Monz's baglama frets
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Ozan Yarman
Dec 26, 2011, 5:12:46 PM12/26/11
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Monz has written to me and others regarding his measurements of the fret positions of a baglama he purchased from the Grand Bazaar during his visit. Here they are:
Monz's baglama - purchased at the bazaar in istanbul 2011.1209(if your browser uses a fancy font, paste this table into
a plain text file to see it properly)
measurement of frets
mm ~ratio cents 53edo 159edo
0.0 1/1 0.0 0.0 0.0 upper bridge ("nut")
36.8 91/86 97.8 4.3 13.0
54.1 62/57 145.7 6.4 19.3
71.7 28/25 195.9 8.7 26.0
102.9 13/11 288.6 12.7 38.2
123.6 103/84 353.0 15.6 46.8
138.0 34/27 399.2 17.6 52.9
164.9 65/49 489.0 21.6 64.8
192.7 80/57 587.0 25.9 77.8
206.2 13/9 636.7 28.1 84.4
222.0 3/2 696.7 30.8 92.3
244.1 140/89 784.2 34.6 103.9
258.9 44/27 845.4 37.3 112.0
269.8 77/46 892.0 39.4 118.2
290.0 171/97 981.6 43.4 130.1
306.5 129/70 1058.4 46.7 140.2
322.7 27/14 1137.3 50.2 150.7
333.0 163/82 1189.4 52.5 157.6
352.1 59/28 1290.4 57.0 171.0
370.0 163/73 1390.7 61.4 184.3
670.0 lower bridge
It should not be deemed improper if I also copy/paste monz's comments on the table of data above:
i'm sure this will not come as a surprise to ozan ...
i just made precise measurements of the frets on my baglama,
using a millimeter scale and a magnifying glass to estimate
by eye to the nearest 1/10 millimeter.
below is a table of my measurements, showing approximate ratios,
cents, and how closely subsets of 53-edo and 159-edo approximate
the actual fret measurements. it is easy to see that 53-edo
really does not approximate these frets very well, but that
159-edo does.
i also found it interesting that both of the major-2nds,
especially the higher one, and the "perfect-5th" are all
closer to meantone than pythagorean ... and most of all,
that the "octave" is more than 10 cents smaller than 2:1 ratio!
-monz
In response to monz, though a week late, indeed the data doesn't come as a great surprise to me. But the octave being narrower than 2/1 is a discrepancy. It might be due to not considering the compensation effect due to pressing down on the string with the fingers - which results in greater pressure (and therefore tension, yielding categorical increase in the frequency). Possibly, the stretch of the baglama scale is roughly 1 to 10 cents from the lowest to the highest pitch. Just add half a cent per fret until you reach the octave at the 17th step, this should suffice for the correction.
More analysis on everything MELM welcome!.. Don't forget the Urban Dictionary definition of MELM:
Oz.
✩ ✩ ✩
sinan cem Eroglu
Dec 26, 2011, 6:55:11 PM12/26/11
to mton...@googlegroups.com, ozany...@ozanyarman.com
Hi MELM Group,
First of all, it's nice to meet all of you again in this group. I want to say something about baglama frets for Monz because subject of baglama frets is my research subject. I have lots of experiences about frets because my father is very famous baglama maker in Turkey (You can check him out on YouTube). He tried and found many things with Erkan Ogur on baglama fretboard.
I think Monz's baglama is a ordinary touristic instrument like every instrument that can be found at the bazaar in Istanbul. This baglama's frets are located not mathematically because this kind of baglama is factory made, so its frets are located by eyeball estimate. I think that this baglama's maker doesn't know which temperament he should base on.
Normally, all baglama frets are located according to equal temperament (Tuner is 440 Hz), but microtones are changeable from player to player or region to region becase of dynamics of Anatolian Folk Music. Nevertheless we have a calculation to locate microtones. Let me explain this with an example;
All baglama makers have a table that contains measurment of frets. When we locate frets according to this table, we will have equal temperament 12 frets in one octave. If we tune well open strings with 440 Hz Tuner like guitar's open strings, all frets are ok in equal temperament, but as you can guess we need microtones so what will we do ? We can add lots of extra frets to baglama keyboard wherever we want, but on a normal baglama microtone frets's position is set. Having located equal temperament 12 frets in one octave, we change our tuner's calibration to 430 Hz and microtone frets are adjusted in 430 Hz. ( I refer 5 microtone frets that are approved on normal baglamas ). This method is very common and generally accepted. A baglama whose frets are adjusted under this method is ok for Turkish Folk Music Theory and globally accepted baglama fretboard.
So Monz's frets of baglama wasn't adjusted neither equal temperament nor any other temperament. Unfortunately, his baglama's measuremets are relative.
Actually, there are another crucial subjects that affect measurements of frets and general intonation of baglama. Those are location of bridge and location of breakaway point of strings. (picture 1 that you can find it on attachments). Lots of baglama bridge are located wrongly because baglama makers locate bridge on one fifth of string length. This cause intonation problems in equal temperament. Suitable bridge location is one fourth of string length. When bridge is located according to this measurement, left side of bridge and right side of bridge are octave each other ( picture 2 ).
Like classical guitar, sometimes baglama's intonation is unsuitable for equal temperament, suitable for "almost" just intonation. In this situation we can think that location of frets are wrong, but when we check frets out, they are actually ok. To solve this problem, we must change breakaway point of string. To do this, we attach very short steel strings under the actual strings for backward or forward breakaway point of string (picture 3).
As you can see, there are lots of components for location of baglama frets. I hope this data will be useful for all MELM participants.
Best wishes
Sinan Cem EROGLU
www.sinancemeroglu.com
From: ozany...@ozanyarman.com
Subject: {MELM: 4} Monz's baglama frets
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2011 00:12:46 +0200
To: mton...@googlegroups.com
First of all, it's nice to meet all of you again in this group. I want to say something about baglama frets for Monz because subject of baglama frets is my research subject. I have lots of experiences about frets because my father is very famous baglama maker in Turkey (You can check him out on YouTube). He tried and found many things with Erkan Ogur on baglama fretboard.
I think Monz's baglama is a ordinary touristic instrument like every instrument that can be found at the bazaar in Istanbul. This baglama's frets are located not mathematically because this kind of baglama is factory made, so its frets are located by eyeball estimate. I think that this baglama's maker doesn't know which temperament he should base on.
Normally, all baglama frets are located according to equal temperament (Tuner is 440 Hz), but microtones are changeable from player to player or region to region becase of dynamics of Anatolian Folk Music. Nevertheless we have a calculation to locate microtones. Let me explain this with an example;
All baglama makers have a table that contains measurment of frets. When we locate frets according to this table, we will have equal temperament 12 frets in one octave. If we tune well open strings with 440 Hz Tuner like guitar's open strings, all frets are ok in equal temperament, but as you can guess we need microtones so what will we do ? We can add lots of extra frets to baglama keyboard wherever we want, but on a normal baglama microtone frets's position is set. Having located equal temperament 12 frets in one octave, we change our tuner's calibration to 430 Hz and microtone frets are adjusted in 430 Hz. ( I refer 5 microtone frets that are approved on normal baglamas ). This method is very common and generally accepted. A baglama whose frets are adjusted under this method is ok for Turkish Folk Music Theory and globally accepted baglama fretboard.
So Monz's frets of baglama wasn't adjusted neither equal temperament nor any other temperament. Unfortunately, his baglama's measuremets are relative.
Actually, there are another crucial subjects that affect measurements of frets and general intonation of baglama. Those are location of bridge and location of breakaway point of strings. (picture 1 that you can find it on attachments). Lots of baglama bridge are located wrongly because baglama makers locate bridge on one fifth of string length. This cause intonation problems in equal temperament. Suitable bridge location is one fourth of string length. When bridge is located according to this measurement, left side of bridge and right side of bridge are octave each other ( picture 2 ).
Like classical guitar, sometimes baglama's intonation is unsuitable for equal temperament, suitable for "almost" just intonation. In this situation we can think that location of frets are wrong, but when we check frets out, they are actually ok. To solve this problem, we must change breakaway point of string. To do this, we attach very short steel strings under the actual strings for backward or forward breakaway point of string (picture 3).
As you can see, there are lots of components for location of baglama frets. I hope this data will be useful for all MELM participants.
Best wishes
Sinan Cem EROGLU
www.sinancemeroglu.com
From: ozany...@ozanyarman.com
Subject: {MELM: 4} Monz's baglama frets
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2011 00:12:46 +0200
To: mton...@googlegroups.com
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From: Subject: {MELM: 4} Monz's baglama frets
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2011 00:12:46 +0200
To: mton...@googlegroups.com
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Danny Wier
Dec 31, 2011, 11:03:34 AM12/31/11
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Though Sinan explained a whole lot, I do remember a file in the Scala archive:
! turkish_bagl.scl
!
Ratios of the 17 frets on the neck of "Baglama" ("saz") according to Yalçýn Tura
17
!
18/17
12/11
9/8
81/68
27/22
81/64
4/3
24/17
16/11
3/2
27/17
18/11
27/16
16/9
32/17
64/33
2/1
The name in the description should be Yalçın Tura, the composer and theorist (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0876832/).
This produces something close to 17 out of 24 equal temperament, actually, which if I remember correctly, is the "Arabic tuning" I found on a Roland keyboard a while back. The minor second might have been 256/243 instead of 18/17, however (both ratios are in Al-Farabi's division of the tetrachord, anyway.)
~D.
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