So I know about the Fujaku and plan on getting it soon, but in the meantime I’ve just been marking the approximate positions using videos and pieces of sticky notes lol. Its getting me by alright but I’d really rather know the actual locations of the frets. If someone could assume the tuning is CGC what would be the fretted notes going up the neck on the first string assuming the C is tuned to absolute pitch? For example: 0=C, 1=?, 2=?, 3=?, etc… I would really appreciate some help with this.
Hi Zach, are you asking about the physical measurements, or just which note matches up with which position? I unfortunately can’t help you with the former, but if it’s the latter, that’s much simpler. You just go up the scale chromatically.
0=C
1=C#
2=D
3=D#
#=E
4=F
5=F#
6=G
7=G#
8=A
9=A#
b=B
10=C
This is the Tsugaru system, at least. I hear the other styles have different conventions. One key thing to remember is that the octave is based on 10. So, 10 is an octave above 0, 12 is an octave above 2, etc.
Hope this helps!
That’s exactly what I needed. I wasn’t sure if Western scales and such applied to instruments from the Orient. Thank you so much for clearing that up! Now I can just map out my sticky notes to the real notes and get to making some music. Thanks again!
Haha, yeah, for all I know, maybe they used to have different values in the past and only merged with Western scales upon Japan’s modernization. You can get some pretty weird, atonal stuff in certain kinds of traditional Japanese music (noh or gagaku, anyone?), but when it comes to Tsugaru, at least, it’s pretty straightforward.