F-B^b-C-F-A-C

• OVERVIEW •

New Guinea, just north of Australia, is marked by astonishing linguistic, cultural, and ecological diversities. One of the world’s largest islands, it is home to a quarter of all humanity’s surviving languages, with thousands of communities isolated from each other by volcanic highlands and dense rainforests. The region’s musical cultures overflow with corresponding variety, showcasing a cornucopia of localised concepts and fusions – and an imaginative array of guitar tunings too.

 

This layout, titled for its four tones (F-Bb-C-A), is one of many used amongst guitarists on New Britain Island, just off New Guinea’s main Pacific coast. Essentially ‘one string narrower’ in range than Standard (19 vs. 24 semitones), it has a melodious, enchanting geometry, ripe for close-voiced chords and up-the-neck melodic motions. Also used at nearby transpositions (e.g. -1, as E-A-B-E-G#-B).

Pattern: 5>2>5>4>3

Harmony: Fmaj(11) | 1-4-b7-b3-5-1

• TUNING TONES •

• SOUNDS •

As discussed in George Winston’s excellent Dancing Cat listings, ‘Four-Key’ (5>2>5>4>3) is just one of many maj. 7th tunings used by musicians of the same archipelago – who, as well as Standard, also turn to ‘Five-Key’ layouts of E-A-B-F#-B-D# (5>2>7>5>4) and E-G#-B-F#-B-D# (4>3>7>5>4: the same pattern as F Math Rock), and ‘Six-Key’ setups of E-A-C#-F#-B-D# (5>4>5>5>4: “used for the basslines available…on [6-5-4str]”).

 

Hear some of these tunings in action on the 2005 album Songs of the Volcano – e.g. as played by the Gilnata Stringband: including Five-Key tuned up to F [as F-Bb-C-G-C-E] on Tou Ra Vai, Youth Development Song, and Tavurvur, named after New Britain Island’s huge, active stratovolcano (it is most audible “in the second part of the instrumental introduction. The…first part [is in] F, in Standard”).

 

Intriguingly, the only other place I’ve managed to trace the E-A-B-E-G#-B ‘Four-Key’ tuning to is a comment on a 2012 TDPRI thread by user thethrash: “My Grandmother is 70 years old, and she self-[taught] herself how to play on this strange tuning when she was about 7 years old. I googled [it], but no results showed up. Just curious if anyone out there ever played in this tuning?”

 

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• Tavurvur – Gilnata Stringband (2005):

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“The Gilnata Stringband, on Tavurvur, play in an early style, using more than ten vocalists and only a handful of instruments. Their sound is similar to early Hawaiian music, with basslines echoing Charley Patton’s blues. Similarly, Eagle Voice Band use…guitars and numerous vocalists on Tomaimo, to produce a sound more influenced by Fijian music.” (World Music Central)

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Denis Crowdy’s fascinating 2001 thesis Guitar Style, Open Tunings and Stringband Music in Papua New Guinea goes deeper into the region’s string traditions. Based on collaborations with guitarists in Central, Madang, and East New Britain provinces, he outlines how “various tunings are used in different parts of the country…described by distinctive local names”, detailing several such examples.

 

Notably, these include ‘Samoan/Rang Ki’ (2>5>7>5>4, e.g. D-E-A-E-A-C: ”an important tuning…widely used [in] the Motu, Hula and Aroma language areas”), ‘Hap Faiv’ (7>5>7>4>3, e.g. C-G-C-G-B-D: “Tok Pisin for ‘half five’…likely [a] modification of Faiv Ki [‘five-key’]”) – and a higher transposition of our ‘Four-Key’ layout above (5>2>5>4>3 as G-C-D-G-B-D). Perhaps just as intriguingly, he adds that in the Northern Madang region, “there appear to be no predominant unique non-Standard tunings”.

 

The simultaneous use of different tunings is also core to many stringband styles. Crowdy describes how, while watching a style known as blu ki, ”six guitar players and one ukulele player were seated in a semicircle, and before playing indicated the open-string tunings and names given. Three different tunings were used: Standard (and another guitar tuned exactly down a tone), Faiv Ki, and Rang Ki…”. See some stringband traditions in close-up action in David Fedele’s short doc amongst PNG’s village communities.

 

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• Climate Change Anthem – Ahus Island String Band (2011):

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“Guitars and ukuleles were played everywhere…it wasn’t uncommon to see people sitting under the dense shade of a casuarina tree, playing and singing. These instruments could be purchased from the Chinese trade stores, and fishing line easily replaced any broken strings. My first guitar…had a colourful stencil of a cowboy on a bucking horse on the lower bout.” (Phil Donnison)

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• (n.b. A note about the above-linked Songs of the Volcano album’s disgraced producer, former global guitar icon Bob Brozman: a man I met, and used to admire – before his unexpected 2013 suicide, amidst seemingly well-substantiated allegations of serious child abuse. Much as I hate to shatter the mood…the musical community can’t just turn away from from such things – and also, what would I even be doing as a musicologist if I chose to ignore the real human lives behind the sounds? Musical skill provides no inherent protection from committing atrocious acts…also see Richard Nixon, Condoleeza Rice, & Tony Blair).

• NUMBERS •

	6str	5str	4str	3str	2str	1str
Note	F	Bb	C	F	A	C
Alteration	+1	+1	-2	-2	-2	-4
Tension (%)	+12	+12	-21	-21	-21	-37
Freq. (Hz)	87	117	131	175	220	262
Pattern (>)	5	2	5	4	3	–
Semitones	0	5	7	12	16	19
Intervals	1	4	5	1	3	5

• 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…

• Open F (this with 6/5str -5): slackening the bass space
• Banjo: another tight-bass folk tuning with 19 semitones
• Zigzag Thirds (Maj): a different extension of an Fmaj base

• MORE INFO •

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

• PNG’s musical culture: Papua New Guinea, the nation-state occupying the island of New Guinea’s Eastern side (the Western half is Indonesian territory), is home to a ear-melting range of musical cultures – for a shuffled selection, check out Enga ceremonial chanting, mid-20th-century legend Blasius To Una, Beatles-inspired rock group The Stalemates, pop grooves on bamboo pipes, Kerema dialect street-corner guitar jams – in fact, even PNG’s current Prime Minister James Marape is a pretty good guitarist-singer (maybe he’d have got on well with Liliʻuokalani (1838–1917), the last Queen of the Hawaiian Islands: a multi-instrumentalist who published hundreds of still-acclaimed songs, both before and after being deposed by the US in 1893…)
• Languages of New Guinea: the region is also held in awe by linguists, being home to over 1,000 distinct languages, as well as many more sub-dialects and regional variants – hear what some of them sound like (e.g. Huli, Central Asmat, & Tok Pisin), and read more in a detailed Britannica overview (“Most often, the members of a given community learn the languages of adjoining groups. The concentration of so many speech communities in a relatively confined area has also fostered the development of ‘trade jargons’. There are examples of the shifting of language allegiance…Some Papuan languages also use…distinctive use of variations in pitch to distinguish words [e.g. in the] Eastern Highlands family, the Sko family, the Lakes Plain family, and others. In Obokuitai, /ti/ spoken with a high pitch means ‘string bag,’ but when spoken with a falling pitch it refers to a type of butterfly…The form /ku/ is distinctive with three pitches: spoken with a high pitch, it means ‘cassowary’; with a low pitch, ‘wood’; and with a falling pitch, it refers to a kind of soil…”)

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Header image: New Guinea’s Mount Rabaul (a caldera volcano)