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Topic: Quartal/4ths Tuning |
R. E. Miller
From:
Nowhere, Near Home.
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Posted 23 Oct 2018 12:19 pm |
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Playing around with trying to build a navigable approach to quartal harmony on the back neck. I've seen Ed Packards approach to making tertial harmony more accessible and I've read some of the older posts wrt E9th being very 4ths friendly, but I'm wondering if anyone else has experimented with tuning around the diatonic scale in 4ths, e.g. in "C" -
B
F
C
G
D
A
E
B
F
C
In playing with it, without pedals, it gives all the quartal triads (P4+P4, +4&P4, P4&+4, +4&b5) in symetrical grips, which seems to be easy to get your hands around.
Pedal combinations aren't completely obvious, but looking at it, it seems that a similar symmetry holds true for diatonic scalar pictures.
Anyway, just wondering if anyone else is experimenting in the same vein and maybe some input/collaboration/interplay...
Buddy Charleton on the front and McCoy Tyner on the back...anyone? |
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Earnest Bovine
From:
Los Angeles CA USA
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Posted 23 Oct 2018 1:20 pm
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| If this tuning isn't re-entrant, then your first string (B) will be very very high. My strings would break. For me, the 4th intervals are too wide for melodic playing. At the other extreme, a diatonic scale tuning doesn't provide enough range. The common tunings, about 5 notes per octave, seem about right. |
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R. E. Miller
From:
Nowhere, Near Home.
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Posted 23 Oct 2018 2:17 pm
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Well, that's embarrassing. I hadn't even thought of that issue. I suppose going down to C1 on a 24" scale would be impractical.  Thank you, Mr. Livingston. |
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Tom Gorr
From:
Three Hills, Alberta
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Posted 23 Oct 2018 6:15 pm
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| Steel guitar open tuning should be a big diminished chord. |
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Fred Treece
From:
California, USA
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Posted 23 Oct 2018 7:26 pm
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| Tom Gorr wrote: |
| Steel guitar open tuning should be a big diminished chord. |
The “jumbo shrimp” of tunings, you might say... |
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Bob Hoffnar
From:
Austin, Tx
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Posted 23 Oct 2018 9:31 pm
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Try dropping the low C in a standard C6 tuning and adding a middle D. Straight pentatonic scale across the strings. Add a pedal that raises the middle E string up to F and quartals galore !
_________________
Bob |
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Rick Schmidt
From:
Prescott AZ, USA
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Posted 24 Oct 2018 2:20 pm
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I didn't want to lose the low C on my C6, so I moved the traditional pedal 4 to a KL with a half stop A-Bb-B raise...(a little tricky, but it can be done), and replaced it with a 7th string whole step raise (C-D). I originally did that with the main intent being Quartal harmony, but being that it's next to pedal 5, it does so much more (but that's another story) All of a sudden I could find Herbie Hancock/McCoy Tyner type voicings that I love to use on piano or 6 string. Some guys drop the 6th string E to D, but for my purposes the C-D raise works great.
Like Bob said, the E-F change is also very cool.
E9 is also full of stacked 4ths if you know where to look, and in some ways the timbre of the sting gauges have their own uniquely pleasing sound when playing "open sus-ey" quartal chords. |
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R. E. Miller
From:
Nowhere, Near Home.
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Posted 24 Oct 2018 3:06 pm
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Thanks, Bob and Rick. That's the kind of input I was looking for. I'll have sit down for a few hours and manually tune around your suggestions.
In the mean time, I haven't given up. I spent the last couple of nights goofing with two separate diatonic 4ths series separated by a scale degree. BCEFABDE. Funky, angular, probably too close to diatonic (not much range), and seems like it would require piano-like comping/melody independence to make much of it...or it might just peak at sounding like Slonimsky in a blender...I'm game to hammer on it, at any rate. |
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R. E. Miller
From:
Nowhere, Near Home.
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Posted 24 Oct 2018 4:14 pm
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| Tom Gorr wrote: |
| Steel guitar open tuning should be a big diminished chord. |
That'd sure take care of the geometric symmetry and key center ambiguity part. If we eliminate the annoying chromatic passing tones, it's the ultimate modal approach. 3 choices, no waiting. Save tons of dough on pedals...raise or lower just gets you a unison. |
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