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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
pluc | 9 hours ago
If you haven't heard them yet, you're in for a wild ride: https://www.youtube.com/@AnginePoitrine
jagged-chisel | 9 hours ago
analog31 | 9 hours ago
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.
jagged-chisel | 9 hours ago
BigTTYGothGF | 8 hours ago
ErroneousBosh | 8 hours ago
What do you think double-stops are?
amanaplanacanal | 8 hours ago
ErroneousBosh | 7 hours ago
That's E, G♯, B, D, F
telotortium | 6 hours ago
ErroneousBosh | 5 hours ago
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.
anentropic | 4 hours ago
bluGill | 8 hours ago
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.
ErroneousBosh | 7 hours ago
williamdclt | 7 hours ago
dahart | 6 hours ago
BigTTYGothGF | 4 hours ago
anentropic | 4 hours ago
lebuffon | 3 hours ago
[OP] bilegeek | 9 hours ago
ErroneousBosh | 8 hours ago
lebuffon | 3 hours ago
On a Cello a fingered string is gone in 2 seconds.
dmoy | 5 hours ago
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.
defrost | 9 hours ago
* https://www.delta-harp.com/
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdUztFVwi3I
swiftcoder | 6 hours ago
AlecSchueler | 2 hours ago
[OP] bilegeek | 9 hours ago
I see your added frets, and raise "add frets on the fly using Lego":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPCEImSfCwc
functionmouse | 8 hours ago
Really? I highly recommend Flying Microtonal Banana.
stronglikedan | 6 hours ago
Really? Most people's first intro to microtonal guitar is recent and brought to them by Angine de Poitrine.
dizhn | 4 hours ago
adzm | 6 hours ago
ofalkaed | 2 hours ago
https://collectionsdumusee.philharmoniedeparis.fr/search.asp...
babblingbrook | 9 hours ago
indymike | 8 hours ago
faxmeyourcode | 5 hours ago
I was totally unfamiliar with harp guitar but I am sad that I missed such a special gathering!
SloopJon | 7 hours ago
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/
dhosek | 5 hours ago
timdellinger | 3 hours ago
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.
SoftTalker | an hour ago
Would that be a ukulele? Or is that something different yet?
ofalkaed | 2 hours ago
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?
dahart | an hour ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Guitar_family_instrum...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_lute-family_instrum...
dhosek | an hour ago