not a perfect well tempered scale.
Neptune
The American band Neptune has also created custom-made guitars with drumsticks used as a movable third bridge.
Pencilina
The pencilina is a custom-made string instrument invented around 1985 by Bradford Reed. The instrument is a double neck third bridge guitar with four bass strings and six guitar strings.
How it works
The third bridge divides the strings into two segments with different pitches. Depending on where the string is played, a harmonic-like second tone is created. This sound is often described as a bell-like tone. The string resonates more or less when the back side is struck, depending on the position of the third bridge along the string. The reason this happens can be explained by the theory of acoustic resonance and microtonality. At harmonic nodal positions, the string resonates more than at other positions. For instance, dividing the string 1/3 + 2/3 creates a clear overtone, while 24/33 + 9/33 creates an indistinct overtone.
See also
Bibliography
- Helmholtz, H. von. (1877). Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen als physiologische Grundlage für die Theorie der Musik. 1877, 6th ed., Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1913; trans. by A.J. Ellis as On the sensations of tone as a physiological basis for the theory of music (1885). Reprinted New York: Dover, 1954. ISBN 0-486-60753-4
- Partch, Harry. Genesis of a Music, 2nd ed. Da capo press, 1974. ISBN 0-306-80106-X
External links
- What's 3rd Bridge?, a clarification by Yuri Landman
- GlennBranca.com
- www.pencilina.com, Bradford Reed's home page
- Oddmusic A website dedicated to unique, odd, ethnic, experimental and unusual musical instruments and resources.
- The interaction of reflected waves on a string is illustrated in a simplified animation that can be found at Edward Zobel's "Zona Land".
