Re: Any piano players have any advice for the Stick?
greg wrote:
Well, here's something to consider. The Matched Reciprocal tunings make a lot of sense if you are used to thinking about the instruments layout in relation to the nut. For me, I like to think about it in terms of the relationship to the inlays. With the Classic tuning, you have the same lettered note names at the first inlay marker on the bass strings as you do on the third inlay marker on the melody strings, (DAEBF#C# for both).same for the 2nd marker on the bass strings/4th marker on the melody strings (GDAEBF#)
This makes it MUCH easier to identify where the notes are in the most common playing regions of the board for each hand, and since we don't have black and white keys to guide us, this inlay correspondence is very helpful. Just my 2 cents, and I played MR on a Grand for about three years, so...
Just following up on this now I’ve had a raised matched reciprocal rail board for a month or so.
I’m finding that with RMR, the reference points I’ve got are whatever bass note I play on the lowest two bass strings, I can find a corresponding octave (and fifth below) for the same key five frets higher and four strings over, I.e. the same notes are at adjacent markers, just over a few strings.
This means that I can get a nice piano-like, full board chord across the two sides, so E at first fret marker on lowest bass string (6th string) —> E (and B as the fifth below) at 2nd fret marker on 2nd (and 3rd) strings on melody side. I’ve found this a very natural way to navigate the instrument, lots of space between the hands, visually helpful, and all defining notes relative to one another rather than relative to the nut.
Or if you want even more space, shift up the right hand to the 3rd marker and one string closer to the bass side. Again, markers display everything neatly.
I was going to discuss/mention this at my next lesson with Greg, but figured it was worth mentioning on the forum more generally in case anyone else uses this system or others are looking for a way to develop a system.