I found this Banjo music book at my local Antique store. I was wondering if anyone has seen this before or has any information on it?

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As to scordatura (according to countless music dictionaries means "mis-tuning") , we can agree that  Briggs, Frank Converse, Albert Baur, and so on used the intervals of what we call  "standard tuning" when they set the formula for the banjo as we know it.  Pre-banjo-prototype un-documented intervals as well as post minstrelsy folk turnings are a different subject.

 

My reference to scordatura is under the subject of written music for the banjo beginning with Briggs and continuing through to when popular instruments stopped being noted and play by numbers began.

Could we agree that for sheet music published for the banjo and pertaining to the "rules of the banjo" like fingerings, flagged fifth string notes, positions etc.  defaults to "standard."  Using that formula, special instructions to alter the tuning "to produce particular effects" (as my music dictionary states) would be "mis-tuning" the banjo.

Scordatura is a perfectly acceptable term for altering the standard intervals of the banjo.

 Here is the basically definition that I use.

Sorry.

Jody Stecher said:

That was a paraphrase, not a quote. And SSS was wrong.

Here is basically the definition that I use.  

.. is how that was to be written.

Joel, yes I agree with all of that except with the idea that tunings other than standard are "wrong". The idea that any non standard tuning means that the banjo is mistuned  belongs to an earlier time when it was "obvious" that women should not be allowed to to vote. We do know, all of us, which is the baby and which is the bath water.  We can allow to lapse the beliefs of the past that no longer serve us well without misrepresenting history or falsifying anything. Let us also remember the context of this conversation. It was providing an answer to the question about what "A tuning" meant. You found my reply confusing. I thought it was reasonably lucid and I had framed my reply in terms I thought would most likely be familiar to an early 21st century banjo player.  Your reply retained the framework and concepts of the late 19th century. Your admirable familiarity with that time, its details of daily life and its standards and language is not a universal condition. I still remember your discovery that the bicycle was a more likely everyday conveyance in the Old West than a horse was. I hope you keep sharing such discoveries. 

 

p.s.: A better reference than the female vote would have been the concept of "legitimate music" and by extension, the concept of legitimate and illegitimate humans.  "Legitimate" music as a concept is a way of publicly identifying with a higher social class than the one the user of the term was born into. As a musical term it is vague and non-specific but as a marker of class it is a way of saying "I am better than you". "Mistuning", "false tuning", "scordatura" send a similar message,  a message that would have been clearly understood in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as an expression of the desire to be upwardly mobile. And upward mobility does not mean tuning the strings higher. 

That is interesting.  Though, times change, and my intention was not that.  Simply that there was, for reference and ease of communication, a interval set for the banjo as a starting point.

I picked up the term when I read "Nicolo Paganini: his life and work" by Stephen Stratton.  The context was that he would produce wonderful effects using scordatura.  But Paganini was a showman, not one of these stiff collared stone faced 19th century elevated banjo players that has been over blown (invented?) by modern histories like "Half Barbaric Twang."

And by all written accounts, Paganini was a better musician than I am.

Does "alternate tuning" not mean a deviation from the accepted standard?

Post Script:  I'd still like to play through this book if it is new (to me) material.

Yes it would be good to know the content of the book. Ever since we got on this tangent we haven't heard a thing from Marcus A who discovered the book.  

To my sensibilities "alternate" implies a choice between viable options.  Anyway, you and I are in agreement. In the 19th century the arrangement (at any pitch) of gCGBD was the far and away the most common tuning and was considered to be standard.

Hey everyone, sorry I have been absent from the discussion for so long. Almost a year later. Did some moving around, and haven't had much time for the banjo much but I will get this up for others to enjoy. I just have to find it amongst my belongings.

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