Tension and Touch

Much of my guitar technique falls into the tapping or "touch" variety of technique.  This is defined as tapping or touching the notes with your left hand without picking them with your right hand.  Obviously, this requires much practice over an extended period of time, but it also requires a very low action and a light touch.

Additionally, my main instruments have scale lengths ranging from 25.5" to 30".   Due to string physics, longer scale lengths have higher string tension.  Which makes touch/tap technique less responsive.   

This week, I've been performing an experiment on C4, which is an 18-string Contraguitar.  It's unusual in my instruments in that it has a multi-scale or fan-fret design.  Thus, instead of, for example, a 25.5" scale, it has a different scale length for each string.  This begins with a 27.25" scale on the bass side, and narrows to a 24.5 inch scale on the treble side.  The experiment is to drop the entire tuning by a whole step (from Contra E to Sub-contra D), and observe how that impacts string tension.  Obviously, it makes for a lower string tension, but that's not what is at test here.  By lowering the string tension by a whole step, I want to see how the overall string tension is impacted for tapping and touch technique.  Reducing the string tension will make it more responsive, but I've yet to discover if dropping it a whole step is enough to tangibly reduce the overall string tension and make for a noticeable difference in touch/tap techniques.

Experiments continue. 

More to come.

-kk