So I've had my 12 string stick now for a bit over a week, and I have some questions and I was looking for feedback.

I was thinking in my head about reversing the strings on the bass side so that the strings all go from low to high in 4ths across the whole range of the stick. Does anyone here do that? Anyone think of any reasons why I shouldn't do that? Also, is there any physical reason (do the make of the stick) that I couldn't do what I'm suggesting? I have PASV pickups if that makes a difference.

Well if you do that you'll lose the cool ability to play clean chords on the bass side which the 5ths tuning makes easy. And You'll have to really reach over a lot of strings on a wide neck to play your bass notes. The plus side is you can play your regular bass patterns like on a bass guitar, an NS Stick or SB8. It'll change the nature of the instrument. BUT Emmett designed the Stick to be very flexible so it's do-able. AND you could always change it back if you don't like it.

Good luck with your decision .... I went through the EXACT same thing a little over a year ago with my old 10 string. I was going to change it into an "SB10" and as soon as I did I missed the chord ability of the inverted 5ths tuning and changed it right back to standard MR tuning.

Straight fourths wouldn't work across 12 strings, with the lowest and highest gauges you could possibly use I think you'd cover the acceptable pitch range with at most 9 strings or so, in which case an SB8 or NS/Stick would be better.

You could have overlapping pitch ranges (i.e. parallel 4ths), but I find it much more advantageous to mirror the 4ths in this case.

What are you looking to accomplish with a particular tuning - style of music, solo vs. band, etc.?

At this point, the re-stringing question is part curiosity. Like I've said, I've only had my stick for a week or so, and currently, I've just noticed that for me naturally, my left hand likes to be able to ascend the same direction as the right hand can. Also, to me, if the strings were aligned low to high, I could do parellel runs across a large spectrum (i.e. start on the bass side with the right hand, start a scale to the highest string, and then have the left hand come in at a harmonic soon after and just follow it on up. As for having them keep the standard 4ths all the way through, it just logically made more sense to me at first to have everything spaced the same. I'm sure there are tons of advantages to how the stick is already set up, but it was just my initial impression.

I'm a solo person, no band. I'm also a keyboardist by nature, which maybe part of why I'm coming from how I am. Music wise, I guess I'm most heavily influenced by bands like Dream Theater (and especially Jordan Rudess), Pink Floyd, Rush, Iron Maiden, so the type of stuff I would like to play would fall along similar type sounds/styles. I guess prog rock with a good bit of heavy metal tossed in?

Also, as a complete aside from my main question, anyone out here ever try doing speed/thrash type stuff on a stick? I was listening to Angel of Death the other day and I was just trying to think how that could be pulled off on a stick without some majorly wierd tuning arrangements.

Thanks for the replies so far. And Rob, "One Cloud" was one of the youtube videos that helped make me want to get a stick!

motorhead, those are some of the exact thought processes I went though as well when trying to decide on a tuning. We also have similar influences.

There is an appeal to straight 4ths because of the logic, but in practical terms, there are times when hands can tend to run into each other when trying to play two different things in the same pitch range. In my experience, having two separate pitch regions (that overlap in range) opens up a lot more possibilities, especially for solo music.

Have you heard Behold the Arctopus? Colin uses a Warr Guitar in (I think) a Stick style 5ths bass/melody 4ths tuning.

Yes, I have heard of Arctopus...I actually think I saw them on either Warr's site, or Traktor's....I was under the impression though that the Warr guitars were set up a bit differently that made them more easily be plucked or strummed than a Stick...


What would you say then to keeping the standard stick tuning, but reversing the strings so they still run in the same direction (low to high)? Obviously I know its a personal choice, but it helps to have feedback from experienced folks!

The Arctopus clips I've seen seemed to be very tap based rather than strummed/plucked- you can do some of that on a Stick too (i.e. Greg's Big Bang video is a good example)... the tone would be different but I didn't see any particular reason that it couldn't also be performed on a Stick in the same tuning.

I think you'd lose a lot of ergonomic advantages of inverted 5ths if you reversed them- instead of open handed, extended fingers you'd run into a lot of finger scrunching (there was just a big thread that discussed this recently- viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1303 ) Bass in 5ths players obviously have more insight into this than me...

Hi motorhead

One nice thing about The Stick (compared to other instruments) is that it's relatively easy to experiment with the tuning.

Having an adjustable nut is essential to getting the right "play" at the first fret especially, and if you take a few notes about what you're doing, you can always "go back" relatively painlessly.

As a former keyboardist myself, I have to say the two coolest things about the 5ths tuning are the expanded orchestral possibilities (your left hand can really act as "two" hands), and the way chords are laid out, with the voicings spread out over the vast range of the string group. The left hand can be a complete accompaniment machine all on its own.

If you look at the following tuning chart:

http://www.stick.com/instruments/tunings/12/classic_66/

you'll see that the range of 6 strings in 5ths takes you up almost as high as the highest melody note.

So if you wanted to do rapid scaler lines, you can use two hands on that one side of the instrument and soar.

If you have my Water on the Moon CD you can hear some of this kind of thing in Track I, and though I was only playing a ten-string, even that has a greater range than 6 strings in 4ths by a minor 3rd.

Here are some nice fat orchestral voicings:

The root-5-octave-5 power chord (numbers indicate fingers):



if you want to play unison with your right hand, yes it's easier to do that if you have 4ths in both hands (and there are some easy things you can learn for doing it in 5ths as well. This video has some of that as well about halfwaythrough, and lots of plucking, too - (thanks for also mention the Big Bang Video, Rob):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFEg5DwWEtQ[/youtube]

RSShttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFEg5DwWEtQ

You can also use pitch transposers, and octavers to get a similar effect, and still have you left hand free to do something else.

If you do decide to use a 4ths tunings, the mirrored 4ths has so much more going for it, in terms of how easily the chords fit the hands, and in terms of having the same ergonomics.

Ah, tuning talk...I could go on...

Hi Greg, I really enjoyed this improvisation a lot and even though you look really serious
about your business I found a lot of humor along the way Really great! There are acres
of ideas in that one and I don't know how I missed it unless it is a new post. But a question
comes up that I hope is not to far off the current flavor of the thread; I wonder if you could
address double stops in relation to chord phrasing and polly chord phrasing? It seemed
that there was a lot going on on those levels without being to tricky. For example
Rob Martino's chords are complex and beautiful and I love that for what it is but I
also loved the raw energy that came out of your improvisation; more primal but no
less emotive

Gary Goodman has a 12 string bass in straight 4ths that matches the Bösendorfer model #290 grand piano range (8 octaves!!!). It is feasible but your gauges have to be a little bit extreme; Gary manufactures wound strings up to .270! Again this will not be practical on a grand stick since the 2 lowest strings will be almost touching each other


Cheers, Daniel.