Tuning in fourths

[paulg]

After reading about the stick and a vague recollection that Fripp tunes in fourths I tried it. Talk about cheap and easy! Boy what a revelation. Why did we make it so hard? Did the Spanish tuning come into being to get the big "E" cord? It definitely works better for those big open chords but if you play smaller shapes (three of four notes) fourths seems much easier to master. My only delemia is; do I want to commit to this tuning at age 52? Who else uses this tuning? Thoughts?

[khromagi]

Ah some dude did, hold on, Googled it, Stanley Jordan

[gtrnstuff]

Puerto Rican cuatro, 5 courses low B to high G in 4ths.
Alternate tunings are fun.

[harmonicator]

About a year ago I encounter a guy on youtube ripping up Cherokee, and he raved about tuning the guitar in stacked 4ths. So I tried it. It was kinda cool. All the octaves were the same, like a piano. Arpeggios were easier. The problem was putting all my knowledge into the new "system". Big "re-learning" curve.

I think I may give it another try sometime.

[tone4days]

so it would be E - A - D - G - C - F ?

[Rufus]

Isn't the guitar already basically tuned to 4ths other than the B string? Are you just bumping that up to C and the high E string to F?

[Luke]

Standard tuning facilitates barre chords

4ths tuning is better for jazz voicings

To relearn everything would be a project.

[Bryan T]

Originally Posted by paulg

a vague recollection that Fripp tunes in fourths I tried it.

Fripp actually tunes in fifths. CGDAEx. The highest string ("x") is tuned to G if I remember correctly. In fifths, you'd want a B, but good luck finding a string that'll allow you to do that.

[ShavenYak]

Originally Posted by Bryan T

Fripp actually tunes in fifths. CGDAEx. The highest string ("x") is tuned to G if I remember correctly. In fifths, you'd want a B, but good luck finding a string that'll allow you to do that.

An 8 can be tuned that high, but the sound is going to be pretty anemic compared to the 56 or bigger you'll want for that low C.

[Bobbyoso]

Yeah, when I'd read that Stanley Jordan tuned in 4ths, about 10 years ago, I thought it was brilliant. It immediately makes chords, arpeggios, and scales much easier, because you don't have three different fingerings for chords, for example, based on the lowest string being either the 6th, 5th, or 4th. So, one fingering per chord inversion, rather than three or more.

I've never committed to it, because I had decades of the old paradigm to unlearn, but I can see it being so much more coherent an approach, and much less to remember. What I don't understand is why someone decided we needed one maj3 interval in amongst the fourths?

[diego]

Tuning in fourths seems more logical. Common practice in music makes having the fifth and octave from the sixt string on the second and first strings practical. The "new standard tuning" as used by Fripp is mostly fifths, with a minor third on top.

[Luke]

Originally Posted by Bobbyoso

Yeah, when I'd read that Stanley Jordan tuned in 4ths, about 10 years ago, I thought it was brilliant. It immediately makes chords, arpeggios, and scales much easier, because you don't have three different fingerings for chords, for example, based on the lowest string being either the 6th, 5th, or 4th. So, one fingering per chord inversion, rather than three or more.

I've never committed to it, because I had decades of the old paradigm to unlearn, but I can see it being so much more coherent an approach, and much less to remember. What I don't understand is why someone decided we needed one maj3 interval in amongst the fourths?

Barre chords

[Doug H]

Originally Posted by Luke

To relearn everything would be a project.

I don't view it as "relearning everything" as much as "expanding the vocabulary". I've done a bit of fingerstyle with alternate tunings and I've never gotten confused. Standard tuning is still the best for some things, while other tunings are more appropriate for others, etc. I don't see it as an "either/or" proposition.

[teleharmonium]

I use the fourths tuning exclusively, I switched in 1999 at age 28. The transition wasn't easy, but I was never that great at standard tuning in the first place. I think the asymmetrical aspect of it just didn't work with my brain. I'm a much better guitarist now (which is not entirely due to the tuning change, but certainly is in part).

I swap the highest two strings in my sets (usually TI jazz swing flats, sometimes D'addario rounds, generally an ".011" set with a wound G unless I go heavier on certain guitars) with single .010 and .013 strings so that the tension balances well with the lower four strings after I tune them up to F and C respectively.

To this day I have to be careful not to play guitars in standard tuning when I am at a store or at a friends place; I need to be mindful to tune up to C and F first, or else I start to revert in my thinking. Maybe it's not a big deal but I'm afraid I'll fall off the wagon, like if I smoked a cigarette now after being a non smoker for 17 years.

The benefits of fourths tuning are huge, in my opinion. Not only are your chord shapes all movable horizontally as well as vertically, but the consistent interval spacing helps you think of the entire fretboard in such a way that big distances are easier in any key.

I'll play notes on the E (I no longer have to say "low E" because I only have one E string) with my thumb and also bring in notes from the second or even third octave above that, without having to be as conscious as to the fingerboard as I would otherwise need to be.

This means that my relative, positional based calculation of the upper interval I am playing relative to the lower one, and my generalized memory of the fingerboard (which is not as simple because of the notes that have both a sharp and flat name, bearing in mind that I play in all keys roughly equally), reinforce each other. I don't have to rely on just the latter, as is necessary in standard tuning when you are using the upper two strings (until you become so proficient that it's just happening unconsciously); my on-the-fly mental process while I am playing can use either of those two paths, including using position based thinking first to branch out to my next note from wherever I am and then considering what the note name is. By that time, of course, I've already played the note, but by letting the name (in the enharmonic form that is correct for the current key) run through my mind at that time, it's like an exercise that helps reinforce my internal memorized fingerboard.

Another advantage is that it doesn't implicitly favor any one key over another, which is important to me and would probably be helpful for anyone that does a lot of playing with horn players.

I hope that was reasonably clear; it's not easy trying to explain my internal process which I don't normally have to share with anyone. That's an area I'd like to hear more about, personally, when it comes to other musicians; for example, I've been working on thinking of notes with a sharp or flat, as a single symbol consisting of both the note name and the modifier; this is mentally faster than actually running the name as it sounds when you say it through your mind, like "b flat" which requires two syllables in speech and simply can throw off your rhythm or limit your speed if you are saying the name of each note to yourself as you play them. For whatever reason, I started with "sound memory" of the note names and now I'm moving over to "visual memory".

[teleharmonium]

Originally Posted by Bobbyoso

What I don't understand is why someone decided we needed one maj3 interval in amongst the fourths?

I'm not sure what the history is, but an advantage of standard tuning is that it enables close voicings. For example if I want to play a root-third-fifth-seventh all in one octave, I generally cannot do it in fourths tuning, unless I work in an open string or something. The reality is that I just don't play those chords, and it's too bad because I like not only those, but even some voicings, stacked intervals, or clusters that are even tighter than that which I used to sometimes play in standard tuning.

Every system has its advantages and disadvantages, so what I do now in those cases is try to just play the critical notes and leave out the ones being played on some other instrument, or use octave displacement and the occasional false harmonic.