Not a single photo of the palmfrets in the article, wow. Closest you get is a hand covering the entire device.

https://palmfrets.com/

I was much more interested once I saw the actual website.

Long story short, it's basically a fret at the bridge end of the guitar, so using it will bring the 'root' note of the bass strings up a semitone or few.

I can see this being pretty useful for drones when fingerpicking. Though combining this with normal frets on the top string will necessarily be inaccurate because it shortens the string length, so the normal frets will be slightly misplaced.

Yeah — I don't really see how it can work except on the bass strings (played open).

This is a novel but slightly peculiar take on this problem. But there are lots of other things, right?

Listing for others since I suspect you know: all of this scheming about live-manipulating the basic tuning of an electric guitar dates back to the Parsons-White stringbender (and arguably further, since that was a way to get pedal steel sounds), which has led to stuff like the Duesenberg Multibender, the really extraordinary MayTrem (which keeps all strings in relative tune as the pitch is bent), the amazing Hipshot Doubleshot which lets you tune a guitar or dobro in two separate open tunings and switch between them instantaneously with a lever, etc.

Ed Gerhard added single-string frets to the bass side of his weissenborn (acoustic lap steel) that he can play with the fingers behind his slide or (incredibly) with his thumb.

All of these things are sort of fiddling at the edge of the question of a musical instrument, which is: should you confound their constraints or work within them? It's a bit like the thing about whether a dulcimer should be diatonic, whether you should add just the frets you need, whether it should be chromatic, whether it should have removable frets, etc. etc.

As a sort of hobbyist lap steel player I find all these things fascinating, but I think the ultimate question is — where do you draw the line? There are lots of things I can't play on a six-string lap steel, but should I change the instrument so I can, or should I accept the role the instrument plays, and play the things I can?

Another way to look at it is: why is the Harpejji niche? Why isn't everyone playing the Linnstrument? Why don't all pianists play the ROLI Seaboard?

> All of these things are sort of fiddling at the edge of the question of a musical instrument, which is: should you confound their constraints or work within them?

I feel like this is no different than asking “what style of music should I play?”

The answer is whatever you are drawn to as an artist. What interests you more?

I hope some people work within the constraints of an instrument, and some people change the instrument. I love that there are people who make music with household items, and I love people who faithfully play instruments unchanged in design for thousands of years.

All of the options provide plenty of outlets for creativity, and I love that there are people who want to explore different ones, and share the results with the rest of us. Sometimes one of those modifications invents a new instrument that captures the heart of millions and will proliferate for decades, and sometimes someone finds a new way to play an old instrument that opens the eyes of everyone to the possibilities that were always there.

> Sometimes one of those modifications invents a new instrument that captures the heart of millions

Absolutely — the pedal steel is the obvious example. The entire notion of the upward country pedal steel guitar bend is actually a side-effect of the continuous behaviour of a pitch shifting mechanism that the original designer did not design it for, which has now evolved to create an entire genre.

And as an addendum I guess some of these more strident modifications are a bit more in scope now with the relative ease of working with metal in CAD and the lower cost of tooling generally.

I think as a musician one should maybe focus on playing instruments more than being dependent on products, but perhaps the balance is shifting more towards customisation than ever before.

Disagree. It's not a one-way trip, where the musician has inspiration, and the musical instrument is the vehicle. For most musicians, the musical instrument is itself a source of inspiration. That can be either expansive (look what this thing can do! wow!) or constraining (i guess i have only one option).

This is one reason why some musicians (guitarists cough) collect multiple instruments. A telecaster makes you play differently than a les paul.

Sadly I don't think you even used AI to come up with this complete non-answer. If you don't have anything to say, why comment?

I don't see why you need to draw a line anywhere. Change your instruments however much or little as you want; do whatever gives you the greatest enjoyment / practicality / sound you're looking for, or whatever else your reasons for making music might be. Or skip the music making entirely and just play around with hardware if that's your thing.

Players do usually draw a line, individually. Because you have to develop technique and composition around these things and that has time/flexibility/practicality costs in various ways.

For example it's not difficult to see with this thing how you can end up with arrangements that can only be played on this one modified instrument (which means as a gigging musician you probably need two of them!)

But also you have to spend the time developing the technique to use this thing, which might have impacts on your technique elsewhere.

The Duesenberg Multibender is a great example of this. It's a configurable bridge where separate levers can be configured to bend (usually bend up but with a hefty return spring they can be made to bend down) individual strings by differing amounts, which lets you can achieve voicings that sound like pedal steel instruments. (It's really cool.)

So that is possibly good if you are a pedal steel player but you want a portable lap instrument that has some of those bends for the only couple of pieces where they are needed, or you are a guitarist who has to play a couple of pieces that have pedal-steel bends in them and you don't want to buy a pedal steel.

But it has a cost: configuring the multibender takes time and the levers can only be used with the intervals they were configured for — indeed, if you configure the levers to bend strings down, you are possibly stuck in a single tuning.

It also changes the way musicians play; it's clear that compositions get written around the multibender. So it is, at that point, a somewhat different instrument to learn to really use, which takes time.

There are other ways to approximate some of the bends these levers can do — you can bend the string behind the bar with your finger, you can combine that with sliding the bar up a fret for a shifted pair of notes that match the typical bends (albeit without easy access to unshifted strings), or you can slant the bar, which has its own classic tone. These also need learning, and they have their own limitations (there's kind of only one lap steel capo that can survive string bends and return to tuning)

So for a player, the decision to use, or not use, these extra facilities is a meaningful decision in terms of how they want to sound, how much time they want to spend learning one technique over another, whether they want to compose around those facilities, etc.

(FWIW I would love one and could build a lap steel around one, but I have deliberately chosen to focus my learning attention and playing style on other techniques first)

It's pretty much the same with guitars — a lot of players decide early on that they are going to be fixed-bridge players or whammy bar players. They become quite different instrumentalists as a result.

Thanks for the further explanation, that makes more sense. From your original comment, it sounded like you were softly arguing against modifying instruments universally, to protect the sanctity of their instrumenthood or somesuch, but yes, there are plenty of reasons one might want to keep things 'vanilla' too.

> it sounded like you were softly arguing against modifying instruments universally,

Oh, no, not at all. I just feel that sometimes eliminating constraints is not the right choice; there's sort of a tension between freedom and focus/clarity etc.

ETA: though on further thought, the question of their instrumenthood is in there at some level, I must concede. But it is quite a complex notion.

e.g. is a fully chromatic mountain dulcimer still really a mountain dulcimer? To what extent is an instrument indivisible from its canon/repertoire?

Certain classic pieces of folk music may never have evolved if the early instrument had more freedom to fret more notes, because an entire style of playing the dulcimer (the "noter" style where you fret with a small stick) really is rather interwoven with the diatonic layout.

Like I say — there's no hard answer but I think this is a question musicians often grapple with as they develop their talent more deeply. In the same way that a lot of guitarists at the top of their ability abandon a lot of the anciliary kit (effects pedals, particular instruments) and strip back.

In the AI era I spend quite a lot of time thinking about creativity and constraints, but it has always been fascinating to me.

It doesn't sound like that at all, you're just reading it in bad faith and being deliberately argumentative.

No, it's a fair enough interpretation.

> where do you draw the line?

Isn't music better for the fact that every artist can draw their own line?

> Why isn't everyone playing the Linnstrument?

Counterargument: does someone play the Linnstrument? Do they make good music with it?

> Isn't music better for the fact that every artist can draw their own line?

I am not at all making the argument that it isn't.

Rather I am trying to get at the idea that the "revolutionises the guitar" coverage framing that accompanies developments like this usually elides questions about musicality.

> Counterargument: does someone play the Linnstrument? Do they make good music with it?

I have never actually heard such a player myself.

No, I can't see how. I'm very glad that Yuja Wang stuck to piano instead of creating some ridiculous new device. Techniques would never develop over time if every musician had to start completely from scratch on a brand new instrument.

Instruments as the embodiments of conventions.

Play what inspires you to play.

Invent what you are inspired to invent.

Right. It's kind of a deeply personal thing. But that is exactly why the commonplace media/marketing framing about the way these things "revolutionise the guitar" is so often misplaced.

Why do we all use QWERTY?

This is not a bad analogy.

Yeah, I really dislike it when writers use stalling as a tactic.

I don't think she's stalling. It's a story about a local person in a small-town publication; more readers will be interested in the "local boy does good" aspect of it than the invention itself.

The angle of the wrist on the front page makes me wonder about RSI.

The last part of the first video makes it more clear: you're basically your own bass backing player with one or two notes. I see why he trademarked "palmbass" as another term.

which is exactly the role of the thumb in classical guitar

so this is solving the fact that using a guitar pick forces you not to use your thumb

I’ve not played classical guitar but on a standard electric guitar I just don’t have the finger length to fret the low e and the higher notes at the same time, and I don’t have freakishly short hands either. So it can help with that, pick or not.

Here's a demo that actually shows what this is about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS7hF4S9rlw

A little offtopic, but if you tune the D string down one semitone, the chords start to sound evil. Sometimes it's helpful when trying to find new interesting chords to a song.

For people with small hands who can't reach.

Does anyone else hear the French name for french fries?

i do now!

I thought that was the joke.

This is quite cool. Going try to make a partscaster with a bad imitation of this :-)

If you want more Minnesota guitar innovation, look up Leo Kottke

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJNq5YqZ3EI

Yes! And every time I hear Kottke mentioned, I cannot resist sharing this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La-QiWzwgOM

Leo Kottke, Doc Watson, and Chet Atkins playing Last Steam Engine Train together.

wow, instantly brought me back to the film "Days of Heaven", and then discovered that is the correct thought. never thought to check who did the music, but I love the movie

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Days_of_Heaven

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBgwuM11q0o

reminds me of something, i love this sort of thing, for the same reason i like chet atkins merl travis thumb technique. it allows you to play multiple parts of the harmony, suddenly music sounds much more rich. and it will fall in exactly the same trap. these advanced mechanics will heavily inform the style you can play, and not find it transferable easy to other genres, or ensemble playing.

in that way, i find piano still the main multi-string instrument where its technique is genre-agnostic.

random stuff on a friday fwiw.

Please add a B bender to it and it will be the best thing ever.

Thanks. This site has an aggressively annoying paywall.

Not sure what benefit this gives you at all, since (for me at least) id rather be able to 'unlock' extra tones deeper than the open string. Being able to do 3 frets on the reverse side of the guitar doesn't bring that much.

Especially doesnt bring much that couldn't be achieved with an alternate tuning.

Nothing against it, it just seems a pretty contrived invention.

> rather be able to 'unlock' extra tones deeper than the open string

Doesn't down-tuning and then using one of these accomplish that?

I use some chord fingerings that leave the low E and A strings open and form the rest of the chord with the D, G, and B strings. Chords with intervals that start in the second octave sound really dreamy and are easy to play. There is no way to extend that to more than two bass notes without something like this. Four bass notes open up much more interesting chord progressions.

"But it goes up to G" "Can't you just CAPO the third fret?" "...it goes up to G"

Not to discredit the invention, it's very cool indeed.

It could open up new possibilities for the right musicians, I think, the way Stevie Wonder can do so much more with his chromatic harmonica. I'm a little worried about changing the ergonomics of an instrument that's already trying to destroy your hands if you play it just a little bit wrong for enough hours, but time will tell.

"instrument that's already trying to destroy your hands if you play it just a little bit wrong"

that's not the fault of the instrument, that's your fault.

The Steinberger TransTrem [1] similarly allows changing pitch at the bridge. Buck Dharma and EVH used it to great effect. It's about as simple as a design as it can be but calibrating it is a process and guitarists aren't exactly a group known for their engineering prowess or progressive thinking (compared to bassists or keys players, for instance) so it never achieved critical mass. This seems like an even simpler system so perhaps it'll gain greater traction.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransTrem

TransTrem doesn't allow for single string pitch changes though, it's more of a solution to easy alternate tunings when you have a whammy bar.

A simpler solution is probably using a crossover or synth-pickup so you can split the bass notes to a pitch-shift pedal.

He had to remove the bridge pickup... no good for me.

There is a less capable model (unifret) that doesn't require moving the pickups or adding much dampening to the soundboard.

All the frets past 18, too.

for people with small hands who can't reach..

I wonder if you could make a quarter-tone palmfret to let you play microtones on a standard fretboard, or does the intonation not work out like that?

It couldn't add a quarter tone between each semitone on the guitar, it looks like it's just duplicating the lowest 2 or 3 frets on the bridge side.

Right, but I'm thinking if you added a quarter-tone fret on the palm side, if you hold that down and also fret a different note, you'd get a string shortened to one quarter-tone above the fretted note, right?

It doesn't work, because the length you need to shorten to achieve a quarter-tone changes depending on which fret is is use (specifically, it would be 24th root of the length starting from the current fret). So if you were fretting in first position, the palm fret would give you roughly a semi-tone (slightly more), and if you were fretting in higher positions, it would be more than that. With some very careful planning, you could maybe use the spots that give you 3/4 or 5/4 tones.

Ah, shucks, that makes sense. I guess I should have remembered that's why the frets get closer together as you go up the neck!

Undjentlemanly

I’m just a beginner player, but what are the pros / cons of this vs those quick-change capo things?

this shortens the string from both sides and gives the player the ability to engage/disengage as part of their right-hand playing.

Because of the way intonation works in string instruments (e.g. by fine-tuning the saddle of the bridge on electric guitars/basses), I think that you'd be able to have this set up to work well in a few playing positions, but just as the frets get smaller as you go higher up the neck (because of the way pitch works on a shortened string) I'd expect the intonation to get out of whack in other spots on the neck.

You'd be out of tune if you used both a palm fret and a neck fret at the same time on the same string. But I doubt that you'd ever want to do that. The palm fret only moves 1-3 semitones, which if you're already putting a finger on that string, it's almost always going to be easier to move the finger a fret or three than to use both the palm and the finger.

They do different things. This like, instead of playing an F and a G on the low E string by fretting the first & third fret with your fretting hand, you can "fret" it with your strumming hand, which would free your fretting hand for the other strings around the 12th fret. This, in a way, lets you play a bass line and high melody without moving all over the fretboard wildly. The video on palmfrets.com shows this more clearly.

As a beginner player, this isn't worth worrying about, IMO. It might unlock some interesting composition options for someone writing a song for themselves... Normally, you have a bassist playing those parts for you, though.

Oooh. I play acoustic. Apparently it's not quite as good because you don't want to mess with the acoustics of the instrument, but being able to get just one more bass note on each string would open up a ton of new possibilities...

Yeah this isn't the game changer he thinks its going to be. Real e-bow energy here.

Really having a hard time seeing any major manufacturer licensing the design and using it on any of their instruments.

Like, neat, but I wonder what it really gets you.

A guitar has a lot of duplicated notes. The lowest 5 notes of the low E string are unique and the highest 5 of the high E for a guitar in standard tuning.

Standard tuning is EADGBe. Every fret is a half tone. So on the low E string it goes, from open E->F->F#/Gb->G->G#/Ab->A. That A is the same A as the second open string. This is how guitars are tuned to themselves, you can play the fifth fret on most strings to find out what the next string should sound like. The exception is the B which is tuned to the fourth.

It's a bit by design, you have access to a full scale within reach of your hand, no matter where your hand is.

And this really only extends the higher range. So on the high e, instead of 5 unique notes, you'll have 5 + whatever the palmfrets give you.

Now. If it jumped you an entire octave, that could possibly be cool. Basically replace an entire pedal with a bit of hardware on your bridge.

> The exception is the B which is tuned to the fourth.

I was going to say it's a major third, but then realized you meant fourth fret.

> And this really only extends the higher range.

No, the palm frets are only under the bass strings. So what it does is allow you to play first position bass string notes at the same time as higher position treble string notes. It extends the possible chord voicings, not the whole instrument range.

come on, no Polyphia fans here? this is the only way to add more notes and finally shred the matrix.

as a long time guitar player, this thing has no future whatsoever, too many compromises that buy you very little musically

agreed. this is another gimmick product on an instrument that reached its apex 70 years ago.

I had a slightly different take, which is that the Chapman Stick already exists.

Exactly. Thought this would've been mentioned in the article, or least a top comment here.

However, I absolutely appreciate anyone trying out new things. So props to him.