hi, I'm probably going to be purchasing a stick in the near future, and I'm looking for some advice on which tuning to use.

As a bit of background, I've been playing the piano as my only instrument for the last 12 years, and have become fairly fluent in it. I did my grade eight classical exam a couple of years ago, and lately I've been working on learning songs by ear and improvising with both hands at once.

I've been considering the standard tuning (bass 5ths, melody 4ths), and I've realised that this will result in everything being different for each hand. That is, all the patterns and shapes for scales, arpeggios and chords will be completely different for each hand.

Having been used to using exactly the same shapes and patterns for twelve years, this could potentially rather annoying. Is there any popular tuning which uses the same interval on both sides? (4ths for instance.)

I also realise that the advantages of having 5ths in the bass and 4ths in the melody might outweigh having to learn different shapes and patterns. Have you used both tunings, and found one to be generally better than the other? If you've gone from playing the piano to the stick it'd be great to have your opinion on this too.

Thanks in advance,
Angus

Using the standard Classic tuning the chord shapes mirror each other on the
melody and bass sides-there are only a few shapes to learn.Much easier than guitar chords.
Mike L

Hello,

I have switched to the Mirrored 4ths tuning on my 12-string grand Stick. Here's a link to it: http://stick.com/instruments/tunings/12/mir4_66/. This has made learning piano music much easier for me. There are several of us who are using some sort of all 4ths tuning. I have an SG12 on order and I'll be trying the Piano 4ths tuning first to see if I like it. Here's that link: http://stick.com/instruments/tunings/sg12/mir4_piano/.

I used the standard 5ths/4ths tuning for a couple of years before switching. Based on the kinds of music I want to play, I feel that Mirrored 4ths is better for me. This is especially true for classical music and all piano pieces. For example I have transcribed some Eric Satie for Stick and couldn't get it quite right and it was hard to play with 5ths/4ths. Now that I have Mirrored 4ths, I can play the pieces as written and they sound and feel great.

-Eric

Hi Angus,

I was a keyboardist, but without the training you had by any means. Eric's recommendations are good ones, especially if you want to play music specifically written for the piano. The SG12 is nice because the shorter scale makes it easier to play in the actual pitch range the music was written for (on the longer scale instruments, you'll often have to play an octave lower than written).

But there's another thing to think about.

Are you thinking of The Stick as an expansion of the piano concept of "two parts", one for each hand? Or are you willing to entertain the idea that the left hand can effectively generate two parts all on its own? (a bass part and an accompaniment part). With the inverted 5ths tuning on a Grand Stick you have a two and a half octave span in one hand position, which makes some pretty interesting orchestrations possible.

If you think you will be using the left hand primarily for closed-voice chords an counterpoint lines, then there is absolutely no reason to use the inverted 5ths, but if you are thinking about simultaneous use of the left hand for bass and chords, 5ths has some advantages.

As far as the two tunings having different chord shapes, that's only partly true. Straight 4ths and inverted 5ths have a reciprocal relationship, which means that the same geometric pattern will give you the same chord, but as an inversion. This chart reveals how the tunings relate to each other:

http://www.stick.com/instruments/tunings/10/classic/

as one goes down in pich the other goes up, to the same notes.

Keyboardists have to learn the two-dimensional fretboard whatever the tuning is, and The Stick's inlay pattern and uniform tunings groups makes that pretty easy.

Whatever you decide, you're not "stuck" with any tuning. The instrument's custom bridge and nut hardware make it pretty easy to change tunings and optimize the setup yourself. Emmett's unique nut design allows subtle tweaking of the string clearance at the first fret, making The Stick much more playable down low than an instrument with a zero fret, for example, and you can make these adjustments without having to remove the string from the nut to play-test the string.