The Birth of the American 12-string Guitar (2013) | Hacker News Reader

The Birth of the American 12-string Guitar (2013)

harpguitars.net

68 pointsbilegeek48 comments

I'm probably preaching to the choir in a story about guitars, but if you're looking for some good 12-string music, Leo Kottke's 6 and 12 String Guitar is a good start.

If you haven't heard (or seen) Michael Hedges play a harp guitar, there's some background and links to videos here:

https://michaelhedges.com/michael-hedges-the-harp-guitar/

The author is Gregg Miner, and Gregg has an extensive library of harp guitar music. A long time ago I met Gregg when one of my friends Brad Hoyt (a keyboard and harp guitarist as well) hosted a harp guitar convention here in Indianapolis, and I got recruited to help. Gregg and the rest of the artists that were there were extremely approachable, and most of the crowd were musicians (some pretty famous ones, too) checking out one of the more interesting variations of the guitar... and what you could do with one. Fun times.

Apparently there was a gathering of harp guitarists here in North Little Rock at a guitar shop that recently opened just down the street from where I live last year: https://www.harpguitars.net/2025/11/29/hgg23-in-north-little...

I was totally unfamiliar with harp guitar but I am sad that I missed such a special gathering!

What I love about links like this is that we see information being shared just for the love of it. This person has done a lot of work simply to share knowledge with the world about something they are passionate about. This is what great about the internet and is easily lost amongst all the commercial content.

Just imagine, had this been a Facebook event instead, none of this information would have been available to us outsiders. The open web lives, even if bruised and limping.

12 strings is one thing, but how about microtonal? That's instead of adding strings, you add frets!

If you haven't heard them yet, you're in for a wild ride: https://www.youtube.com/@AnginePoitrine

Why frets? Orchestral strings don’t use frets.

Frets make chords possible.

You only have to put your finger somewhere in between two frets to get a particular note, so you can play more than the tiny handful of chords that can be played on something like a violin.

There are non-fretted guitars but they are rare, and I think early banjos were not fretted.

Frets make chords easier

It makes hard chords easy, and impossible chords possible (if not easy). Most barre chords, for example.

> Frets make chords possible.

What do you think double-stops are?

Whimpy-ass chords. You need three or more notes for a serious(tm) chord.

Five for the Hendrix Chord, E7♯9 ;-)

That's E, G♯, B, D, F

Every jazz player knows you can drop the fifth, and the root too if the bass is filling it in. That gives your fingers room to add even crazier extensions

Oh man have you seen the Adam Neely video "Seven Level of Jazz Harmony"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz3WR-F_pnM

If not, stop and watch it. But make a cup of tea to enjoy with it first, and maybe put a cloth over your keyboard for when you inevitably splutter tea all over it.

I read a pretty good argument once that this chord should really be called a b10 (no one does though...)

We seem to have a pretty hardcoded preference for using sharp in everything that's not brass and woodwind, don't we?

I think it's also ingrained that the chord starts from 3rd and 5th degrees so numbers above 7 are always adding in one of the other degrees. Or that a chord should have at most 'one of each'.

The argument was that this chord is unusual in that it's best thought of as having a second modified 3rd, rather than a #9 (raised 2nd)

The major-minor-7 chord is another example of the same degree twice... and we don't call that a maj-14 either

There are those who say it isn't a chord until you have 3 notes. I'm going to skip the complex music theory behind the arguments (I haven't studied them enough to understand much less form an opinion).

Of course in most music contexts there is more than one instrument playing and so the others can fill in the missing note making a full chord. Only a "one-man-band" really feels the loss.

Power chords only have two notes (although more than two octaves, I don't know if you count that)

It's self-consistent: those who say that a chord must have at least 3 notes also say that power chords are not technically chords

What do you mean about more than two octaves? The basic power chord is 3 notes, for example E2 + B2 + E3. One of those is an octave.

"Power chord" sounds cooler than "power dyad".

Isn't it the curvature of the fretboard (to allow for bowing individual strings) that prevents chords on a violin rather than lack of frets?

I can play chords on a violin or viola and strum them. Keeping a four-finger chord perfectly in tune in rapid changes is really hard (near impossible) without frets.

Chords can be rolled. Here's an all time favorite

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngjEVKxQCWs&list=RDngjEVKxQC...

Fretless bass is quite popular though, and they play chords all the time. What would 80s music have been without them?

And all uprights are fretless, too. And cellos of course. They can also play chords.

For plucked instruments, besides ease of use, it adds clarity and sustain. Orchestra AFAIK only has Pizzicato where that would matter.

What's the difference in sustain time between a cello played pizzicato and a plucked guitar string?

On fingered strings the guitar sustains for about 10 seconds until the note is very quiet, but still ringing.

On a Cello a fingered string is gone in 2 seconds.

Sustain

in college a good friend was a very good Oud player (plucked, some number of strings.... more than 8? I forget), and it definitely sounds different from guitar due to less sustain. Clearer notes and chords, but they don't linger as long or loud.

Edit: apparently it's 11 strings? ok.

A bit spotty, but alright; meanwhile the Italian instrument makers said guitar-harp? Hold our expressos, this'll take some discipline:

* https://www.delta-harp.com/

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdUztFVwi3I

Never having played a harp, whats the advantage here (beyond cool factor) over an equivalent electric guitar?

A harp can have more than 6 notes ringing out at a time. It's also a different instrument and if you've trained to play harp then a guitar is useless for you.

I'm a bit late on the reply, so to add to what has been said by AlecSchueler consider the piece I linked above being played on that guitar slung mini harp.

It's a cover of an English prog rock piece, the titular Discipline from 1981 by the band King Crimson with the then line up of a drummer's drummer, Bill Bruford, and three top form guitarists, Robert Fripp (sitting on chair), Tony Levin (Chapman stick), and Adrian Belew [0].

One comment on the linked performance is simply: 3+2/4 vs 2+3/4 vs 9+8/16 vs 4+4+4+5/16 INSANE

So, ... it's an instrument that allowed for a credible attempt at covering three "insane" polymeter prog rhythms by a single performer.

I'm old enough to have got the album when it first came out- looking for a live performance I stumbled over a recent breakdown look back at a peer album track: Frame by Frame [1]

[0] King Crimson: Discipline (Live Kani Hoken Hall Tokyo 30th April 1984) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOFkbDKsC9U

[1] These Guys Wrote The Most INSANE Polymeter in 1981 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYAa1JNCDFE

That's the first time I've heard microtonal work in a rock setting. Pretty good!

I see your added frets, and raise "add frets on the fly using Lego":

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

> That's the first time I've heard microtonal work in a rock setting. Pretty good!

Really? I highly recommend Flying Microtonal Banana.

> Really?

Really? Most people's first intro to microtonal guitar is recent and brought to them by Angine de Poitrine.

Awesome band. Most of their songs sound so familiar to me because they are actually influenced by our folk music. :)

It is still worth noting that the microtones used by Angine de Poitrine are usually just transient notes, and could instead be played portamento with smooth transitions between the notes (eg on a fretless board) in most situations. It still sounds really cool, though, and certainly a technical and musical accomplishment. But the music itself still follows the usual patterns closely.

In the early days of the guitar it had tied gut frets, it was microtonal by nature and you could move the frets for different temperaments. Then in the 19th century things changed and the guitar got fixed metal frets, ever since people have been trying to figure out how to have the benefits of both. 1852 is the first attempt that I know of.

https://collectionsdumusee.philharmoniedeparis.fr/search.asp...

I’m a bit skeptical of the claims given that multi-course tunings are almost as old as guitar-family instruments.

agreed - America went through a "mandolin mania" in ~1880s, and even in the 1900s and 1910s, the guitar was by no means an established instrument.

As a matter of fact, the "tenor guitar" was made for people who knew how to play the very popular four string banjo, but wanted to play a guitar without learning new chords.

Instruments were in a state of change, and the "harp" nomenclature (and styling) for a 12-string guitar was more a marketing flourish than a family lineage.

> the "tenor guitar"

Would that be a ukulele? Or is that something different yet?

Different lineage[1] as (partially) mentioned above; the ukulele evolved from small Portuguese instruments[2], and is tuned about 3 full steps higher.

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

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukulele#History

>almost as old as guitar-family instruments.

They are as old as we can trace it back, vihuela/viola de mano were multi-course, as was the baroque guitar which developed from them. The romantic guitar brought us single string courses and in the guitar family double courses died out other than in a few nooks and crannies. I don't think this has any effect on what TFA proposes and the author is well aware of this bit of information, but it has been years since I read it and maybe I am forgetting something?

Multi-course ouds and lutes of course predate anything resembling the modern guitar by a long, long way. Do you consider those in the “guitar family”? If so, I’d refer to the group as oud or lute family. Guitar family is a recent subset of lute family, and doesn’t even contain the first multi-course instruments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Guitar_family_instrum...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_lute-family_instrum...

I was being loose with terminology, but yes, oud/lute family is more accurate.

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