All Fourths works for Bass Why not Guitar?

[AlphaMale]

I'm thinking about telling Guitarists I know to tune to all Fourths as opposed to the standard tuning. Is there any disadvantage to the all fourths tuning?

[PurplePurple]

Limits the amount of Bar-able Chords under my understanding.

[Poop-Loops]

You get a LOT more chords you can play if you tune to standard tuning and not just bar chords. You can get 3 string major and minor chords also, which adds some flavor if you don't want all the other notes in the chord.

[DocBop]

Tuning a guitar in all fourths would lead to some pretty funky fingering for chords especially large voicings. Since guitarists play chords more than single lines,(the reverse of bass) it make sense to tune to accomdate chordal playing.

Also if you get into guitar they have all sorts of tuning they use.

[Richard Lindsey]

Originally Posted by AlphaMale

I'm thinking about telling Guitarists I know to tune to all Fourths as opposed to the standard tuning. Is there any disadvantage to the all fourths tuning?

No offense, but why are you thinking of "telling" your guitarists anything of the sort, if you have no idea whether it would be good or bad? Why would you even make it your business? And what's your standing for making that kind of suggestion?

And yeah, for the reasons already detailed in other posts, there are some real practical disadvantages to tuning in strict fourths. The only guitarist I've heard of who tuned to EADGCF is Stanley Jordan, and that's because he plays strictly two-handed tapping and basically never plays standard chords. Not to say that he's the only one period, just that what you suggest is a very rare thing.

All that said, there are a lot of alternate guitar tunings that exist, but they all have one thing in common: they're used because they facilitate some kind of musical expression. IOW, they're used because they make it easier for you to do something you want to do than if you used standard tuning. They fit a need. They're not used simply because someone--who may not even be playing their instrument--thinks it would be intellectually more logical or more symmetrical or something.

There are in fact some good practical reasons for the standard tuning. So the question you should ask yourself before making a suggestion like that is not "is there any disadvantage?" but "is there any actual advantage to what I'm suggesting?" IOW, what's the point of doing this?

[cowsgomoo]

Originally Posted by AlphaMale

I'm thinking about telling Guitarists I know to tune to all Fourths as opposed to the standard tuning. Is there any disadvantage to the all fourths tuning?

I think you probably ought to concentrate your energy & attention on your own playing before trying to tell others what to do

[middy]

[dulouz]

I think it is a great idea. Jazz guitar players do it sometimes. In fact, I once played in a group with a guy who tuned in 4ths. The more complex jazz chords are made up of 4ths anyway. It would make chording, as well as soloing, much easier.

For those of you who scoff, where is your sense of adventure. Where would we all be if someone told Larry Graham or Victor Wooten that what they were doing was a waste of time?

Of course if you want to play the same old open folk chords everyone else has been beating to death, by all means go ahead...

[ding_man]

Yeah theres all kinds of weird tunings for guitar...

I saw an acoustic blues thing and he tuned the guitar to an open g chord and went crazy on it with a slide. **** was nuts and beatiful.

[Richard Lindsey]

Originally Posted by dulouz

I think it is a great idea. Jazz guitar players do it sometimes. In fact, I once played in a group with a guy who tuned in 4ths. The more complex jazz chords are made up of 4ths anyway. It would make chording, as well as soloing, much easier.

For those of you who scoff, where is your sense of adventure. Where would we all be if someone told Larry Graham or Victor Wooten that what they were doing was a waste of time?

Of course if you want to play the same old open folk chords everyone else has been beating to death, by all means go ahead...

Jazz players do not do it often at all. I try never to say never, but it really is not common.

And for the most part, no it doesn't make chording easier, and it has nothing to do with "open folk chords" either. Chords built on 4ths are only a small part of the chords musicians use, and not necessarily the most complex ones either. And before you look down your nose at folkies, they probably use alternative tunings more than anybody else.

As for "scoffing", it has nothing to do with lacking a sense of adventure. It has to do with knowing something about the instrument and how it's played. This is not to say that the standard tuning is the only one possible. Far from it. What I'm saying is that tunings have reasons, namely allowing you to do something more easily that was harder or impossible with other tunings. But there's no inherent virtue in a tuning that's perfectly symmetrical or regular. For some reason, some bassists seem to be hung up on fourths, as if the whole world ought to work in fourths. And there's no reason why this has to be so. It's often a classic case of a hammer thinking the world ought to be made of nails.

If tuning in fourths facilitates something a guitarist wants to do, then by all means do it. For that matter, tune in fifths or octaves or unisons if it lets you do what you want to do. But there's no reason a guitarist ought to tune in fourths just because some bassist thinks it would be more logical or symmetrical.

How many of you guys who think guitarists ought to retune their instruments, for some vague and undefined reason, actually play guitar seriously yourself? FWIW, I do, and have for many years. That doesn't make me the last word by any stretch of the imagination, but at least I do have the benefit of many years of serious work on the instrument. To me, no one who doesn't have a really good understanding of the guitar has any business telling guitarists how they ought to tune. It just doesn't make any sense.

[Dan1099]

Yeah, I don't know what the "folk chords" thing was really about, but folk players probably use alternate tunings more than anyone else. Just ask Joni Mitchell.

[DocBop]

Originally Posted by Dan1099

Yeah, I don't know what the "folk chords" thing was really about, but folk players probably use alternate tunings more than anyone else. Just ask Joni Mitchell.

My repairman back in my guitar days worked on a lot of big names gear. One day when I was dropping off a guitar for work he told be to check out one of Joni's acoustics. She had her stuff in to get ready for a tour. It was tuned to a Major 7 chord, strange to get used to but had a great sound. Joni is a great artist in all senses of the word, but I thinks its been a long time since people thought of her as a Folkie.

[dulouz]

Joni Mitchell, I couldn't think of a better person to illustrate my point. She may be stuck into the pigeon-hole of "Folk" but she has the spirit of a jazz musician. Check out her "Mingus" album with Jaco, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Peter Erskin and Don Alias. Or "Shadows of Light" with Pat Metheny.

I am not saying that folk music is bad, I actually dig it. But think about how many country/pop/folk songs you can play with G,C,D and a capo? Speaking of folk tunings, how about DADGAD? That is an open Dsus4 chord. Or Keith Richards' (rock is really a folk style being that it isn't western european classical) open G tuning that he uses to suspend the 4th and 6th"

Speaking of guitar playing, I have been playing guitar for over ten years. Actually I teach guitar and bass for a living as well as play bass in a band professionally. I have 35 students in my studio per week, most of which are guitar students.

I didn't mean to start world war three here. I was just trying to acknowledge what I thought was a great idea. Why not try new tunings?

[Richard Lindsey]

Originally Posted by dulouz

I didn't mean to start world war three here. I was just trying to acknowledge what I thought was a great idea. Why not try new tunings?

It's cool, I didn't mean to either, and I hope you understand that I'm talking in the spirit of "lively discussion," not of personal attack. I apologize if it came off otherwise.

My point was not that people shouldn't try other tunings, and I think that's clear from what I posted. What I was saying is that what the OP proposed to do made no sense to me. There's no evidence that the OP knows guitar much if it all. There's no reason given for why the guitarists should change tuning, other than that the OP is "telling" them to. It's not really a great idea unless there's something you have reason to think you might or will gain from it, and there's nothing to suggest what that gain might be, or that the OP has even given that much thought. The sole rationale seems to be, hey, my bass is tuned in fourths, so my buddys' guitars should be too. That's not really a sensible argument.

There's a difference between saying something like, "What would it sound like if you tuned to fourths? Ever try that?" and "Even though I don't play guitar, I say you guys should tune to fourths."

As for DADGAD, I know it well, having played for years with a guitarist who used it exclusively. That's kind of what I'm talking about. The guy came to that tuning from standard because it made it easier for him to do particular things he wanted to do on the guitar (this was a Celtic-flavored group). For me and the way I play guitar, on the other hand, DADGAD makes most things I want to do harder rather than easier, so I stick with standard and drop D.

[DocBop]

Originally Posted by dulouz

I didn't mean to start world war three here. I was just trying to acknowledge what I thought was a great idea. Why not try new tunings?

IMO you are confusing apples and oranges. Open tunings like Joni and Blues slide guitar player doing are a different thing from changing the tuning of an instrument. Open tunings are tuning to a chord where tuning an instrument differently is to facilitate playing that instrument for various reasons. Some to change a tonal range or a style of playing, or just plain experimentation. I think if you look into classical double bass player you will find they use different tunings, especially European players.

I think what some are getting upset about is bass players making suggestions about another instrument I doubt they ever seriously played. Then inferring not experimenting with tunings is a lack of exploration. I played guitar for about twenty years so I know the instrument in case you wonder why I feel I can comment on it.

As for experimentation there is a lot of territory to be explored musically with a standard tuning instrument. At same time it is great there are some explore with changing the instrument. Both are valid and equally important, but no disrepect of players that do one and not the other. Together is how we came from the lute to the modern guitar and from double bass to the extrended range bass of today.

As Rodney King said "why can't we all just get along?"

[dulouz]

The plus side to all of this is that we are all passionate about what we do. It is cool that we have place to voice our opinions and share knowledge.

[Phalex]

A 5 string with a low B string is tuned to all the same open notes as a six string guitar.

4ths are relative I guess.

[dulouz]

Originally Posted by Phalex

A 5 string with a low B string is tuned to all the same open notes as a six string guitar.

4ths are relative I guess.

Is the glass half full or half empty??

[DocBop]

Originally Posted by Phalex

A 5 string with a low B string is tuned to all the same open notes as a six string guitar.

4ths are relative I guess.

Except on a guitar the B-string is above the G-string so there go your fourths.

Funny no one has mention 7-string guitar it has an extra low string, but no standard tuning. I've heard people tune it to B, A, and other notes.

[HaVIC5]

Originally Posted by DocBop

Except on a guitar the B-string is above the G-string so there go your fourths.

Funny no one has mention 7-string guitar it has an extra low string, but no standard tuning. I've heard people tune it to B, A, and other notes.

Or if you're Lenny Breau a high string on a 7-string. It doesn't matter what tuning you use so long as you can exploit it to fit your purpose. Banjo players play with different intervals between every string, and Bela Fleck seems to be able to tear it up all right.