I suppose when looking at an instrument as worn by a player, there is some logic to thinking of numbering strings bottom-up. Granted, for those who were left-hand players and didn't re-string their instruments, effectively playing them upside-down, that wouldn't apply.
But let's think about this for a second.
As a musician, my concept of string numbering has nothing to do with geometry and orientation. It's all about pitch. Even in terms of position, the string "closest" to the player, whether to their body or their eye, is almost always the lowest pitch, and the one I think of as the first string.
Except 5-string banjo. And ukulele. Because evolution made them odd.
So why does the convention feel so backwards?
In my mind, proximity or pitch should really declare what string order is. The lowest strings are, in fact, also the ones closest to my body when in a playing position. And as a western language-speaker, I even read left-to-right.
Fingers are "numbered" from index to pinky.
Frets are numbered low-to-high.
Notes on scales are numbered low-to-high.
So as I am learning the instrument, reading tablature or interpreting copedent charts really, really mucks with my number-from-low-to-high brain. It wants to count low to high, left to right, close to far, and I find myself doing a lot of mental transposition.
I just gotta ask--am I alone in thinking this way?
Seems like such a random question and a rambling post, I know, but good fodder for discussion.
