I've experimented a lot with different isomorphic tunings on the guitar - that is where each string is in the same interval. The obvious one to try is perfect 4ths, E A D G C F. This one is great because the same shape works everywhere, drop 2 chords for instance have three sets of shapes you need to learn on standard guitar but only one on perfect 4ths. However, I hate giving up the open B and E strings. You can fix this by adding an extra fret on the highest two strings (or just using a capo on the lowest 4 strings) [1].
My favorite isomorphic tuning though is minor thirds tuning, where each fret becomes a diminished chord. This allows you to explore Barry Harris' harmonic concepts really easily, which describes major and minor 4 note chords as combinations of two diminished chords. I made a video showing how this works. [2]
I have to say the phrase 'isomorphic tunings' is very confusing if you have a mathematical background. It apparently doesn't refer to tunings which are effectively the same (not entirely what this would mean, I suppose you could swap a few strings).
Totally, my mistake. The correct term is regular tunings, which yield an isomorphic layout on the guitar (well, it would if you had infinite strings). In plain english, the same shape always corresponds to the same intervals no matter what strings you are playing.
It means they are effectively the same as you shift rightwards or leftwards on the neck. So you can play a G major chord, move the same exact shape "down one string" and now it's a C major chord. This is not a feature of standard guitar tuning.
I guess isomorphic tunings are isomorphic in the sense that you can move a fingering not only up and down the fretboard, but also from one set of strings to another, and the chord remains the same, just transposed.
Major thirds tuning, on the other hand, gives you a consecutive chromatic scale in any given position without stretching or changing the position. It's great for single note soloing.
If all strings use the same interval, you have less variety in fingering; everything is the same everywhere.
The M3 interval between the G and B string is useful; you can allocate fingerings between those two strings to play certain things that don't work for a pair of strings that are a P4 apart.
Totally agree, I think regular tunings are cool and easier for learning in a lot of ways, but the ergonomics of standard tuning or other non-regular tunings make somethings easy that are really beautiful. I think making whatever you consider to be desirable on your instrument also be idiomatic and easy to do is good.
I've always wondered about that kink between the G and B string, a major 3rd gap, when all the other strings are spaced perfect fourth. It bothers me because it's an anomaly that breaks the symmetry and increases the number of shapes to keep in mind.
The whole thread is an enjoyable read, and the answer seems to be - like many things in Western music theory - it was a design decision, a kind of legacy code, with pros and cons. "Things evolve to meet a need."
One of the answers talked about an all-fourths tuning, that some instruments use such tunings as standard.
Theoretically it's more beautiful, and simplifies the shapes and their movements across the fretboard. It might be a pain to overcome years of learning patterns on the guitar with the kink - I'll have to try it. Sometimes it's good to shake up the foundation and see what new patterns emerge.
Similarly, I love the logic (and I'd say even wisdom) of the piano keyboard - but there are some kinks in there too, which introduce complexity in the patterns and their transformations, making them harder to remember. I'm curious to try a hexagonal keyboard and other alternative layouts - I imagine the symmetry has practical advantages, and to my mind more aesthetically pleasing.
" I've always wondered about that kink between the G and B string, a major 3rd gap, when all the other strings are spaced perfect fourth. It bothers me because it's an anomaly that breaks the symmetry and increases the number of shapes to keep in mind."
One of the deeply beautiful things about the guitar is this "ugly" asymmetry. People with analytical minds that desire order always get bothered by this 3rd, why not go to all 4ths and be more elegant???
Because art and music arent always about being elegant! Tuning a guitar in all 4ths lets you play like a snooty stuck up jazz musician, but ultimately there are so many richer bar chords available with that 3rd in there that who cares if it is "ugly" to have the 3rd. People forget a plain jane normal guitar chord like a G chord or something is tonally actually very complex. It isn't like a basic g chord on a piano G B D. The "basic" G chord on guitar spans many octaves and has a non-obvious combination of notes. The 3rd in there for guitar tuning allows you to explore all those complexities with the given limitations of the human hand best.
Do it! Keep a spare guitar around with just that tuning! Even allowing for inflation, nice guitars are still incredibly cheap by historical standards. If you want an acoustic,I don't think you can go wrong with any guitar on this first page:
Lots of people have their favorite cheap electric guitar, but mine is definitely the Tagima TW-55 (not the woodstock series, has to be TW). Can often find it used for ~$180
I use an all-fourths tuning on the Linnstrument and absolutely love it. As a person who approached both music theory and learning to play with their hands for the first time (after clicking around in a piano roll for years) with an all-fourths isomorphic keyboard, it removed whole categories of mental gymnastics and time sucks and let me pick up big chords and bits of jazz/rnb much quicker as a result. The benefits of being able to transpose and dance around the keyboard effortlessly without having to account for that major 3rd gap can't be overstated. You've got one unified mental model for everything and can skip directly to the good stuff. There are a number of grid instruments on the market that implement all fourths (Push, Launchpad, etc etc). If you have an iPad, Musix Pro can also act as a MIDI output (either for iPadOS instruments or for external hardware) that gives you an equivalent layout, but also many other interesting layouts that may work better for the music you want to play.
As a side note, after learning linnstrument, I picked up an 8 string guitar and found it much easier to translate my knowledge by tuning in all-fourths. With all-fourths, you really can learn chords as a set of (essentially) 2D glyphs that interact and fit together like Lego pieces. Inversions are easier to remember, transposition is always effortless, training your hands is quicker. Highly recommended.
How do you find what you're looking for in the grid of notes on a Linnstrument? I've been looking at MPE controllers and I (currently) want a Seaboard because I feel like the note positioning knowledge will transfer from keyboard.
Hi, sorry for the late reply but hopefully you'll see this: Linnstrument lights the keyboard up so that you see where C is at for each octave. It also lights up notes similar to a piano's black/white keys. It took a little while to get situated, but I got used to this. Note that each row of a Linnstrument is like a flattened piano roll. This page might be helpful: https://www.rogerlinndesign.com/support/support-linnstrument...
Additionally, Linnstrument, like all other grid instruments that implement all-fourths or a closely-related layout, has redundancy of notes on the board. That is to say, the same note often appears at least a couple times on the board. There's a setting (default on older firmware, easy to activate on newer firmware) where you can tell the board to light up ALL other redundant individuals of a note that's currently being played. For example, when I play C3, I will see C3 lit up all over the board simultaneously. This has a huge training wheel effect both in letting you witness the shape of your tetris-tile chords elsewhere on the board, but also, always gives you a sense of the geography of the board -- where you can jump to next if you want to dance your way up/down or to another chord or note.
The instrumental (ha HA) utility of the "kink" seems to me a natural consequence of compounding constraints:
some musing:
the number of strings is constrained to allow for chord voicing across all the strings,
and to provide range,
open chords with minimal fingering complexity radically increase accessibility,
duplication is critical to support those,
capping with the double octave of the lowest note makes up-and-down strumming work,
if you're going to break pattern to coerce the highest string, it's extremely useful to also provide its dominant (5th) which makes sounding those top strings together just "work" (especially: with a bass note on the lowest string), with the side benefit that it allows learned scale patterns to work across those two strings, where most melodic playing will be up-an-down and third- fourth- or fifth- jumping or stopping,
...add all this up and it's a collection of mild but clear wins that together really strongly entail the current system.
Robert Fripp's 500 page book on guitar playing no doubt explains why this is Wrong and his preferred all-fourths tuning etc. are Better though. :)
It's been interesting to learn about the reasoning (or post-facto explanations) of that seemingly anomalous major 3rd gap. I can see its advantages, like it enables certain barre chords.
Apparently, the tuning invented by Robert Fripp is called "New standard tuning", based on all fifths. I like the audacity to call it a new standard. :)
> C2-G2-D3-A3-E4-G4 (from lowest to highest)
> the five lowest open strings are each tuned to an interval of a perfect fifth
Yeah, perfect 5ths, or the weird in-between which would be tritone tuning allow for really wide intervalic leaps really ergonomically. Since a lot of progressive music favors melodic lines with wide intervalic leaps, it's a good option for that style.
> Sometimes it's good to shake up the foundation and see what new patterns emerge.
In this vein, I'm a lifelong guitarist and someone lent me a mandolin... I've learned a lot from playing it! It's tuned to straight fifths, but since it's much smaller than a guitar, you can actually reach all the notes of the scale without moving your hand up and down the neck. (I assume this wouldn't be true of a full-sized guitar tuned to fifths, although I haven't actually tried it.)
You can pretty quickly intuit how things work, and it will give you new insights into theory. The scales show up more simply and symmetrically than on a guitar. (e.g. the western major scale in the open position is 0-2-4-5, 0-2-4-5, 0-2-3-5, 0-2-3-5)
Has anyone tried to approach music theory without any historical underpinnings (and preferably ignorant of it). I'm thinking of something that started with cog sci and signal processing, and maybe ML. Don't bother linking the obligatory xkcd. I know it is the height of hubris to think that approach would produce anything like quality music for decades, but I think it might give insight to things that were left over from technical limitations or random chance. How far down the rabbit hole have experimental composers gone in questioning everything down to the foundation, and then kept digging?
Not exactly what you're saying, but made me think of a time when once, in a guitar shop, the clerk was playing really cool sounds on the guitar. She was playing in Hawaiian Slack-Key tuning [0]. She said Europeans had left behind guitars after "discovering" the islands. The natives then developed their own way of tuning and playing them, outside of the European styles. Here's a random link to a song in the style I'm talking about [1].
Although a different tuning, it still uses equal temperament. I mean, it can be played on a guitar using standard tuning, but will require different positions.
I don’t think you can really throw music theory out because so much of it is inate to humans hearing and culture, and it’s largely a formalization of such.
However, the rub is that what most people consider music theory is western classical theory. There’s a lot of different music theories around the world , with different scales, structures etc…
Also a really good video on why “music theory” is often largely paired to western music https://youtu.be/Kr3quGh7pJA while there’s so many alternates out there
Some western instruments are easier to produce microtones on than others - violin/viola/cello/bass for example (or in a more rock/jazz idiom fretless electric bass).
The problem with creating a new music theory is the question what do you want the music theory to do? The main value of classical music theory is exactly the historical underpinnings that you want to drop
And I would take it one step further... What do you want to do with music? The people I know who studied theory were interested in becoming better musicians.
I'm a jazz musician. The people I know who can create their own compositions and arrangements in that genre all studied theory in college.
Music theory is just a labeling of the grouping of sounds that sound a certain way, right? And the reasons why they do.
Like you could combine a bunch of random notes together and it would sound terrible. THe reason why a certain scale is a scale is that it all jives together in a way that makes sense to the human brain.
Music theory is an approximation of what the aggregate human preference function for music is, where the aggregate is over a region and time. It's not really a theory per se, but you could definite "learn" many aspects of theory from enough labelled examples. Given many western music examples, you would easily learn circle of fifths and other common details; given indian music, you would learn microtones and other subtle touches that make indian music have depth.
Yah, music theory is an instrument of conservatism.
Most people just make what sounds good to them and that creates a massive power potential to extract by labelling some of that "good" and some of that "bad" in the eyes of an arbitrary system.
There is plenty of music theory not based on traditional western music.
The "atom" of all music is that frequencies with simple relationships (for example, exactly 1/3x) sounds "nice" (we can hear the harmony) and frequencies with complicated relationships (pi x) sounds sour (used intentionaly with great effect by bands like Sonic Youth for example).
The essence of western music is the decision to split the octave into 12 and have this be the notes we use (anyone who have tried this will discover that we run into trouble when our instument tonal range spans more than one octave, this is where "tunings" come in).
But there are alternatives: Spliting the octave into 53 parts has way more harmonies
The split into 12 is not just in western music. 12 appears in the 22 shruti system in Indian music due to not all 22 tones being used; the 22 can be seen as alterations in a 12 framework.
Music doesnt derive from music theory. Instead music theory develops to understand and examine music that already exists. A huge error that a lot of music theory hobbyists make is to overuse it or use it in contexts where it doesn’t make sense (e.g., using theory developed to understand Mahler to understand EDM).
As much as we like to imagine that music derives purely from the mathematical relationship between tones and that aliens would produce the same music we would based on universal physical principles, that’s not the case.
I will note that the kiwix.org site appears to not be completely correct with publicly hosting the data and the licensing requirements:
> Ensure that any Internet use of the content includes a hyperlink for each author name directly back to his or her user profile page on the source site on the Network (e.g., http://stackoverflow.com/users/12345/username), directly to the Stack Exchange domain, in standard HTML (i.e. not through a Tinyurl or other such indirect hyperlink, form of obfuscation or redirection), without any “nofollow” command or any other such means of avoiding detection by search engines, and visible even with JavaScript disabled.
With EADGCF tuning, barre chords wouldn't work so well, since the top and bottom strings would be a half-step apart (disregarding octaves) creating dissonance. Or rather, EADGBE tuning works well with barre chords because the top and bottom strings are the same note. An open-chord tuning works even better with barre chords, but only for that one chord shape. EADGBE gained predominance partly because it strikes an uneasy compromise between different chord shapes and barre-chord friendliness.
Indeed. I've found that double drop-D has most of the same advantages and also is so close to an open tuning that it gives you most of those advantages as well.
Worth noting. I don't know why I didn't discover it for the first couple decades I picked up a guitar.
The most beautiful and unusual tuning I came across is alternating major and minor thirds, something like ACEGBD. Then you can tune A,E,B down 15 cents and each group of three consecutive strings (open or mini-barred at any fret) becomes a _just intonation_ major or minor chord. You pluck three strings and it's like plucking one static string, a sound hanging in space without movement. Major and minor just intonation scales are also playable, though require some jumps.
A bit off-topic but if you're interested in some modern players that make heavy use of alternate tunings, I strongly recommend Ichika Nito and Yvette Young (Covet). Ichika has tons of videos of him playing in the weirdest tunings and it's quite entertaining.
Can also recommend Covet, great songs, and the guitar work is pretty bonkers--really incredible what different tunings and tons of practice/talent can do. I watched a YT where Yvette Young was talking about how her 1st tele had Bill Lawrence pickups, which (after a truly mad dive into pickup research) I now also have in my main guitar (microcoils + an L45-S in a strat, not a tele, I'm not a monster). My point here is: be careful or you might find yourself up at 1am trying to decide what capacitors you want on your tone pots.
Thats one rabbithole, but mine might be worse. I recently made my first pickups.
First I made a coil winding machine, after lots of late night research. I bought an old sewing machine and took it to pieces for the main components. After my first build I improved my machine with some 3d printed parts.
Then there is the process of choosing and sourcing the components, coils, wire magnets, wax...
Then the actual process of getting the winding done...lots of broken wires later...my tele has an awesome set of pickups which sound so clear. The neck pickup is very non standard, more like a strat pickup.
I love that you did this DIY. I just had a guitar built by a guy who also winds pickups per your specs - I loved that I could have him dial in the tone exactly how I wanted.
I needed a set of tele pickups. I like the sound of YouTube guitarist Danish Pete's telecaster. I heard it had a Fender 'nocaster' bridge pickup in the bridge, and a 'twisted tele' in the neck. Fender only sell those as sets of two of each, so I would need to buy 4 pickups for the two I needed. List price is £200 for each set, and try and sell the unwanted pickups on ebay...but other people are already onto this and there are lots of the 'wrong' pickups listed.
Making your own is the obvious solution!
I have 2 strat projects I needed pickups for too, so it will begin to pay off. I reckon I broke even in equipment (but not time) after one pickup.
Wow that is _wild_ and I love it. See this is why I need to buy a house: I need space for the sewing machine I'll inevitably use to wind my pickups haha.
I think it's a super fun hobby, I really loved the process of choosing tone and options and learning what affects what. It made my guitar feel like a real players' instrument, like I made my own tool. I'll almost certainly do it again--maybe yeah make my own pickups, but what you did is next level haha.
I rent a storage unit so I can have spare sewing machines on hand. Without that where would you keep your spare oscilloscope, your various antennea, and your guitar projects?
The guitar I put them in...I made that too. To be fair I got some of the parts from a kit (cheap way to get some parts), but I modified it in a number of ways, and changed all of the hardware. It is a lot of fun. I did think about blogging about it, but I didn't think anyone would care
Too late for me I'm afraid...I built my first effects pedal before I owned a guitar! I have not built that many since tbf, but that doesn't stop me planning to.
I found my fuzz face recently that I spent forever characterising AC128 germanium transistors to get that magic combination...it still sounds completely mental!
Also see Lindsey Jordan of Snail mail. Midwest emo like Mike Kinsellaof American Football, Owen, & Cap'n Jazz, et. al, and Evan Thomas Weiss of Into it Over it are also fantastic examples of clever tunings. My personal favorite is Chad Matheny of Emperor X - such a unique artist
Note that these are also tuned down a half step from how the songs on their first self titled LP (not to be confused with their second or third self titled LP) were originally recorded due to Mike’s vocal range changing over 20 years.
And she is sometimes credited with influencing David Crosby (who she was in a relationship with) to use alternate tunings. CSNY's use of alternate tunings certainly helped popularize them, at least for a bit.
When Stills' played in EEEEBE tuning (which he apparently learned from Palmer) it almost doesn't sound like a 6-string.
A popular (well, used to be) artist who does this is Chris Carrabba (Dashboard Confessional, huge in the early '00s, was basically a solo act when he started, break-out and biggest hit was "Screaming Infidelities" which got a ton of radio play).
I think he did it to make it easier to play+sing his songs solo, is all I can figure. Heavy use of multiple open tunings. He'll use like half a dozen tunings on one album, plays on stage with a rack of guitars so he can swap between songs.
There are many guitar 'tunings', and many predate the 'standard' tuning the article refers to. Also, players make up different ones all the time, including using capos to temporarily change 'tuning' on the fly. The 'standard' tuning is by no means the only one.
ive always wondered if it would be work learning the all 4ths tuning. seems like the guitar would be much easier to play if you dont need full bar chords. but it might be hard to switch back and forth between the all 4ths tunings and standard.
I’ve wondered the same thing in the past, mainly because my primary instrument is the bass guitar which uses all fourths.
Once you play guitar for long enough you will understand why that major third is there, though. A small compromise in the “logic” of the tuning gives you so much utility.
#/media/File:Shruti_scale_compared_to_12-TET.gif){kind=link}
My favorite isomorphic tuning though is minor thirds tuning, where each fret becomes a diminished chord. This allows you to explore Barry Harris' harmonic concepts really easily, which describes major and minor 4 note chords as combinations of two diminished chords. I made a video showing how this works. [2]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFX5AQRg8Ko
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Kg1m5KqaoQ