Thanks for the insight.

From a instrument evolution perspective, do you think that this is an issue that needs resolving for the Stick in its own evolution, or do you think that it’s a not an issue for the instrument but more a question of different tunings for different individuals/applications?

For example, I’ve not looked into the full history of how guitar came to be tuned EADGBE as standard, but I imagine a lot of it was down to trial and error, finding what had issues and what didn’t, and settling on one tuning that minimises most issues... but that still of course doesn’t stop individuals/camps choosing different tunings as per their needs.

Just an interesting thought that struck my brain.

I've never understood the bitterness you periodically express. A number of people, including myself, have in the past consistently expressed a desire to hear more from you, both figuratively on the forum and literally in the form of playing. Yet you sometimes seem more determined to push away. That's a bit of a head scratcher to me for a member of such a small community.

I've no plans to switch tunings, but you seem to have an interest in rigorous musical research and application for our instrument, and I'm still very interested in what you could share.

I use one that I created myself after a lot of experimentation. The lowest open string on the bass side is F# which gives me a G on the first fret. The strings go up in 4ths from there. The melody side is what I guess would be called a minor 5th higher. This tuning let me play the music I wanted at the time. I am about to start another round of experimentation with the intention of finding a tuning optimized for the classical music I think I might be able to play. I’m not trying to play everything, just a few things l like. I’ll share once I find something that works for me.

-Eric

I am going to chime in here on a couple of points;

Reading in a 5ths tuning is doable, and I was doing it in Matched Reciprocal, but like I mentioned earlier in the thread and Mad Monk just mentioned, the learning curve is reduced substantially, just by making the intervallic skips more similar. Scales = exact same shapes, chords = exact same shapes, intervals = exactly the same shapes. Reading anything while in 5ths in real time was very, very difficult. Try playing guitar and mandolin at the same time, it's doable, but ends up being a real feat if you catch my drift...

Now, once I got into reading some simple stuff down, it became wildly apparent that there was stuff on the bass side that was more of a hardship than it had to be (in 5ths). Reading on guitar, violin, or cello is all about being in position, and having easiest access to the pool of notes you will need to play with the least amount of effort. Highest and the lowest. In 4ths tuning, the "4th" note of your scale is literally right there. In 5ths tuning, a 4th is tougher to grab. I want to be able to easily play 2nds, 3rds, and 4ths as chordshapes with no compromising (9ths, 10ths, 11ths aren't my only option in M4, I get to have my cake and eat it too).

The fret spacing on a Stick is substantially bigger than a cello, enormously bigger than a violin, definitely bigger than a guitar, and bigger than a bass. When I am real-time reading, it just isn't practical or efficient to have my hand flopping around hunting down the note.

You have only to look at the post that folows the one you quoted to see why I am disgusted.

My posts are usually carefully thought out and they are based on many thousands of hours of practice, in addition to considerable study at school and on my own. I do not talk about unproven ideas.

But any rube can essentially erase my post by talking out of his ass, as happened here. Funny you didn’t take him to task for saying, basically, that fourths players are full of shit. I’ve had to put up with flak from the self-professed experts here for many years and I’m sick of it. I thought maybe a new subcategory would make it safer...

And no, I am not a member of your little community. I am here to share some pretty arcane information with the world by putting it where it can be found.

Mad Monk.

The instrument can be adjusted pretty easily, it’s the pedagogy that will hopefully evolve. I would like to see a Stick piano model with 7 bass strings, like I have, though.


Mad Monk.

Continuing to do something that just doesn't work for me is insanity, especially when I can change one or two things like my tuning and my approach and get on with making music, and dispense with frustration. I invested a substantial amount of time, money and energy into trying to learn the instrument as it was, and I think that I actually got worse over a couple years.

Changing my tuning to M4 yielded almost immediate improvement, and made it so that I could utilize my schooling, 40 years of music experience, and apply my work ethic towards getting positive results on the Stick. Better than that, it made playing the Stick really fun for me, so I think that alone makes the tuning change worthwhile for me.

Would you be happy to elaborate on your current instrument tuning and setup? I’d love to hear your reasons, approach, logic behind decisions etc. Feel free to PM if you’d rather.

I predominantly play piano for supporting voice accompaniment so am curious as to what other approaches exist for translating piano to the stick.

Balt-A-Sar, why are you poo-pooing what we do? Seriously. And on Christmas...? Not nice.

...counting hours is really a endeavor for itself, you will loose this for your practice time...
...focus on the subject with no distractions is better to prevent the waste of time...
...all, at least the most of us has their hours of experience, well, their results and conclusions will be as individual as the single persons are theirselves...
...in fact, personal experience, history, age and so on can't be criterion, only the subject-matters are counting here, sorry...




...noble, indeed, to warn...but to help the people would be better, much better...
...several thousand hours, yes indeed thats a warning, a written list of your studied oeuvres of Bach and Satie, would be a help, just what's called a repertory, thanks and looking forward to...
...anyway I'm very happy to notice you posting after your long pause, thank you very much once again...
...and like mcgrahamhk wrote: "What in particular did you find about the split tunings that made reading tricky?" , it only remains to second that...





...study or sight reading? that's the question here...

...well, study is always possible, maybe better known all over the world as transcripion...
...transcription is a science on its own, from note to note copying to grasp the token gesture of a piece, all can arise, depending on the tendencies, likings of the transcriptor, severity of the piece...
...compare some piano works of Isaac Albeniz, they became even more famous as transcriptions for classical guitar as the originals, if this implies the transcriptions were better than the originals is another question and post, of course...

...sight reading is rather different, here the player looks at the new and never before seen score, moves his fingers, or hands if you like so, and we all can hear now the music that is written in the score, like a sequencer software does it, often better then most of us humans...
...to do this you must be a box checker (free after Brett Bottomley) but a proper one, you will need a big library of music scores, and you are reading from the scores like a box checker, but at the most for three times, then check out the next box...
...maybe you will learn something about music, maybe not and never...
...and please, spare us the videos from this activities, it's just boring...sorry, I'm just plain and honest...





...why this???, it's only what a mediocre drummer does every day...
...not only with his hands, his legs are sharing the party....





...sorry what means become???...what means if you want???...
...after all, thank you for your wishes at the end of your clause, there are so many things in life which needs good luck, a lot of luck indeed...





...and now?...just learn them!...
...violinists have four basic shapes to learn, they just do it, worldwide, no problem at all...




...look at clusters, every child, no, every cat can play them on the piano only by lying on the keys...
...try playing tenth on piano, no, no, no, not with the pedal, only the two notes together, any questions...
...yes, clusters are very hard to play in fifth tuning, but using fourth tuning does'nt change here really much...
...look at the literature of the different instruments and you find a lot of specific textures caused by the used instrument, easy playing things (not necessarily musically easy!) are always in the language of the music, seconds and thirds on the piano, tenths on the stick, because they are easy to perform...
...Bach chorales are a good example, thank you, but IMHO even here we have only a different assignment of the voices on the instrument to do, just play soprano and tenor on the right and alto and bass on left side, voila...there exists no rule to do it pianowise, means sop/alto on the right and ten/bass on the left even the score shows this assignment of the voices...
...and don't forget your thumbs, piano players use them every day ...


...I'm to the core persuaded and assured of the idea of free hands, but what a shift for the stick and the tapping idea would be the combination with a free spirit...


important notice: this post refers exclusively to the discused item and matter. There is not the slightest intention to insult or attack any person, but analysis of objects are often hard and unrelenting...personally I'm estimating Mad Monks posts a lot, they are helpful and inspiring...
...thank you for beeing here again...