Can Guitar Frets Perform Multiplication?
Charles Petzold explores whether the logarithmic spacing of guitar frets can be used like a slide rule to multiply numbers. He demonstrates a one-octave fretboard that seems to work, but when extended to two octaves, the correspondence breaks down. The article explains the math behind slide rules and why the fretboard analogy is only partially valid, offering an interactive HTML demonstration for readers to test the concept themselves.
It seems as if guitar frets are partially mimicking a slide rule but not quite nailing it.
- Syzygies
Steve Martin in conversation, 2002. 34:20 to 36:00 is this exact question.
Later, Robin Williams joins him on stage. My cameo starts at 1:01:40, inaudible and off-camera, because I'd traded a seat up close for two in the balcony so my future wife could join me.
- lioeters
This post is by the same author as the Lost Art of Logarithms. https://www.lostartoflogarithms.com/
Discussed about a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43356314 (196 comments)
- dofm
Regarding how people figured out the positions of the frets:
Frets used to just be thick material (wire, strips of flexible wood or treated cord) tied around the neck of the instrument. They were added, moved and removed for different scales, and "tuning" might have involved choosing fret positions that sat well with other instruments that could not be tuned, etc.
They were inherently movable. Sitar frets still are tied to the neck this way.
You can do this yourself with cable ties which make tolerable frets for experimental purposes.
So this would have allowed the knowledge of precise tuning to evolve over time.
- bgrainger
Hard to believe that article doesn't contain the phrase "slide guitar".
- pazimzadeh
> How did people figure out the positions of the frets without calculators and precision measuring instruments?
If you had perfect pitch (maybe relative pitch is enough) then couldn't you just make marks in each position on the fretboard where it sounds like a new full note, and then go back and listen for the half-notes and do the same thing?