This is mostly to Jayessker, MadMonk and ErictheGray but anyone invested in this study please feel free to contribute. I didn't want it to get lost in the to and fro of the "why do you use mirrored 4ths thread".

I would love suggestions of piano or similar scores that are fairly easily ported to 4ths-stick tunings to allow us to collaboratively develop a kind of recommended study/workshop list commencing from simple pieces up to complex, for the purposes of developing independence.

I am not a good stick sight reader but was fluent on bass and trombone in the past and plan to incorporate reading to build a stick repertoire and more easily port music across onto the stick that is native to other instruments but well suited to stick. (I should mention that stafftab can of course perform a similar function but there is not a massive library to rival that of standard notation).

I think standard notation offers the distinct benefit to the stick student of laying out the rhythmic interplay between the hands on the rhythmic grid and I'm hoping this tried and true path to excellent independence that all pianists take can benefit the stick journey to independence. I have spent some time with another approach, that is looping basslines in one hand and progressively increasing complexity in the other which works but I think the piano way has a lot of merit and history and is probably superior in the long run but both approaches play a role.

There was a thread not long ago on how we may do better as stickists and one of the things that has allowed superhuman virtuosity on the piano to develop over the centuries is a fairly structured curriculum of incrementally increasing difficulty which can be methodically worked through to guide the student from one stage of development to another. Maybe stickists who have been along a similar path could make some good recommendations to go towards an outline for the student stickist (like me) to work through.

Anyway to summarise, I would like to open up the conversation around this and ask for recommendations around scores, etudes and sources form piano or similar, ideally with a rough difficulty rating (?say from 1-10? or beg/int/adv) to help reading stickists develop skill and progressive independence. Once we have a few, maybe we can sort them by difficulty and try to come up with a short list for me and others to work through incrementally like a small classical curriculum...

Thanks

I would recommend Bach's Minuet #1 in G minor. Regardless of your tuning, this is piece in a familiar key that is relatively easy to learn and to develop. Claire Steger plays this one quite nicely.

Let me know if you would like to learn that one (or the #1 in G Major, or the #2 in G Major).

Check out the college textbook "keyboard strategies for the adult beginner"

There's a lot of stuff that will be piano specific but it is also filled to the brim with etudes and classics written with exactly your goal in mind, with an excellent sense of incrementation.

I regularly pull from this book for my less experienced Tap Theory students and I can't recommend it enough for this purpose. I have a pure notation style I've been working on for Stick as well, however it is geared towards the 4ths/5ths tuning. It's a combination of piano and classical guitar notation and fingering techniques that allow the stickist to always know where they should be on the fretboard and what finger they should use with a minimally invasive amount of extra info pulling attention away from the notes.

Hey, all good! Thanks for the honourable mention, but I am nobody - just a music enthusiast. I play the instrument the way that works best for me, and I study and practice in a way that leverages previous knowledge and practice on other instruments.

Not sure if advice or recommendations from me is a good idea, I am literally the worst Stickist to ever use one, guys who have been playing a lot less time than I have are quite a ways further. Anyways, here is a thought or two...

I have never been much of a keyboardist, and if I could go back and do it all again, I would have taken piano lessons for a good year/two years prior to playing Stick and would likely have gone with the Suzuki method. I have the Suzuki books for Piano, I might take a run at the method and see how it goes.

One book that I work out of quite a bit for Stick is Neil Olmstead's "Solo Jazz Piano" By Berklee press...