I'm on the edge of yet another tuning change....after a year and a half with mirrored 4ths i'm considering the unthinkable and thinking about 5ths.

I have always been troubled by the fact that in mirrored 4ths the hands move the same motions, but the movement on the board/visually is symmetrically out from a central point rather than in the same direction.

So after wondering for a while, I spent two hours inverting my setup and changing to uncrossed parallel 4ths so everything would move in the same direction. Being stubborn I had to learn first hand that (in my newly formed opinion) it definitely feels better with hands across the board, that is playing crossed. even though it bugs me that my hands may collide and i can't play bass in higher registers. It feel quite certain, at least for me that conventional stick logic is in fact correct and crossed if indeed the way foreward for me. So... i'm going to spend some more hours changing my stick back to crossed setup.

That got me thinking, so (the majority) of you guys were right all along. Then maybe i should also consider whether the commonly favoured tuning of 4ths/5ths may have something to it which is not intuitively obvious but i may come to understand after trying it. I also find myself chording more than playing melodic bass lines...

So i'm going to try MR 4ths/5ths finally, after trying my hardest to avoid 5ths (due to a love of 4ths/uniformity).


So after my above ramblings, to my question. I was wondering about the logic of inverted 5ths.... I know the original concept of Emmett's was altering the lower strings pitch whilst still keeping the same notes, and that expanded into the inverted 5ths idea.

But do you guys THINK like 4ths inverted, where movement across the board in one hand follows the other, just with pitch inversion,
.. or do you think in 5ths with one hand and 4ths with the other. Or do you think 4ths on bass then add 2 frets when changing strings?

And when forming a chord on bass, do you think, i'm on the root note and so a chord (in "virtual" fourths) can be formed on the bass strings imagining this to be the highest note in fourths?

I have read about the concept of 5ths and tried it briefly but always got hung up on the fact that i couldn't easily transfer my decent 4ths knowlege to the 5ths side. And a major stumbling block was that the chords need to be formed from the root note on the (fat) 7ths or 6ths string down. because you normally want a chord with the root bass.

So i'm looking for insight into how the 5ths guys think when transferring 4ths knowledge to the bass side, especially in chording. and any mental tricks to see the whole 4ths/5ths board as a uniform playing field, like in Emmet's original 9 string concept. I'm excited about this new path of (re)discovery for me, but i don't want to get stuck in my old mental knots of trying to think in 4ths in one direction from the centre and in fifths in the opposite direction from centre for bass, while adding two frets for each string skip. I think that confusing double thinking was my undoing when i first tried 5ths bass.

Love to hear your insights.

Chris

I stopped trying to look at the 5ths like the 4ths, it just did'nt help me out. I just think about notes and intervals from the bottom string up, like looking up at the surface of the water watching bubbles float up while sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool!

The way i approach it, is that I DON'T THINK about the relationships unless i reallllly need to find a specific note or chord. I usually just listen and play, and if need be experiment untill i find better ways of doing things. This approach may not work for all but it certainly lets me keep it really organic and gives me new ideas. The organic knowledge of the note layout helps vastly when I'm looking for new arrangements for solo or accompanied stick (working really well with vocals).

Try feeling sound rather than thinking notes. ( it seems like an obvious thing that you probably do, but realizing it and consciously abandoning the thought is usefull for a lot of things, even if its not all the time.)

I actually tried playing in mirrored 4ths, ie, Treble tuned EADGC, and Bass EADGC but with the lowest string in the middle of the board. It seemed even more backwards than i originally thought the 5ths tuning was to begin with!

after about 15 minutes, i went and put my old strings back on, and threw the strings i bought to try that tuning on my bass. I think 4ths would be great if you didnt do the lowest bass note in the middle (ie, two sets of strings an octave apart, going low to high) but in the standard stick configuration, 5ths is awesome.

I also realized I liked the way chords sound in the 5ths tuning way more. In the end, you just gotta kind of approach it with a clean slate. At least thats what i did.

bergerbrain wrote:

But do you guys THINK like 4ths inverted, where movement across the board in one hand follows the other, just with pitch inversion,
.. or do you think in 5ths with one hand and 4ths with the other. Or do you think 4ths on bass then add 2 frets when changing strings?
Chris

Generally I think in 5ths and 4ths these days. The change started happening gradually with more playing time. As the other guys mentioned, I think an intuitive approach works well for changing tunings. Guitarists use a myriad of open tunings for creative reasons, but generally not for playing a traditional repertoire. It depends largely on what you want to play.

If you're doing a lot of reading or transcribing it may be a more difficult transition (which seems to be backed up by people who have switched to 4ths tuned Sticks).

I love reverting to 4ths/4ths "thinking" every now and then and play those unison lines where the inversions always sound fresh. It works.

As for your prior knowledge of 4ths tuned instruments; remember that several pro musos have made the transition to Stick as "doublers" who still play bass and other instruments at the highest level. From what I heard at the seminar, I suspect you'd pick it up very quickly.

Cheers,
Andy

Having a piano background, the hardest part, initially, was the idea of pitch moving up, while moving left from lower strings to the higher pitched strings. Any movement where pitch went up when my hands moved to the left was contrary to my piano thinking. Also, your hands moving away from each other to achieve uniform moving up in pitch seemed so foreign. Having played piano for more than 35 years, I've really had to struggle to change my muscle memory and the correlation between pitch muscle memory movement. If you came to stick from playing piano for many years, I think you know what I'm saying. Of course, with that said, the ability to see the chord structure on the keyboard has served me well in learning stick, if I could just "see" the fretboard instead of the keyboard in my minds eye. I know time and practice is the only solution. As far as learning the bass side, I've been doing some independent left hand-bass only reading of music, and some unison scales practicing. After 6 months I'm seeing some progress, and really having a great time learning this fantastic instrument. As a beginner, like myself, just keep playing and don't worry so much about progress,. Sure we spend more time mulling over chord development and finger placement, but that's part of the fun...Right? learning any instrument is like any new endeavour, getting started is the hardest part, so try to keep the instant gratification tendencies in check , and enjoy the little advancements you make each time you play.

Hi Chris,

The logic of the 5ths is in what it does for you "orchestrally," rooting chords on deep notes and expanding the harmony above, in a way that won't sound muddled. In terms of how to think about 5ths and 4ths, a student recently asked me how I "think" about them. The answer comes from the orchestra itself as the violinists and cellists think differently from the bassists, 5ths is "4 notes per string" and 4ths is "3 notes per string". With 6 strings in the bass group, mirrored 4ths makes a lot of sense as each hand will "feel" the same (see below).

You can also think about the 5ths as a 3-note-per-string tuning and use position shifting to get around easily. I do this all the time when playing lines in the left hand, no problem.

I don't think about the inverted arrangement of the 5ths because everything fits the hand so nicely. I find when I play an instrument where the tuning is uninverted, or when I play my left hand on the melody 4ths or right hand on the bass 5ths, I have to do more thinking because the interval and chord shapes actually don't fit the hand as well as the Stick's "centered bass" arrangement does.

So inverting the 5ths for the left hand (or using mirrored 4ths), and applying the right hand to a conventional or "un-inverted" tuning allows you to feel the intervals much more easily.

This means less thinking is required in both hands. It's all visceral, baby!

Thanks for the replies so far.

I kind of wish i had just decided on one tuning and run with it rather than always looking on the other side of the fence.

It sounds like the fifths as inverted 4ths concept has limited mileage. I too prefer the sound of the larger interval chords and that's why i'm considering another switch to 5ths. I was hoping it would be a cohesive concept across the board.

Often my bass note/chord moves together with shifts in melody chords and so i was hoping that both hands could move in the same way across the 4ths 5ths boards. That works but it seems like most are splitting their brains and thinking 5ths in left hand and 4ths in right, which I have tried before and think I struggle with.

For now i'e ordered some MR stringsets so i'm making the change and hopefully experiencing the tuning 1st hand will help me decide,

It's down to mirrored 4ths or MR now. My short foray into uncrossed has me fairly sold on crossed tunings, and the above two appeal to me most. But after over a year with mirrored 4ths i'm just looking at fifths and thinking...did I really give it a good go in the beginning?
I think Rob Martino obviously makes great music with mirrored 4ths but in my hands the sound of mirrored 4th in closer to that of a subpar bass player and a subpar guitarist jamming and I am trying to figure out if it's the 5ths tuning that changes the sound into a cohesive whole stick sound or if i just need to practise more!