A Minnesota guitarist's Palmfrets invention strikes a new chord
Palmfrets, Minnesota guitarist's invention, strikes a new chord
A Minnesota guitarist has invented Palmfrets, a device that lets players fret notes with the palm of the hand rather than the fingertips, opening up new chord shapes and techniques. The project has its own site at palmfrets.com, and the story drew attention on Hacker News, where commenters linked to the original Echo Press report and an unpaywalled mirror.
Palmfrets, Minnesota guitarist's invention, strikes a new chord
- adzm
Not a single photo of the palmfrets in the article, wow. Closest you get is a hand covering the entire device.
I was much more interested once I saw the actual website.
Long story short, it's basically a fret at the bridge end of the guitar, so using it will bring the 'root' note of the bass strings up a semitone or few.
I can see this being pretty useful for drones when fingerpicking. Though combining this with normal frets on the top string will necessarily be inaccurate because it shortens the string length, so the normal frets will be slightly misplaced.
- boulos
The last part of the first video makes it more clear: you're basically your own bass backing player with one or two notes. I see why he trademarked "palmbass" as another term.
- velcrovan
If you want more Minnesota guitar innovation, look up Leo Kottke
- Someone
- defart
Not sure what benefit this gives you at all, since (for me at least) id rather be able to 'unlock' extra tones deeper than the open string. Being able to do 3 frets on the reverse side of the guitar doesn't bring that much.
Especially doesnt bring much that couldn't be achieved with an alternate tuning.
Nothing against it, it just seems a pretty contrived invention.