C-A-B^b-A-G-E

• OVERVIEW •

C-A-Bb-A-G-E is surprisingly tasty, if rather impractical. Forms a ‘crunchy’ C13 chord…with the root(s) at the bottom. Seems silly, and it definitely is – but it’s essential to just shuffle things up sometimes. Anyway, J.S. Bach – probably the G.O.A.T. of global harmonic development – did similarly, famously ‘signing’ his name in The Art of Fugue as Bb-A-C-B (read as B-A-C-H in old German).

So have many other musical greats throughout history. Around the same time as Bach was writing his masterworks, the ‘Trimurti’ of great South Indian saint-composers were busy hiding the names of favoured Hindu gods in the twists of their song melodies (in Carnatic classical music, alpha-melodic wordplay is known as mudra). So be shameless in being silly, as long as it’s a genuine form of exploration too. What you can cook up with CABbAGE? And what else you can spell with the open strings? (See my full article for more: Alphamelodics: well-tuned words)

Pattern: 9>1>11>10>9

Harmony: C13 | 1-6-b7-6-5-3

• TUNING TONES •

• SOUNDS •

Despite the tuning’s online name-notoriety, very few have released music in it. For two prominent, contrasting examples, compare Rob Scallon’s heavy CABbage recipe to Ichika Nito‘s delicate CABBAGE preparation (both set on 7-strings).

(And, because why not – read why ‘foley artists‘ love using actual cabbages to create film sound effects (“…A brutal fight sequence. I find myself wincing at the sound of every punch, although Monat-Jacobs had just extolled the virtues of working with a rubbery material such as cabbage…”)

• CABbage – Rob Scallon (2016):

“Cabbage (n.): cultivated culinary vegetable that grows a rounded head of thick leaves. Mid-15th-century, ‘caboge’, from Old North French ‘caboche’…from Old French ‘caboce’…a diminutive from Latin ‘caput’…from Proto Indo-European root ‘kaput’ [all these words mean ‘head’]…The comparison…to the head of a person – usually disparaging to the latter – is at least as old as Old French cabus: ‘head of cabbage, nitwit, blockhead.” (Etymology Online)

• NUMBERS •

• See my Tunings Megatable for further such nerdery: more numbers, intervallic relations, comparative methods, etc. And to any genuine vibratory scientists reading: please critique my DIY analysis!

• RELATED •

—Associated tunings: proximities of shape, concept, context, etc…

• Alphabet: a meta-signifier for alpha-melodics
• Ten Years: another surprisingly melodious word
• Mesopotamian: the tuning of Iraq’s capital city?

• MORE INFO •

—Further learnings: sources, readings, lessons, other onward links…

• More musical cryptography: see my Alphamelodic tunings article for more spelling-based tunings and broader global instances of similar phenomena (“there will always be a base level of consonance to any melody made exclusively from the letters ‘ABCDEFG’: as the absence of sharps/flats means that all these tones fit neatly into the C Major scale…So, despite the apparent chaos of spelling-derived methods, many of the resulting melodies showcase their own subtle structures and regularities. In a sense, there’s nothing remarkable about this: could you imagine if our written language really was just a structureless scrabble-bag of letters? What would it sound like?”)
• South Indian mudra signatures: from Smitha K. Prasad, and more in my Carnatic Primer article for Darbar (“the Trimurti often ‘signed off’ with a mudra…something that has an oddly hip-hop vibe. Shastri went by the mudra ‘Shyama Krishna’, and Dikshitar by ‘Guruguha’, both borrowing the names of Hindu gods…”) – also see Carnatic Drone tuning, used by electro-classical South Indian virtuosi including ‘Guitar’ Prasanna

Header image: a bundle of Brassica oleracea

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George Howlett is a London-based musician, writer, and teacher (guitars, sitar, tabla, & santoor). Above all I seek to enthuse fellow sonic searchers, interconnecting fresh vibrations with the voices, cultures, and passions behind them. See Home & Writings, and hit me up for Online Lessons!

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