Thanks for the though.
I remember the axis harmnic keyboard from a few years back (just THAT it existed, I never tried one)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O64JK33TVGs

It seems a little like the accordion in terms of arrangement


It's something I'm still kind of wrapping my head around - that it's a HARMONIC relationship of the reciprocal tuning.

I come from classi[al] guitar, so I guess I might have that same hangup as some others where I tend to think of harmony as almost an emergent condition from the interaction of melodic voices...polyphonic as opposed to a homophonic for lack of a better vocabulary

Thanks for the link. I’ve read through your reasoning, I agree re: need for better and more fully fleshed out pedagogy. If you find M4ths easier for your reading then great for you, but now I’ve read through your arguments I’m not convinced its optimal - in an absolute sense - for all pianists who are reading, especially those reading charts (mostly what I have to work from), but for running parallel lines I can see there is enhanced fingerboard symmetry that is helpful when reading cold/nearly cold.

Given what we’re discussing is pragmatically just fifths vs fourths in the left hand, I think the trade off of quicker reading of lines and enhanced symmetry vs ease of chords and reduced symmetry is really going to boil down to individual tastes or musical requirements.

(For context, I’ve spent 6 months putting standards (pop, RnB charts, and jazz/gospel standards) onto the Railboard. Probably around 100 hours by estimation. For quick chart reading and fast chord tension adding, inverted fifths is hard to beat IMO/IME. For chart reading I’d enjoy the easier bass lines but lament the loss of quick chord access)

...what is this, what is this...
...you asked for the pros and cons, do you remember, and you fear the answers....
...you are free, you are still free, you ever will be free...to use the tuning you like to use...
...like all others are free to use their tunings too...
...nothing to win, and nothing to loose...
...why you start a discussion if you don't want to listen to other views???...
...???...???...???...

Balt-A-Sar, we are looking for informed dicussion.

Mad Monk.

Wow. And here I wasted thousands of hours playing from scores, with a repertoire in fifths that equals all the classical stuff that anyone is playing here now, and more,
And then spent thousands more hours playing the same pieces and many others, in fourths, thinking I’d found a better way to study from and play from scores...
When I should have just asked you.

Mad Monk.

Come now, I didn’t say you were wrong, I literally said I’ve read your arguments and am unconvinced of your position, as put forward by you. For someone who is interested in reasoned and informed discussion you take the hump far too easily.

If I had to do it all over again I would choose standard tuning again. I have learning disabilities so reading a grand staff is not an option for me nor memorizing even a simple classical piece.

If I had normal learning abilities and memory capacity, I would learn uncrossed 4ths or mirrored 4ths. I think, it’s hard to know what I’d be like with different abilities.

Brett

Great insights here and in the linked-to thread.

Brett's recent posting about moving the Stick forward to more wide acceptance and Mad Monk's, and other's, thoughtful reasoning about how a mirrored 4ths tuning could be a boon to players studying the vast scored repertoire may be connected. As are the comments from bass and guitar players finding 4ths tuning more approachable.

A comment I read in this or the linked-to thread about how the poster despised notation and thought music professors were pompous really set me back. How can the Stick be more widely accepted in the musiverse if 1) there's hardly any repertoire available for players to study or 2) there's no respect for institutions where someone may be able to study Stick as a performance instrument?

I often read that the Stick is meant to be used as an improvisation and/or compositional means. This is great. But not everyone can improvise or compose, or wants to.

Perhaps it is time for the Stick to move out of its navel-gazing phase. Repertoire study is key to any performance instrument. No matter the genre one chooses. There's simply not much Stick repertoire one can study, after 40 years.

If mirrored 4ths tuning indeed does accommodate access to various types of scored music, maybe this tuning should be promoted, or at least mentioned, by SE for this purpose.

Peace.

I agree, I'd like to see more acceptance, but this first requires music that is accessible to the public, and it also needs to make a particular sound that can't be afforded by guitar or piano to carve it's own need to exist. When music isn't accessible, we can't make that acceptance occur any time soon. And advanced technique for advanced sake is also a complete dead-end until there's something musical to be demonstrated through it, and we can't shortcut our way there, there has to be layers of musical development built into the playing of the instrument (in a mainstream sense).

Re: how 4ths vs 5ths tie into this - personally I think the Stick requires more than just guitar/bass fingerboard knowledge. Most piano players don't get into the Stick because music is not being made that they couldn't make themselves on piano. Guitarists/bassists like experimentation and naturally are drawn to things like the Stick, but don't have the full spectrum music theory and hand control that pianists do and can bring to the Stick.

FWIW I think the 5ths enables such easy and full chording, that for the majority of people looking to learn the equivalent of strumming Wonderwall (or something similar, which is how most start), inverted 5ths plus 4ths is the fastest and mechanically simplest way to do this. Given the fingerboard geometry is the same, any argument for M4ths (in terms of physical ease) I think also applies to inverted 5ths.

NOTE: I'm not saying some with previous experience wouldn't find mirrored 4ths hacks their existing knowledge - this is of course is true - but for the cold-start beginner, I'm confident the inverted 5ths would be the fastest way to get into playing a song that sounds big and full with very little stretching required.

No doubt about that. For years now I have been working on developing two commercially viable “sounds” that are unique to the instrument.




Absolutely. Fortunately, music studied on the Stick can be applied more directly to other string instruments than music studied at the piano. As an example, I joined my university’s classical guitar ensemble with nearly zero experience on any kind of guitar. But I was able to play guitar from scores immediately, thanks to years of experience playing piano scores in fourths on the Stick.

Mad Monk.