3rd Bridge
Encyclopedia
The 3rd bridge is an extended playing technique
Extended technique
Extended techniques are performance techniques used in music to describe unconventional, unorthodox, or non-traditional techniques of singing, or of playing musical instruments to obtain unusual sounds or instrumental timbres....

 used on some string instruments (notably the electric guitar
Electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...

), that allows a musician to produce distinctive timbre
Timbre
In music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...

s and overtone
Overtone
An overtone is any frequency higher than the fundamental frequency of a sound. The fundamental and the overtones together are called partials. Harmonics are partials whose frequencies are whole number multiples of the fundamental These overlapping terms are variously used when discussing the...

s that are unavailable on a conventional string instrument with two bridges (a nut and a bridge). The timbre
Timbre
In music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...

 created with this technique is close to that of Gamelan
Gamelan
A gamelan is a musical ensemble from Indonesia, typically from the islands of Bali or Java, featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, drums and gongs; bamboo flutes, bowed and plucked strings. Vocalists may also be included....

 instruments like the bonang
Bonang
The bonang is a musical instrument used in the Javanese gamelan. It is a collection of small gongs placed horizontally onto strings in a wooden frame , either one or two rows wide. All of the kettles have a central boss, but around it the lower-pitched ones have a flattened head, while the higher...

 and similar Indonesian types of pitched gongs.

Third bridge instruments can be custom-made by experimental luthier
Experimental luthier
Experimental luthiers are luthiers who take part in alternate stringed instrument manufacturing or create original string-instruments altogether. Notable experimental luthiers include Yuri Landman, Bradford Reed, and Hans Reichel....

s (as with guitars designed and played by Hans Reichel
Hans Reichel
Hans Reichel was a German improvisational guitarist, experimental luthier, inventor, and type designer.-Career:...

); modified from a non-third bridge instrument (as with conventional guitars modified with a pencil or screwdriver under the strings); or may take advantage of design quirks of factory-built instruments (as with the Fender Jazzmaster
Fender Jazzmaster
The Fender Jazzmaster is an electric guitar designed as an upmarket sibling to the Fender Stratocaster. First introduced at the 1958 NAMM Show, it was initially marketed at jazz guitarists, but found favor among surf rock guitarists in the early 1960s...

, which has strings
Strings (music)
A string is the vibrating element that produces sound in string instruments, such as the guitar, harp, piano, and members of the violin family. Strings are lengths of a flexible material kept under tension so that they may vibrate freely, but controllably. Strings may be "plain"...

 that continue from the "standard" bridge to the tremolo piece).

Perhaps the best-known examples of this technique come from No Wave
No Wave
No Wave was a short-lived but influential underground music, film, performance art, video, and contemporary art scene that had its beginnings during the mid-1970s in New York City. The term No Wave is in part satirical word play rejecting the commercial elements of the then-popular New Wave genre...

 artists like Glenn Branca
Glenn Branca
Glenn Branca is an American avant-garde composer and guitarist known for his use of volume, alternative guitar tunings, repetition, droning, and the harmonic series. In 2008 he was awarded an unrestricted grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.-Beginnings: 1960s and early 1970s:Branca...

 and Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth is an American alternative rock band from New York City, formed in 1981. The current lineup consists of Thurston Moore , Kim Gordon , Lee Ranaldo , Steve Shelley , and Mark Ibold .In their early career, Sonic Youth was associated with the No Wave art and music scene in New York City...

. The 3rd bridge technique has a physical
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...

 connection with Pythagoras
Pythagoras
Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. Most of the information about Pythagoras was written down centuries after he lived, so very little reliable information is known about him...

' monochord
Monochord
A monochord is an ancient musical and scientific laboratory instrument. The word "monochord" comes from the Greek and means literally "one string." A misconception of the term lies within its name. Often a monochord has more than one string, most of the time two, one open string and a second string...

, because both function with the scale of harmonics
Scale of harmonics
The scale of harmonics is a musical scale based on the noded positions of the natural harmonics existing on a string. This musical scale is present on the guqin, regarded as one of the first string instruments with a musical scale . Most fret positions appearing on Non-Western string instruments ...

. Also many non-Western musical scale
Musical scale
In music, a scale is a sequence of musical notes in ascending and descending order. Most commonly, especially in the context of the common practice period, the notes of a scale will belong to a single key, thus providing material for or being used to conveniently represent part or all of a musical...

s and musical instrument
Musical instrument
A musical instrument is a device created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the...

s share these consonant
Consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...

 just
Just intonation
In music, just intonation is any musical tuning in which the frequencies of notes are related by ratios of small whole numbers. Any interval tuned in this way is called a just interval. The two notes in any just interval are members of the same harmonic series...

 pitch relations.

Physical explanation and examples

On a standard guitar, the string is held above the soundboard by two nodes: the "nut" (near the headstock) and the "bridge" (near the player's right hand on a standard guitar). A player sounding a note on a standard guitar vibrates a single portion of the string (between the nut and the bridge, or between their fretting finger and the bridge).

In contrast, a third bridge divides the string into two pieces. When played at one part of a string, the opposed part starts to resonate
Resonance
In physics, resonance is the tendency of a system to oscillate at a greater amplitude at some frequencies than at others. These are known as the system's resonant frequencies...

, depending on a predictable mathematical ratio of the strings' lengths. On harmonic
Harmonic
A harmonic of a wave is a component frequency of the signal that is an integer multiple of the fundamental frequency, i.e. if the fundamental frequency is f, the harmonics have frequencies 2f, 3f, 4f, . . . etc. The harmonics have the property that they are all periodic at the fundamental...

 positions the created multiphonic
Multiphonic
Multiphonics is an extended technique in instrumental music in which a monophonic instrument is made to produce several notes at once....

 tone is consonant
Consonance and dissonance
In music, a consonance is a harmony, chord, or interval considered stable, as opposed to a dissonance , which is considered to be unstable...

 and increases in volume and sustain because of the reciprocal string resonance. The sound is comparable with the sound of bells of clocks.

In the 1930s, Harry Partch
Harry Partch
Harry Partch was an American composer and instrument creator. He was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonal scales, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments that he built himself, tuned in 11-limit just intonation.-Early...

 experimented with this technique on an instrument he called a Kitara that had movable glass rods. In the late 1960s, Keith Rowe
Keith Rowe
Keith Rowe is an English free improvisation tabletop guitarist and painter. Rowe is a founding member of both the hugely influential AMM in the mid-1960s and M.I.M.E.O. Having trained as a visual artist, Rowe's paintings have been featured on most of his own albums...

 made occasional use of third bridge guitars, inspiring a slew of experimental guitarists (notably Fred Frith
Fred Frith
Fred Frith is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer and improvisor.Probably best known for his guitar work, Frith first came to attention as one of the founding members of the English avant-rock group Henry Cow. Frith was also a member of Art Bears, Massacre and Skeleton Crew...

 to use prepared guitar
Prepared guitar
A prepared guitar is a guitar that has had its timbre altered by placing various objects on or between the instrument's strings, including other extended techniques...

s, inspired by John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...

's technique of the prepared piano
Prepared piano
A prepared piano is a piano that has had its sound altered by placing objects between or on the strings or on the hammers or dampers....

. Classical guitar duo Elgart & Yates wrote a small book Prepared Guitar Techniques in which the technique is described and used in the added written musical piece, although not defined with the term 'third bridge' yet. From the 1970s, Hans Reichel
Hans Reichel
Hans Reichel was a German improvisational guitarist, experimental luthier, inventor, and type designer.-Career:...

's self-made and modified acoustic guitars sometimes featured third bridges.

From the late 1970s, Glenn Branca
Glenn Branca
Glenn Branca is an American avant-garde composer and guitarist known for his use of volume, alternative guitar tunings, repetition, droning, and the harmonic series. In 2008 he was awarded an unrestricted grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.-Beginnings: 1960s and early 1970s:Branca...

 adopted Partch's theory and used amplified string tables for some of his symphonies . After being trained in the Branca orchestra, Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth is an American alternative rock band from New York City, formed in 1981. The current lineup consists of Thurston Moore , Kim Gordon , Lee Ranaldo , Steve Shelley , and Mark Ibold .In their early career, Sonic Youth was associated with the No Wave art and music scene in New York City...

 applied their own guitars with screwdrivers, mainly in their early years. On their debut EP and the album Confusion is Sex
Confusion Is Sex
Confusion Is Sex is Sonic Youth's first studio album, originally released on 12" vinyl in 1983 on Neutral. It was reissued on SST Records in 1987 and on CD in 1995 on DGC with extra tracks from the Kill Yr Idols EP. The album features a live cover of The Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog". The cover...

this technique is often used. Afterwards Bradford Reed
Bradford Reed
Bradford Reed is an American multi-instrumentalist, experimental luthier, and member of avant-garde band King Missile III. He is proficient at such instruments as drums, guitar, melodica, piano, and synthesizer. In the 1980s he invented the pencilina, a custom-made string instrument.-Pencilina:The...

 developed the Pencilina. Reed plays mainly with drumsticks hitting the strings as well.

Yuri Landman
Yuri Landman
Yuri Landman is a Dutch experimental luthier who has made several experimental electric string instruments for a list of artists including Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Liars, Jad Fair of Half Japanese and Liam Finn...

 invented the Moodswinger
Moodswinger
The Moodswinger is a twelve string electric zither with an additional third bridge designed by Yuri Landman. The rod which functions as the third bridge divides the strings into two sections to cause an overtone multiphonic sound...

 in 2006 to explore the possibilities of this technique. Landman's technique is partly based on muting the opposed part while striking, causing a sound reminiscent of a backwards-recorded sound. Landman published the essay 3rd Bridge Helix - From Experimental Punk to Ancient Chinese Music & the Universal Physical Laws of Consonance, in which he clarifies the relation between this prepared guitar technique and the consonant overtone
Overtone
An overtone is any frequency higher than the fundamental frequency of a sound. The fundamental and the overtones together are called partials. Harmonics are partials whose frequencies are whole number multiples of the fundamental These overlapping terms are variously used when discussing the...

 values present in non-Western scales especially the musical scale
Musical scale
In music, a scale is a sequence of musical notes in ascending and descending order. Most commonly, especially in the context of the common practice period, the notes of a scale will belong to a single key, thus providing material for or being used to conveniently represent part or all of a musical...

 used on the Ancient Chinese musical instrument the guqin
Guqin
The guqin is the modern name for a plucked seven-string Chinese musical instrument of the zither family...

. In 2009 he developed a simplified DIY-version of the Moodswinger, called the Home Swinger
Home Swinger
A Home Swinger is a musical instrument created by Yuri Landman. The instrument has 12 strings, an electronic pickup and a movable rod to alter the pitch of the instrument....

. He gives workshops at festivals and venues in Europe and the US, where participants can built their own Home Swinger.

The Boston based noise rock band Neptune
Neptune (band)
Neptune is a noise music band from Boston, noted for having built their custom-made guitars and basses out of scrap metal. The band also plays custom-made percussion instruments and electric lamellophones.-Band history:...

 made different types of experimental third bridge guitars employed with drumsticks, functioning as a third bridge. Also the band These Are Powers
These Are Powers
These Are Powers is an experimental music group from Brooklyn, New York and Chicago, Illinois. The band mixes polyrhythm with samples and other electronic sounds and noise rock.-History:...

 is using this technique on their bass guitar.

Without the 3rd bridge

The sound effect can also be achieved without an additional 3rd bridge or extended tail piece. If the player presses on a fret (not behind it, as with standard fretting) and strums the string at the head side, the resonance comes also through. Again, on harmonic positions the result is much louder and clearer than on the inharmonic fret positions. The 5th, 7th, 12th and 19th fret generate low frequency humming overtones along with the complementary tone, which is usually played in the regular way. This playing technique causes a smooth round multiphonic sound. By muting the resonating part and letting it go after the pluck it sounds like an inverse recorded sound. On all other positions the tone is more undefined and comes with higher pitched lower volume overtones. With heavy distortion these tones can also become more clear.

Bowing behind the bridge

The technique is also widely used in many modern classical works on bowing instruments.The extended technique involves in that case bowing the instrument on the short length of string behind the bridge. The tone is very high and squeaky. By playing the instrument at a string part behind the bridge, the opposed part starts to resonate. The tone is louder at harmonic relations of the bridge string length. On violins the tone can be very high, even above our hearing capacity. Depending on the instrument the pitch of the tones may or may not be perceived (cello
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...

s and double bass
Double bass
The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...

es are more likely to produce recognizable pitches because of the longer length of their strings). This technique is used extensively in Krzysztof Penderecki’s
Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Penderecki , born November 23, 1933 in Dębica) is a Polish composer and conductor. His 1960 avant-garde Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima for string orchestra brought him to international attention, and this success was followed by acclaim for his choral St. Luke Passion. Both these...

 Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima
Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima
Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima is a musical composition for 52 string instruments, composed in 1960 by Krzysztof Penderecki , which took third prize at the Grzegorz Fitelberg Composers' Competition in Katowice in 1960...

. Another example is found in Ferde Grofé’s
Ferde Grofé
Ferde Grofé was a prominent American composer, arranger and pianist. During the 1920s and 1930s, he went by the name Ferdie Grofé.-Early life:...

 Grand Canyon Suite
Grand Canyon Suite
The Grand Canyon Suite is a suite for orchestra by Ferde Grofé, composed during the period from 1929 to 1931. It consists of five parts or movements, each an evocation in tone of a particular scene typical of the Grand Canyon...

 where bowing behind the bridge in a violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

 cadenza
Cadenza
In music, a cadenza is, generically, an improvised or written-out ornamental passage played or sung by a soloist or soloists, usually in a "free" rhythmic style, and often allowing for virtuosic display....

 represents a donkey’s braying.

Guitars commonly used for this effect

  • Fender Jazzmaster
    Fender Jazzmaster
    The Fender Jazzmaster is an electric guitar designed as an upmarket sibling to the Fender Stratocaster. First introduced at the 1958 NAMM Show, it was initially marketed at jazz guitarists, but found favor among surf rock guitarists in the early 1960s...

  • Fender Jaguar
    Fender Jaguar
    The Fender Jaguar is an electric guitar introduced in 1962. A descendant of the Jazzmaster, the Jaguar quickly caught on in the emerging Surf music scene...

  • Teisco
    Teisco
    Teisco was a Japanese manufacturer of affordable musical instruments from 1948 until 1969, and now its brand is owned by Kawai Musical Instruments Manufacturing Co. Ltd. . The company produced guitars as well as keyboard instruments, microphones, amplifiers and even drums...

    guitars with tailed bridges

Further reading

  • www.ezinearticles.com/?Adding-a-Twist-to-the-Electric-Guitar&id=1610340 - An article describing the technique at ezinearticle.com

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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