<story><title>Why Is The Guitar Tuned Like It Is?</title><url>https://library.kiwix.org/music.stackexchange.com_en_all_2022-05/questions/1723/why-is-the-guitar-tuned-like-it-is</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lioeters</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve always wondered about that kink between the G and B string, a major 3rd gap, when all the other strings are spaced perfect fourth. It bothers me because it&amp;#x27;s an anomaly that breaks the symmetry and increases the number of shapes to keep in mind.&lt;p&gt;The whole thread is an enjoyable read, and the answer seems to be - like many things in Western music theory - it was a design decision, a kind of legacy code, with pros and cons. &amp;quot;Things evolve to meet a need.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;One of the answers talked about an all-fourths tuning, that some instruments use such tunings as standard.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;All_fourths_tuning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;All_fourths_tuning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Theoretically it&amp;#x27;s more beautiful, and simplifies the shapes and their movements across the fretboard. It might be a pain to overcome years of learning patterns on the guitar &lt;i&gt;with&lt;/i&gt; the kink - I&amp;#x27;ll have to try it. Sometimes it&amp;#x27;s good to shake up the foundation and see what new patterns emerge.&lt;p&gt;Similarly, I love the logic (and I&amp;#x27;d say even wisdom) of the piano keyboard - but there are some kinks in there too, which introduce complexity in the patterns and their transformations, making them harder to remember. I&amp;#x27;m curious to try a hexagonal keyboard and other alternative layouts - I imagine the symmetry has practical advantages, and to my mind more aesthetically pleasing.&lt;p&gt;Wicki–Hayden note layout - &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Wicki%E2%80%93Hayden_note_layout&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Wicki%E2%80%93Hayden_note_layo...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Isomorphic_keyboard&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Isomorphic_keyboard&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dumpsterlid</author><text>&amp;quot; I&amp;#x27;ve always wondered about that kink between the G and B string, a major 3rd gap, when all the other strings are spaced perfect fourth. It bothers me because it&amp;#x27;s an anomaly that breaks the symmetry and increases the number of shapes to keep in mind.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;One of the deeply beautiful things about the guitar is this &amp;quot;ugly&amp;quot; asymmetry. People with analytical minds that desire order always get bothered by this 3rd, why not go to all 4ths and be more elegant???&lt;p&gt;Because art and music arent always about being elegant! Tuning a guitar in all 4ths lets you play like a snooty stuck up jazz musician, but ultimately there are so many richer bar chords available with that 3rd in there that who cares if it is &amp;quot;ugly&amp;quot; to have the 3rd. People forget a plain jane normal guitar chord like a G chord or something is tonally actually very complex. It isn&amp;#x27;t like a basic g chord on a piano G B D. The &amp;quot;basic&amp;quot; G chord on guitar spans many octaves and has a non-obvious combination of notes. The 3rd in there for guitar tuning allows you to explore all those complexities with the given limitations of the human hand best.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why Is The Guitar Tuned Like It Is?</title><url>https://library.kiwix.org/music.stackexchange.com_en_all_2022-05/questions/1723/why-is-the-guitar-tuned-like-it-is</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lioeters</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve always wondered about that kink between the G and B string, a major 3rd gap, when all the other strings are spaced perfect fourth. It bothers me because it&amp;#x27;s an anomaly that breaks the symmetry and increases the number of shapes to keep in mind.&lt;p&gt;The whole thread is an enjoyable read, and the answer seems to be - like many things in Western music theory - it was a design decision, a kind of legacy code, with pros and cons. &amp;quot;Things evolve to meet a need.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;One of the answers talked about an all-fourths tuning, that some instruments use such tunings as standard.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;All_fourths_tuning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;All_fourths_tuning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Theoretically it&amp;#x27;s more beautiful, and simplifies the shapes and their movements across the fretboard. It might be a pain to overcome years of learning patterns on the guitar &lt;i&gt;with&lt;/i&gt; the kink - I&amp;#x27;ll have to try it. Sometimes it&amp;#x27;s good to shake up the foundation and see what new patterns emerge.&lt;p&gt;Similarly, I love the logic (and I&amp;#x27;d say even wisdom) of the piano keyboard - but there are some kinks in there too, which introduce complexity in the patterns and their transformations, making them harder to remember. I&amp;#x27;m curious to try a hexagonal keyboard and other alternative layouts - I imagine the symmetry has practical advantages, and to my mind more aesthetically pleasing.&lt;p&gt;Wicki–Hayden note layout - &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Wicki%E2%80%93Hayden_note_layout&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Wicki%E2%80%93Hayden_note_layo...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Isomorphic_keyboard&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Isomorphic_keyboard&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Maciek416</author><text>I use an all-fourths tuning on the Linnstrument and absolutely love it. As a person who approached both music theory and learning to play with their hands for the first time (after clicking around in a piano roll for years) with an all-fourths isomorphic keyboard, it removed whole categories of mental gymnastics and time sucks and let me pick up big chords and bits of jazz&amp;#x2F;rnb much quicker as a result. The benefits of being able to transpose and dance around the keyboard effortlessly without having to account for that major 3rd gap can&amp;#x27;t be overstated. You&amp;#x27;ve got one unified mental model for everything and can skip directly to the good stuff. There are a number of grid instruments on the market that implement all fourths (Push, Launchpad, etc etc). If you have an iPad, Musix Pro can also act as a MIDI output (either for iPadOS instruments or for external hardware) that gives you an equivalent layout, but also many other interesting layouts that may work better for the music you want to play.&lt;p&gt;As a side note, after learning linnstrument, I picked up an 8 string guitar and found it much easier to translate my knowledge by tuning in all-fourths. With all-fourths, you really can learn chords as a set of (essentially) 2D glyphs that interact and fit together like Lego pieces. Inversions are easier to remember, transposition is always effortless, training your hands is quicker. Highly recommended.</text></comment>