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 Confessions of a beginning Stickist… 
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Post Re: Confessions of a beginning Stickist… Part I: The Purcha
I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can,

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I'm amazed I did... I'm amazed I did...I'm amazed I did...I'm amazed I did...I'm amazed I did...I'm amazed I did...I'm amazed I did...

I am thinking that I am pretty much an expert on terribleness and failure. lol Don't let me be your guide!

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Post Re: Confessions of a beginning Stickist… Part I: The Purcha
ArmyDoc wrote:
So I was watching some of your videos, and you definitely hold your stick differently than I have been. I was emulating Greg Howard's positioning, which is more up right, and higher. In your Gentle Giant video, your left shoulder is at the level of the 1st fret, and the base of the stick is actually out side the front of your leg - guessing that the belt hook is just in front of your hip bone.

I just examined how I position the instrument - indeed I probably have the instrument relatively lower than most, first fret a bit above shoulder height, as it's more comfortable to access those lower frets without raising my arm too much.

The belt hook is slightly to the right of the center of my waist (when looking down) and the base of the Stick is mostly over my right thigh directly above the knee. In my mind this is still a fairly upright position as the fretboard is within the frame of my body (compared to say Steve Adelson's position).

I also use the non-angled belt hook for the last few years which I find more comfortable, allowing a bit less wrist bending on the left hand.

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Thu Dec 08, 2016 5:16 am
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Post Re: Confessions of a beginning Stickist… Part I: The Purcha
robmartino wrote:

I also use the non-angled belt hook for the last few years which I find more comfortable, allowing a bit less wrist bending on the left hand.


That's interesting. I hadn't thought about the type of hook yet. I did some experimenting last night. There are a lot of variables. One of the things I found that made the biggest difference is what Bachdois said about not looking at my hands. To look at my hands I have to turn the face of the instrument towards me...which flexes my wrist. Keeping the face parallel to my body or even turned away straightens my wrist and decreases strain.
Doing this results in more than one position being comfortable.

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Thu Dec 08, 2016 8:04 am
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Post Re: Confessions of a beginning Stickist… Part I: The Purcha
ArmyDoc wrote:
To look at my hands I have to turn the face of the instrument towards me...which flexes my wrist. Keeping the face parallel to my body or even turned away straightens my wrist and decreases strain.

Yes - this is exactly the benefit of the non-angled belt hook. The standard angled one tilts the fretboard into better view, the non-angled one makes it more parallel to the body (I don't find it significantly decreases visibility either).

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Thu Dec 08, 2016 8:22 am
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Post Re: Confessions of a beginning Stickist Part I: Tuning Updat
So a couple of things since my last post.

First, I tried 5ths tuning for the bass side, and really didn't like how spread out it was. 4th's just works better for me. So, I decided to switch to Parallel 4ths, since Mirrored 4ths was uncomfortable for me. In the process of doing this, I corresponded with Greg, and he suggested trying Uncrossed. What the heck, why not, right? So I unstrung the Bass side and strung it upto with melody strings, with the lowest string on the outside, rather than center. But I didn't finish re-stringing it that night. (underestimated my neurosis with being able to document and reverse what I was doing in case I screwed it up.)

Good, news, got it strung and set up so that the melody sounded pretty much the same on both sides. Then it hit me - I can now practice parallel 4ths crossed or uncrossed if I stop now. So, I've been playing with that for the past week or so. Play on one side, then on the same thing on the other, use either hand in both places. Pretty cool.

Second thing. I got a non angled pedestal for the belt hook. Wow, that really did make a big difference. Don't have to bend my wrist to reach around anymore.

So... I'm still not certain where I will end up. I am coming to the conclusion think that my pain with mirrored 4ths was a combination of 1) not being used to using my left hand that way causing fatigue and 2) the angled belt hook exacerbating number 1.

That said, I'm not sure I want to go back to mirrored. Parallel 4ths is really fast for figuring out where notes are - no added step of switching it to account for different orientation of strings low to high. Haven't decided on crossed vs uncrossed yet. Mostly playing crossed, but the difference does not seem to be dramatic.

Lastly, I am thinking of going true parallel 4ths with a low B string, rather than the Low E of mirrored 4ths.

God I love this instrument - So flexible and challenging! Any how that's the update for now.

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Mon Jan 23, 2017 1:47 pm
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Post Re: Confessions of a beginning Stickist…
Thought I'd do an update. I played around with mirrored 4ths for a while. Then I saw the post on straight 4ths, with the video from this guy:

https://youtu.be/2KpKBU79vBw?list=PLDfJ ... GULkuaH7ZL

I really like the concept of low to high being in the same direction rather than reversed between sides. It "clicks" with my poor noggin. So I tuned both sides in straight 4ths, starting with the mirrored 4ths tuning (just reversing the bass side). But then I noticed something. If the melody was detuned 1/2 step, the pattern across the entire neck became unified.

I'll try to explain what I mean by this. The base pattern for 4ths is BEADGCF. The pattern repeats on the next string, one fret higher. It also starts again one fret back and one string back from the F.

If I tune in straight 4ths E1 A1 D2 G2 C3 F3 for bass strings 12-7 and then
A1# D2# G2# C3# F3# B3 for melody strings 6 to 1 a couple of things happen.

First, the pattern works all the way accross the fret (yes after F4 on string 7 12th fret, moving to string 6 fret 13, its B2 not B4, but its still a B)

Also, there is a pattern that lines up nicely with the inlays. The 7th Fret is BEADGC (and then F on melody). The next marker is fret twelve, where it starts on the next letter, EADGCF.

With this tuning / layout, I'm starting to be able to just know where things are, or be able to quickly figure them out. And I find it's pretty ergonomic too. Not having hand cramps (not sure if this is truely due to ergonomics or if I'm just better at playing.)

Anyhow, since switching to this, I'm starting to make more progress. Thought I'd pass it along.

-Doc

P.S. Tried several times to embed video... no joy. But the link works

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Sun May 21, 2017 10:52 am
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Post Re: Confessions of a beginning Stickist…
This one wouldn't embed because you had to strip out all that stuff about a list, after the question mark in the URL. I embedded it below, and then below that, I embedded a video that shows you how to embed a video. ;)





And that was my posting about straight 4ths tuning on the 10-string Sticks. viewtopic.php?f=27&t=12010
I think it is a very worthy tuning, although I have settled on mirrored 4ths for the moment, and straight 4ths on my NS/Stick. And matched reciprocal on the Railboard. :)

ArmyDoc wrote:

With this tuning / layout, I'm starting to be able to just know where things are, or be able to quickly figure them out. And I find it's pretty ergonomic too. Not having hand cramps (not sure if this is truely due to ergonomics or if I'm just better at playing.)

Anyhow, since switching to this, I'm starting to make more progress. Thought I'd pass it along.

-Doc


Doc, sounds like you found a tuning that lets you play expressively and do what you want to do! Awesome!

And here's another one by him (Valery Rovinskii) on this tuning, this time some Bach:


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Sun May 21, 2017 1:55 pm
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Post Re: Confessions of a beginning Stickist…
It’s been a while since I posted on this thread, so I thought I’d update it, and share some thoughts on “alternate tunings”. Don’t shoot me, and keep it friendly!

I find studying how my brain learns new things to be fascinating. So, I am posting this mainly to document my own journey. Perhaps it will help someone else in theirs. Possibly it will help someone who teaches to understand why their student is struggling, or to be able to explain things differently. In any case, I’ve recently come full circle, from mirrored 4ths, to Matched Reciprocal’s 5ths/4ths, back to mirrored 4ths, to Parallel 4ths, to straight 4ths and now back to mirrored 4ths. So I’ve tried several different things, and my recollection of why I changed between them is relatively fresh.

I suppose it would be easier / faster if I had stuck with one tuning and just learned that tuning by brute force memorizing where the notes are. But I don’t learn well that way. I do better if I know the “why”, rather than just the “what”. I find I just get frustrated with rote memorization. By going to straight 4ths for a while, I began to understand and to be able to visualize the relationships. I can now see it almost as well as I can on the piano. This saves a step in another area, because before when conceptualizing a 3rd or a 5th etc, I would visualize it on a piano keyboard, and then have to translate that to the Stick. Now, I find at least for 4ths, 5ths and 3rds, I first visualize it on the Stick first.

And there was one other unexpected benefit. In restringing my instrument a half dozen times, and all the adjustments that go with it, I am much less intimidated by the instrument itself. These instruments are beautiful – really as much a work of art as a fine instrument. They are also complex. And expensive. As such, they are intimidating. It makes you almost afraid to pick it up, for fear you’ll mess something up. But, having “messed something up” on purpose, not just once but several times, I find I am not intimidated – when something isn’t right, I can fix it. As a consequence, I also find I much more readily pick it up to play.

In any case, here goes.

There are, to my mind, 2 primary considerations that go into picking a tuning.

1) understandability
2) Playability

Most of the stickists that I see posting here and elsewhere have a strong back ground in music, measured in multiple years, if not decades. For them, the order is probably the other way around. But for me (and only me – not trying to speak for anyone else) as a total beginner, understanding where then notes are and their relationship to the notes surrounding them was a major rate limiting step. I moved away from 5ths/4ths tuning to 4ths tuning because of this. It was just too hard for me to wrap my head around two different tunings, going in opposite directions in terms of pitch. Likewise, I moved from mirrored 4ths to parallel / straight 4ths for the same reason.

Early on, I conceived of everything in terms of left to right as you look at the stick, or towards me to away from me while holding it. I still think in terms of towards me or away from me, which works well for Parallel / straight 4ths. But now, in mirrored 4ths, I just think in terms of towards or away from my hand. This doesn’t seem to cause any brain strain. But I couldn’t do this until I learned the concepts first in straight 4ths.

By straight 4ths, I mean a progression of 4ths clear across the neck, only dropping a couple of octaves in the center from F3 to B1 when changing from bass side to melody side. So the progression is EADGCF on the Bass side and continued with Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb, B on the melody side. Once I had it tuned this way, the natural structure and positional relationship of the strings become easily understandable for me. (as an aside, the ergonomics of playing, are the same for both straight 4ths and parallel 4ths, where the progression is either BEADGC,BEADGC or EADGCF,BEADGC, but the relationships are broken when changing from bass to melody),

With straight 4ths, E was always one string away (to the right looking at the neck) and one fret up (towards the nut). G was always 1 away and 2 down, or 2 away and 3 up. Once I began to internalize the structure (By this I mean could do it in my head without looking at a reference chart) I began to make progress. I guess the difference was I was finally spending more time playing notes than I was figuring out where the next note I wanted to play was located.

It was only at this point that playability began to take a bigger role. Let me stipulate that I don’t think that there are huge differences between straight 4ths and mirrored 4ths. I also don’t think there are huge differences between 5ths/4ths and the various variations. In other words, any of the main tunings can be played, and played well. There are great examples of both all over. However, there are some differences. Here are the factors that have influenced me.

If you are playing on a 12 string, the reach to the 12th string is noticeably longer than on a 10 string, which can make both reaching the string and then supporting the finger while playing it more difficult (not terribly so, but noticeable to me) So, for me, having the low Bass strings in the center makes them easier to play then having them on the edge. This is one of the factors that made me consider moving back to mirrored 4ths from straight/parallel 4ths.

Another factor is that the fingers of your hands are mirrored, so once you take figuring out where the note is out equation, the ergonomics are the same. (At least in the center of the neck. Up at the nut on the bass side, it is harder because of the wider frets, and you hand is turned at a different angle.) Anyhow, I find playing unisons a bit easier in a mirrored configuration. That is to say, when I focus making my fingers do the same thing at the same time, having already memorized the pattern in one hand, it is easier to play in unison in a mirrored 4ths configuration than in a parallel/straight 4ths configuration.

Finally, there are a few cord shapes that I find easier in mirrored 4ths than straight 4ths. For example, I find playing root, 3, 5 is a stretch in the bass side, because the frets are wider. So instead I’ve been playing root, 5 (two down one over) and the 3rd an octave higher, one down and two strings over. This opens my hand / extends my middle finger in parallel 4ths, but flexes my middle finger sharply in straight 4ths. I’m sure there are other examples, but this one is a frequent one for me and was probably the straw that pushed me back over to mirrored 4ths from straight 4ths.

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Fri Jul 07, 2017 9:10 am
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Post Re: Confessions of a beginning Stickist…
I have to say in relation to this that what made the Stick playable for me was the inverted strings in the left hand and the "above" approach in the right hand. Having never been able to play chords on the guitar I became an electric, then also upright bassist. (and trombone, more bass clef). When I picked up the Stick, I could play CHORDS! With my left hand! And chords in my right hand! Whoowee! And to think I got it just because I wanted the Tony Levin Sound. (Still don't sound like T.L. I sound like ME. Playing a STICK!)

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Post Re: Confessions of a beginning Stickist…
AnDroiD wrote:
I have to say in relation to this that what made the Stick playable for me was the inverted strings in the left hand and the "above" approach in the right hand. Having never been able to play chords on the guitar I became an electric, then also upright bassist. (and trombone, more bass clef). When I picked up the Stick, I could play CHORDS! With my left hand! And chords in my right hand! Whoowee! And to think I got it just because I wanted the Tony Levin Sound. (Still don't sound like T.L. I sound like ME. Playing a STICK!)


Isn't it great?! Such an incredibly flexible instrument, with so many different ways to approach it.

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