Re: OT: Tuning guitar in fifths for

[Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com>]

I haven't read every post in this thread (so please forgive me if I 
missed a similar reply)
but has anyone mentioned that a Violin is tuned in fifths because it is 
a very small instrument
compared to an Upright Bass (tuned in fourths)?

One can play some pretty beautiful and intense chords on a Mandolin or a 
Ukele for this
same reason  (long live Bill's 'Honey, I shrunk the guitar'  guitar).

On a normal scaled guitar, however, t's a long, long stretch (compared 
to a person like myself with smallish hands)
from a fifth back to a third or minor third if the guitar is tuned in 
fifths.

****************************

That being said and done:  I just find that If I doodle around with a 
new tuning, open or otherwise
that different melodic and harmonic themes will naturally pop out 
depending on the tuning.

Martin Simpson talks about using the five standard simple guitar chordal 
shapes and just moving them around
on the guitar in different tunings....................Songs just pop out 
of the guitar using this simple approach.

I was teaching a bass student today and he was futzing around with my 
thrift store bought
baritone ukelele which I have tuned to an open 7th chord.

He's a much more sophisticated string player than me (I'm teaching him 
rhythmic studies)
and he just was bringing amazingly beautiful things out of the uke 
(which sounds like some beautiful
mixture of a toy plastic guitar and a nylon string classical guitar and 
not like a ukelele at all).

I was just marvelling at how this simple four note tuning was producing 
such beautiful stuff.

I think a fantastic guitarist can play anything on anything if they work 
it enough.

For me , this discussion is mostly about creating new things to surprise 
and delight ourselves,
compositionally.

Rick Walker
(I'm not a guitarist, but I play one on TV)