I would also be interested in what the 5+7 M4th tuning looks like on the SG12. I’m going to be moving to the SG12 soon and am interested in the M4th tunings. Thanks.

Balt-A-Sar, there are too many errors of logic in your post to address.

How about this? Why don’t you try to play a chorale, and then report back, OK?


Mad Monk.

Or post any playing at all, I (for one) will be happy to listen/watch...

Hey there all. I’ve been tempted to move to the dark(light) side of the fourths. Promise of ease of play tempts me to give it a try. But I’m afraid I’ll undo what I’ve accomplished with standard 4/5 th tuning. Bob Culbertson seems to do fine with 4/5 the If I had a second 12 string I’d give it a go with M4th.

I had no problems playing Bach invention number 1 using classic with high bass 4th. I guess we get used to what we have and make it work the best we can. I haven’t tried Bach chorales but have no desire to do Chorales. As for site reading in 4th and 5ths it’s tricky but I have no idea if mirrored 4ths would be easier. I imagine it would be. Your hands are still doing different jobs. With 4ths I imagine there is less hand movement needed.

Next time I meet someone in person who has M4 th tuning I’ll play around and see if it is to my liking. For the time being I’ll stick with 4/5ths. I’m cool with it’s “downside”

I use mirrored 4ths and I recommend the standard 4ths/5ths tuning to most people. All tunings are a compromise. The standard tunings are optimized for the most styles of music. Bob C. plays all kinds of music from classical organ to Irish fiddle tunes to jazz, etc. He has also been using the tuning for more than 30 years. It’s hard to change after that long. I’ve had some nice discussions with him about mirrored 4ths tunings. He said they are a fine alternative for a 12-string instrument. He has no compelling reason to make changes at this point.

There are lots of guitar players who use different tunings for different pieces. One example is Andrew York, the great classical guitar player. He is a master of the the standard tuning but also uses dropped D and all 5ths, among others. He uses the 5ths tuning when playing Bach cello pieces as he can play them unaltered.

Guitar players usually have lots of guitars so this is more feasible for them. For those of us who will only have one Stick we need to make a choice. It is possible to switch to different tunings on a Stick but it is a lot more work than on a guitar. I come to Stick from guitar so my perspective might be different than bass and keyboard players. I have an SG12 as the fret spacing is more natural for me. I like mirrored 4ths because I’m not a serious musician. I call myself someone who likes to play music, not a musician. Since I don’t get to play much I want something that is easier for me. Mirrored 4ths just feels more natural to me. That’s it, I don’t use it for any theoretical reason, I just like it.

I’m hoping to go to Interlochen next summer and I hope to see many of you there. I’m not sure what tuning I’ll have then but it will fun for me and I’ll be happy to have anyone try it.

-Eric

Well, I guess I am the stupid kid who couldn't wrap his mind around the 4ths/5ths thing - I did honestly try my best.

I just wanted to play, that's all. Mirrored 4ths has worked for me, when playing in 5ths was literally moving backwards.I am not trying to sell anyone on anything - I just like playing and talking about music.

Ahhh well.

Signed, "The Box Checker"

This thread covers a lot of that:

viewtopic.php?f=27&t=6020


Mad Monk.

For me mirrored 4ths simply provides a different kind of musical language or accompaniment style that suits my particular interests and musical influences, it's allowed me to distill some of my favorite bass, acoustic guitar and keyboard styles into a cohesive left hand approach that I think is also uniquely Stick-ish (i.e. doesn't feel like forcing a different instrument technique onto something not designed for it).

What I found to be the most powerful feature of the tuning is the particular way melodic ideas can be woven in between held chord notes with other fingers, pull offs, etc, either in the bass range or up on the higher pitch bass strings. I need to come up with a better video to demonstrate what I mean by this, but this old one is a start:


I can relate a bit to the annoyance of people sometimes saying things like "if it's tuned differently it's not really a Stick" etc... I appreciate where that sentiment comes from and inverted 5ths provides the basis of a powerful accompaniment approach, but there is basically no way I could play my music in a different tuning. On the other hand, I've been grateful to get a lot of encouragement from Greg and Emmett in particular for my efforts on the Stick, I don't feel like I've faced any kind of resistance regarding my tuning. Greg did influence my decision to switch from parallel 4ths to mirrored, which ended up opening up a lot more possibilities because of the way it opens up the hand.

I agree with the idea that mirrored 4ths is well suited to reading keyboard music - the moment I decided I wanted to switch from an NS/Stick to a Grand tuned in 4ths was when I attempted to play Bach's first Goldberg Variation and saw the advantages of two overlapping pitch regions in 4ths. I just never ended up devoting significant time to this area (I guess there was a lot of low hanging fruit to grab with my own compositions and progressive rock arrangements, and not a lot of extra time).

I use fourths because:

1. It is the structure of the guitar and bass guitar and it is hardwired into the repertoire and language of those two instruments. Huge repository of knowledge and music to draw on more directly.

2. I played with numerous tunings and arrived at 4ths as my favoured compromise between range, stretch, interval spacing, soloing and chordal layout and hand ergonomics. I tried major thirds, fourths, b5ths and fifths and arrived at fourths. All have the compromises in terms of the above.

3. I wanted my bass hand to sound more like a normal bass player as opposed to other approaches used - this is a personal style preference.

4. In the same spirit as eliminating the third from the guitar tuning, I feel that uniformity of musical intervals correlating to a physical movement/spacial concept greatly facilitates developing an ear/instrument connection. All stickists agree on this as an asset on the melody side of the instrument, almost none of us retaining the traditional third which puts a kink in the conceptual guitar fretboard. I differ from 5ths tuned stickists in the fact that I can't connect an inverted interval with the same physical gesture - only intervals in their root position. I rarely think in inversion of intervals and they often have a completely different sonic quality to their inversion therefore the interval-shape-hand connection in my brain only works to me when consistent across both hands.

5. When I changed to 4ths I felt more connected with the instrument like I was "coming home" - this is mostly familiarity of many years of playing bass and guitar.

6. I like close voicing in upper voices of chords. I feel as though wide voicings in the lower registers can be achieved with string skips in the main.

7. Direct crossover to NS stick.

The major trade offs are:

1. Range reduction - need more strings - ideally 14 - 8 bass strings (divided pickup) and 6 melody - would love to see that stick developed.
2. 5ths bass generates some unique intervallic bass line and chords which are not as accessible in 4ths.
3. The root fifth power chord double stop in the bass hand such as used by Kevin Keith is cool but not playable in fourths - need to use a 5th root voicing instead.
4 .Can't access stick learning repertoire verbatim.

Many cultivated and informative views on bass 4ths versus 5ths on Stick strings. The neutral design and accommodating hardware makes this instrument a "blank slate" for all tunings.

In most musical genres, the keyboardist's left hand doesn't usually do anything close to what the right hand does, unless you're arpeggiating chords up and down the keys, playing two-handed octaves or reciting classical counterpoint.

I have a novel concept to add to this discussion. What if the piano's bass register had no direction of pitch, neither ascending or descending? I' called it a "round sound" from my accordion days as a teenager in the '50s. The left hand buttons open reeds tuned in octaves, which are "weighted" to emphasize lower or higher notes of the octave according to the lettered note. You hear a bass fundamental in an "omnipresent" way with no direction up or down to the next bass note.

Then, what if the piano's bass keys were arranged in successive 4ths or 5ths instead of chromatic semitones? Your left hand, usually reaching for structural harmonic progressions, would have them within a hand's grasp.

Now combine these "what ifs" into one keyboard concept and you have the accordion, that is, its left hand bass concept. Let's hear it for accordion! No, wait, this concept is going nowhere, unless a keyboardist came along who mastered this structural left hand approach to harmony - successive keys is 5ths (or 4ths) and with no ascending or descending pitch.

You'd lose the melodic bass line but you'd gain what I call "applied music theory" right there in your left hand. Circle of chromatic half steps versus circle of 5ths - every other note is identical on both charts. Both schemes are bound together.

So now that I've ruined my piano, what's the biggest downside? Left hand chords are terribly muddy with no voicing at all. I'd need buttons, or another tier of keys for chords above the bass row. Here's where the accordion problem comes into play - artificial chords. To get all the voicings of major and minor chords you'd need many tiers of chordal keys above the bass row.

Now I've created a monster, but I'd have fun playing omnipresent bass lines that go nowhere linearly but move nicely harmonically - the round sound.