Staccato-Harmonic Duo-Tone

Staccato-harmonic duo-tone is a new discovery in guitar technique by Le-Tuyen Nguyen, an Australian composer and researcher who is teaching in Sydney Australia. He presented a lecture-recital on this new technique at the Darwin International Guitar Festival Australia in July 2007.

Staccato-harmonic duo-tone is the simultaneous sounding of 2 tones on 1 string of the guitar; each tone has its own definite pitch, duration, articulation and distinctive tone colour. The lower tone has the normal staccato tone colour with shorter duration; the higher tone has the natural harmonic bell-like tone colour with longer duration as much as the physical vibration of the guitar string.

Method of Production

Staccato-Harmonics Duo-tones are produced by using the left hand finger to press the string directly on a specified fret onto the fingerboard (the string actually touches the specified fret) and plucking the string with the right hand at the same time. Both left hand and right hand must release immediately to let the string continue to vibrate. When both hands release, the fundamental tone is stopped therefore creating a staccato effect; at the same time this allows the harmonic tone to emerge and sustain its duration.

Sound Palette

When staccato-harmonics duo-tone technique is performed, both the fundamental tone and natural harmonic tone are sounded. Duo-tones could be found directly on the frets where the natural harmonics are found, including:

# First harmonic: 12th fret
# Second harmonic: 7th and 19th frets
# Third harmonic: 5th fret
# Fourth harmonic: 4th, 9th and 16th frets
# Fifth harmonic: 3rd fret

In practice, duo-tones are clearly audible when performed on the bass strings of the guitar at the 4th, 5th, 7th, 9th and 12th frets where the fundamental bass tones contrast strongly with the natural harmonic treble tones. Duo-tones are difficult to produce on the 2nd and 1st strings where only the fundamental notes are heard while the natural harmonic tones are very soft with an almost noise-like character. Below is a sound palette of functional staccato-harmonics duo-tones, where both the fundamental tones and the harmonic tones are clearly identified:
550px

Notation of staccato-harmonic duo-tone

Although the guitarist only performs on 1 string, the notation of staccato-harmonic duo-tone needs to reflect the present of 2 different layers, each has its own musical character:

Excerpt from Nocturne (1996) by Le-Tuyen Nguyen
550px

In the above excerpt, we could see the general considerations in notating the staccato-harmonic duo-tone technique:
# Two layers of sound, with upper stems for higher harmonic layer and down stem for lower staccato layer.
# Clear indication of staccato of the lower layer
# Diamond shape note head for harmonics with text indicating higher octave
# Specified exact string and exact fret
# Clear indicative text: Staccato-Harmonic Duo-tone

Compositions with Staccato-Harmonic Duo-tone technique

#Nocturne (1996) by Le-Tuyen Nguyen
#Fantasia (1998) by Le-Tuyen Nguyen

References:
http://www.darwinguitar.com/workshops.php

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu