Report: The Pseudo-Keyboard Approach

[Mad Monk]

Fellow Tappers,

Having single-mindedly pursued the pseudo-keyboard approach to tapping for 25 years, I've noticed some things which might interest some of you.


A) It is possible to configure a 12-string tapping instrument to play almost any keyboard music written prior to 1800, complete and exactly as written (I have many of these pieces in my repertoire). Some music written thereafter is also playable as written.

B) Because 2 independent melodic lines may be played by each hand (in 4ths), textbook exercises in 4-part harmony are also playable. The fretboardist can therefore study the principles of voice-leading and counterpoint using a tapping instrument in lieu of piano, for exercises and composition. (I took a 12-string Stick through a standard 2-year theory course).

C) Skills thus acquired can be used in playing any fretboard instrument tuned in straight 4ths.


The "hows" and "whys" of the above statements would have made for lengthy digressions. However, I can answer specific questions here on this thread.
The upshot is that "Chapman tapping" opens the entire harmonic world to the guitarist as composer. I hope to hear from other tappers who are using piano method and the study of tonal harmony to compose as-yet-unheard music for guitars....


Mad Monk.

harpsitar@gmail.com

[rjgoos]

Thanks for joining us, and for the thought-provoking posting.

>It is possible to configure a 12-string tapping instrument to play almost any keyboard music written prior to 1800, complete and exactly as written (I have many of these pieces in my repertoire). Some music written thereafter is also playable as written.<

>Skills thus aquired can be used in playing any fretboard instrument tuned in straight 4ths.<


I'd be interested in hearing more about the tuning you use. Thanks.

[PhoBucket]

Hi Mad Monk,

Welcome aboard. Why prior to 1800? Does this have to do with the range of the instrument?

[Mad Monk]

About the tuning and range---

From 1983-94 I used a standard 10-string Stick to play Bach; playing the contrapuntal texture in 4ths and 5ths was like conversing in 2 foreign languages at once. In 1995 I got a 12-string which can use the unified language of fourths (mirrored) while accomodating the necessary range--just barely.

Up through the pre-classical era, the left hand range of keyboard music is F1 to D5. So the bass side uses 7 strings:

EADGCFBflat

...starting with the low E of bass guitar, F1 is at the first fret...the D5 is at fret 16 on the seventh string, the Bflat. The remaining 5 treble clef strings are just as on a standard 10-string stick:

FsharpBEAD

...but with the addition of 3 extra frets to get to F6, the highest note used until 1790.

This "harpsitar" tuning maximizes the number of playable keyboard pieces, including at least 98% of everything written before 1800; in music written thereafter, the chromatic harmonies used tend to prevent playability as written, not to mention the expanded range of the pianoforte (there are still lots of post-1800 playable pieces though).


Mad Monk.

harpsitar@gmail.com

[rpmartino]

Interesting... I've often thought about a tuning like this that uses an extended bass range starting on low E (I also tune in mirrored 4ths, E to F on bass and B to C on melody on a Grand Stick).

Even with the bass range starting higher than most tap instruments (which is usually B or C) I still found that I was playing way up the fretboard on the bass side when trying to read baroque keyboard music. I definitely see the advantage of what you're doing here with the extra string.

I'd be curious if you have any recordings of baroque music played on a tapping instrument... I didn't pursue that path as much as I thought I would initially but hopefully will revisit it in the future.

[GaryOpenhill]

I do that on the megatar. 7+5. Bass side from Bass E and up in fourths to B flat. The 5 strings on the melody side runs from deep guitar E to and up to C. Many advantages to this. The sides run parallell from the deepest strings, with an octave apart. The bass side get the range for bass notes and wide chords. You can do whatever a 5 string stick tuned in fifths can do (but not go to low D or C, but that is not a loss for me), but in addition you can play all the baroque things, yuo can reach notes within the scales you can not reach in fifths and on top of that you can alsop do whatever a double guitar tuning can do without having to go way way up on the bass side. I find i really dont need all the 6 strings on the malody side. The B string is convenient, but i dont need it as much as i want to 7th high string on the bass side. The 5 strings still have the same range as a whole GUITAR for crying out loud!If i ever get at stick or a warr guitar, this is how i will force them to tune it. I saw a 5+7 string setup on a stick, and that SE offers this. Its just a matter of restringing it for my uncrossed 5+7 string setup.

[Mad Monk]

About studying composition on tapping instruments--



The "melody plus chords" approach to guitar-based music has produced good results for decades, but we are seeing diminishing returns...maybe another approach to composition will produce something different, at least....

It should be possible to use a 12-string as a sort of "master fretboard" for sketching modern ensemble music just as the piano can be used to sketch a symphony. The idea would be to reject guitar method, based as it is on chords, in favor of piano method, with its emphasis on the simultaneous melodies which create those chords. A bit more study is needed in this approach.

The tapping guitar can thus be both performance instrument and pedagogical tool--helping the musician to conceptualize more complex, more interesting, and more personal guitar music.


Mad Monk.

harpsitar@gmail.com

[Mad Monk]

About the transferability of skills--


The time spent in pseudo-keyboard practice is not lost to the all-round fretboardist who also wants to pluck, pick, and strum standard instruments.

For one thing, the upside-down left hand of mirrored 4ths is no real obstacle to transferring learned material to guitar; furthermore there is always the option of using parallel 4ths. The main thing is that the practice time ordinarily spent on piano technique (in order to study harmony), is used instead on the language of 4ths--which can be used on any fretboard instrument. If you want to get a music degree, you will still have to do some time on the piano--but you can do your homework on a fretboard.

Tomorrow's most impressive guitarists will probably be tappers--and they will have used Chapman tapping to learn to play the standard instruments, rather than the other way around.


Mad Monk.

harpsitar@gmail.com

[Tom Drinkwater]

Makes sense to me. I always lose my picks anyway.

[midivox]

Hi Tappers,
I personally am not interested in using a keyboard approach to tapping or with a tapping guitar, but I enjoyed reading the thread. There of thousands of guitar transcriptions of piano music, some of which I already play.
I prefer looking at a guitar with extra strings, as just that a guitar with extra strings.
There is an unlimited number of ways to tune a normal guitar, let alone one with extra strings
Happy Tppping
MidiVox

[tomsturges]

Straight fourths all the way!

[atimholt]

I'm starting Traktor Topaz's layaway plan (Mobius Megatar), and I've requested a tuning with polyphonic melodies foremost in mind.
More or less, its what Mobius calls 'bassbottom' tuning. Both courses are in fourths. However, I wanted an uncrossed tuning (extremely important on many keyboard pieces), but I wanted to be able to use a pitch shifter on the melody strings to make the entire instrument tuned completely to fourths, so I'm just getting 'bass bottom' completely in reverse ('left-handed,' as it were). By my painstaking (I'm a beginner with this music theory stuff) calculations, I've found the melody strings need a transposition of an octave plus a third up for straight fourths across the board.
I plan on getting an EHX HOG (I had one for 2 weeks once, then had car troubles and so had to return it for the money:(). Aside from everything else it can do, one thing I'm going to try is this transposition, which requires using the octave+5th slider, step-pitch-shift expression effect down a step, and a downtuning of the melody strings by half a step. Of course, I have no idea what this will do for tone uniformity, i.e., what will happen to the sound when I try to arpeggiate from bass to melody. If it doesn't work well, I'll do other stuff. Like maybe eventually get a Krappy with 14 strings tuned completely in 4ths;).
Also. This is my first post. This forum looks interesting. There isn't really oh so much animosity between stickies and megatarques, is there?

[Mad Monk]

There isn't really oh so much animosity between stickies and megatarques, is there?

No, not unless you call us "stickies".

You might be interested in this recent thread on Stickist.com; it's a long debate on the virtues of the various tunings, with lots of video clips: http://www.stickist.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1303


Mad Monk.

[midivox]

Hi Tappers,
There are more Tunings for Guitar than you could ever play in. Hundreds and hundreds on six string guitars and when you go onto more than 6 strings, tunings are basicly unlimited.

I wish I had more time to experiment with alternative tunings. I really only use about a dozen on 6 string guitars and have yet to even try any alternative tunings on my Stu Box yet.

What I do enjoy is that many pieces of music software that have guitar chord diagrams allow you to select an alternative tuning and hear what chords will sound like in that tuning.

The only guitar software I know of that allowed you to create custom stringed instruments and then set the tuning for each string is the old Windows 3.1/95 program Howling Dogs Power Chords Pro. I like this software so much I still keep an old PC around just to use it.

You just click on the guitar neck of your custom tuned instrument and it shows and names any chords you create or you can select a chord name and it will display it, much like Guitar Pro does. But Howling lets you drag the chords off of the guitar neck into a chord chart or any song you are working on. The custom instrument is limited to 12 strings and 24 frets.

For bass lines and riffs you can create bass line icons and riff icons and drag them into songs also. I forget whether Power Chords Pro runs under XP. Have to check my laptop later.

I have been told that Sibelius 5 allows custom instruments as far as chord diagrams go, but I do not know if they are audible ones. Meaning they play as you are creating them.

And of course the guitar allows you to use microtunings, guarter tones, etc but few guitarists ever do so. Of course with more than six strings, you can mix or use more than one tuning at the same time.

Happy Tunings
MidiVox

[Tom Drinkwater]

For simplicity I like straight 4ths for tapping. My music is simple, I need a simple tuning. Plus, the tuning makes sense to me. I have to play my own instrument with my hands and my brain. I still can't wrap my head around two different tunings on one neck.

All different tunings have merit. There is no absolute best tuning. There are only optimal tunings for specific musical circumstances. I think that a 9 or 10 string in straight 4ths starting from a low E1 would be magnificent as a tapper. It would encompass the entire bass guitar and standard guitar range plus a 4th in either direction. 9 strings are plenty large to keep your hands from running into each other too.

Considering that my music is simple, I find that I don't need lots of overlap between the bass and melody regions. A standard guitar starts on E2. A four string bass guitar starts on E1. The bass only has 2 open notes that the guitar doesn't have. E1 and A1. The 2nd string on bass is D2, exactly one step below E2, the lowest note on a standard guitar. That is why I tune my 8 strings in 4ths starting on low E1 and ascend in 4ths. The top 6 strings are basically a guitar tuned down a step and the lowest 4 strings are exactly like a bass. For my music having 2 regions that share the same open notes or open notes a step or two apart doesn't make alot of sense unless it was a double guitar tuning. That would be pretty sweet.

As far as a keyboard technique, I happen to play keyboard almost as badly as I tap. I can easily transfer an idea to piano from a 4ths tuned tapper and vise versa. Once you get your chord shapes down and can invert chords on your tapper, piano music gets alot easier. I am still a novice at tapping, I may have mentioned that earlier, but I can say from 16 years on the guitar and several years on bass, mandolin, octave mandolin, violin, cello and keyboard that a full range, straight 4ths tuned tapper is the easiest instrument to learn on the planet. You will never need another tuning, ever. I promise. I have read were people say that they have graduated to more advanced tunings and it is just silly. There is no reason to have a difficult tuning. It would be very counterproductive to have 2 tunings on a neck when you can tune to a very symmetrical, easy to use and learn tuning right from the beginning.

[rpmartino]

All different tunings have merit. There is no absolute best tuning. There are only optimal tunings for specific musical circumstances.

Right on...


a full range, straight 4ths tuned tapper is the easiest instrument to learn on the planet. You will never need another tuning, ever. I promise. I have read were people say that they have graduated to more advanced tunings and it is just silly. There is no reason to have a difficult tuning. It would be very counterproductive to have 2 tunings on a neck when you can tune to a very symmetrical, easy to use and learn tuning right from the beginning.

...well, until you said that. :)

I went from an NS/Stick (8 strings, straight 4ths) to a Grand Stick (first in parallel 4ths, then mirrored), precisely because I started running into limitations playing the music I wanted to do. Even just trying to sight read the first Bach Goldberg variation presented some challenges with hand collisions on a straight 4ths instrument, when chords and melody are close in pitch to each other.

I don't see two regions as making things more difficult, just opening up a lot more possibilities. I certainly couldn't play most of my music on straight 4ths, particularly with the strings going low to high in the conventional bass or guitar direction (inverting the bass strings frees my left hand from some awkward chord shapes and finger scrunching). I also recommend people check out the Stickist tuning thread (http://www.stickist.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1303) that Mad Monk linked to, there is some great info there. For the sake of discussion, I also made a rough video (http://wavearts.com/Rob/movies/RobLH4ths.mov) that demonstrated some mirrored 4ths left hand accompaniment possibilities that might be quite difficult if not impossible in a straight or parallel 4ths (and likely even 5ths) tuning (same goes for many of my youtube videos).

I think your first point was true- use a tuning that suits the music you want to do. I've heard 4 string solo bass players play nice pieces, as well as players off various crossed/uncrossed/4ths/5ths/parallel/mirrored persuasions. Sometimes (like it did for me) it takes years of experimenting to find the right solution. Fortunately, for anyone starting out and wanting to figure out which is best for them, there is more media/video kinds of demonstrations available on YouTube etc.- if someone is doing something that really resonates with you, it's a good starting point to check out the tuning they use.

[Tom Drinkwater]

I didn't know you started on the NS/Stick. Are those as cool as they look on YouTube?

My point was that the simplicity of straight fouths makes it easy to learn, for me anyways, of course it is not for everyone. Come to think of it, there is no way in h### I'd take on the Bach Goldberg Variations with anything other than my trusty cd player.

[rpmartino]

I didn't know you started on the NS/Stick. Are those as cool as they look on YouTube?

Actually the very first thing I got (in 1995 I think) was a used, rare 10 string Massacar ebony Stick made in 1976 (classic, then baritone melody tuning). I eventually traded that towards the NS because I thought the simplicity of 4ths would help me out. Yes, it was a cool and versatile instrument and worked great in a church band I was playing in- I was able to do both bass and very basic synth parts (MIDI pickup) at the same time. But ultimately I felt like I wanted an instrument optimized for tapping (and solo music) rather than trying to force one thing to be a bass, guitar and a Stick, since compromises are involved.


My point was that the simplicity of straight fouths makes it easy to learn, for me anyways, of course it is not for everyone. Come to think of it, there is no way in h### I'd take on the Bach Goldberg Variations with anything other than my trusty cd player.

Just thought your point needed some clarification, particularly for anyone new to tapping who is trying to figure this stuff out- after all you did indicate people moving to "advanced" tunings were being "silly". :) I went through a bunch of tuning variations the past 13 years or so until settling on mirrored 4ths in 2004. Sometimes I tried to force the instrument to be more like bass and guitar, or be as simple as possible, but discovered those things imposed limitations on the kind of music I wanted to do with two handed tapping.

[midivox]

Hi Tappers,
Why I have always enjoyed different tunings is the different tone colors that different tunings offer. I have 2 gadget guitars that allow switching tunings with just a button press, so you can switch tunings in the middle of a song or live performace if you wish.

Before the gadget guitars, you had to have multiple guitars on stage each tuned in a different tuning. Gibsons new Robo Les Paul, tunes itself and also has alternative tunings. These are cool gadgets.

I only play keyboard one handed for composing purposes. I want to get another Stu Box so I can stack a couple of alternative tunings on it. Having a tapper with both bass strings and guitar strings does not interest me at all, but I enjoy listening to others play their bass and guitar combo tappers.

Maybe someday there will be a multi stringed robo tapping guitar where you can switch tunings with a button press.

Happy Tapping
MidiVox

[Tom Drinkwater]

Have you seen the Hipshot Trilogy? You can get them for up to 8 strings. They are a mechanical device/bridge that allows for quickly switching tunings. Pretty cool. I think they run around $250. I thought about getting one for a baritone strat I am building.

[midivox]

Hi Tappers,
I have 2 Scruggs Tuners on one of my banjos, that you can lock in two tunings and flick them to go back and forth. Say from G Tuning to C Tuning in the same song. Have not checked out any modified bridge gadgets.

Mr. Stu Box is going to offer a full set of bridge tuning knobs for his 12 stringed instruments. So each string will have a knob, instead of now, where you have just one knob and move it from string to string.

I play in Drop D a lot, so stacking Drop D or even an Open D Tuning on top of the normal guitar tuning is a simple way for me to stack tunings. Strings 1 to 6 normal, Strings 7 to 12 in Dropped D or some kind of Open D.

The Stu Box Bridge is such a great bridge that I have never had to tune the guitar yet.

I do not think its makes any difference what kind of tuning you use when learning to tap. You still tap the same way no matter what the tuning is. As was posted, use the tunings you like. One can safely ignore every other tuning. Since you can only play in one tuning at a time, for the most part.

Happy Tunings
MidiVox

[wilper]

Mr. Stu Box is going to offer a full set of bridge tuning knobs for his 12 stringed instruments. So each string will have a knob, instead of now, where you have just one knob and move it from string to string.


I bought the last one of Stu's promotion instruments. And it uses the full set of bridge tuning knobs mentioned above. While my background is mostly in violin-like instruments, I find the arrangement on the box guitar nice and intuitive. Adjusting the tuning is very easy, but at least for me, not very fast. I don't think you would like to retune the instrument mid song.

[Tom Drinkwater]

I am going to start a thread about the different tunings so this thread can get back to it's topic.

[midivox]

Hi All, Wilper,
Yeah, I never tune or switch tunings mid song, unless using a gadget guitar where you switch with just a button press. Thats why I will be buying another Stu Box this year, so I can keep one in a different tuning than dual guitar tuning.
Happy Sounds
MidiVox

[lord_avon]

I am still a novice at tapping, I may have mentioned that earlier, but I can say from 16 years on the guitar and several years on bass, mandolin, octave mandolin, violin, cello and keyboard that a full range, straight 4ths tuned tapper is the easiest instrument to learn on the planet. You will never need another tuning, ever. I promise.

This is very reassuring to me, I've played keys for well over 20 years, I now play bass, and *LOVE* it (the last 5 to 6 years).
I've tried guitar but that damned B string catches me out every time when I start thinking of shapes.

I mean, the keyboard has the same tuning from the lowest A to the highest C. so why does a guitar have this "key" that is a semitone lower and seems to muckup the "flow".

Sure, it makes strumming chords easier, but I find myself having to start and think each time I'm mid flow of writing a riff or solo, and it's frustrating.

Anyway, I digress. I've ordered myself a Megatar Trutapper Dark Dragon with the bassbottom 4ths tuning and I'm really looking forward to getting down to some serious tapping.

I plan to try some of my own music on it, and also to work on some classical (Gaudette being the first I want to have a crack at, then some Scarlatti).

So it's very reassuring to see other people like the 4ths tuning. To qualify this, I had a 10 string graphite chapman with "normal stick" tuning, and it drove me potty, so I sold it.