die, monster, die!
Here are some completely insane microtonal guitars. I really can't tell the difference between most "true" versus tempered intervals, and I've tried—the other day Erik and I sat down with a guitar and a calculator to figure out by how many Hertz we'd be off tuning exclusively by harmonics. The answer was four. I guess once you get into higher overtones the difference becomes more pronounced. Anyway, that 62-tone just intonation guitar still frightens me. And I don't understand the sixth-tone (each half step divided into thirds) at all. Why even bother putting frets up past the octave? Surely no one can play on those.
Here is the Sonic Youth tablature archive, maintained by some very serious guitar geeks. They have all the alternate tunings (looks like over fifty of them) listed alphabetically, and detailed instructions such as:
tuning: EADECD w/ screwdriver @ 9th fret
Only Lee plays on this song. His part is incredibly similar to the World Looks Red. Begin by bending the strings behind the screwdriver, hitting the DECD strings open and releasing the bend. repeat.
then start a pattern like this (w/ 0 being the open string on the 'right' side of the screwdriver):
D--0---0---0---0--- etc
C----0---0---0---0-
E------------------
D------------------
A------------------
E------------------
while doing this you can either push the strings down behind the screwdriver, bend the strings up the screwdriver, wiggle the screwdriver, etc to modulate the sounds and get the pitch you want.
it's kind of difficult to tab the rest.
