Bi-melody tunings..

[rjgoos]

I happened upon Jeff Moen's site (www.touchguitarist.com), and the fellow seems to be making good progress with some sort of uncrossed bi-melody tuning, where the melody set of strings is tuned more-or-less like a regular guitar (in straight fourths), and the other is offset lower by four half steps (if I understand the site correctly).

Is this a common tuning? Sounds like it has many good possibilities.


RJ Goos


(Although there are probably some copyright issues with the download section of this site, it is rare to find reasonably comparable recordings of a Grand Stick, Warr Artisan, and an ADG-10. I thought the least expensive instrument, the ADG-10, sounded as good as the other two, personally).

[rockola]

There are a number of players who use this or a very similar tuning. I played a 12-string tuned in parallel fourths for a while the last time I was in Belgium, and it took almost no time to adapt even though my own instrument is in standard tuning. There's more info on this tuning on the excellent Tunings page at Clic Music (http://www.clicmusic.be/) under the title "Uncrossed parallel fourths".

[rjgoos]

rockola wrote:

>There's more info on this tuning on the excellent Tunings page at Clic Music under the title "Uncrossed parallel fourths". <


Well, there's a paragraph, but no suggested pitches or string weights were given.

I think Mr. Moen's position was that he was not a bass player, but a guitar player, and his tuning allowed for more intricate arrangements within the general pitch range of a normal guitar.

Hey Traktor...what are the exact pitches of the Megatar "bi-melody" tuning?


RJ Goos

[Glenn Drakeley]

My MidiTapper is tuned standard Warr melody on both sides, C#F#BEAD-C#F#BEAD. This is not Mobius Megatars Bi-Melody.

My Box LM, guitar scale length, is tuned standard guitar on both sides, EADGBE-EADGBE. This is one fascinating instrument !!!

Glenn

[traktor]

Hi, R. Jay,

The Bi-Melody Tuning is very similar to the BassBottom Tuning, in that all the note names on the 'bass' side are the same.

The difference is: BassBottom low strings are one octave lower than Bi-Melody low strings. The BassBottom tuning is spelled out in detail in the free, downloadable Owners Guide (which also has an expanded section on Feiten Intonation) and can be found at:

http://www.megatar.com/documents/#ownersguide

To do Bi-Melody, you just use melody gauge strings, and tune the 'lo-melody' one octave higher than the bass side of the BassBottom. When you've done this, you will discover that the lo-melody set is exactly one whole step (2 frets) lower than the hi-melody set. [If Glenn wanted to adapt his MidiTapper Tuning, he'd just select one or the other string set to be the "lo-melody" and then he'd drop that set one whole step.]

This relationship between the two sets of strings gives you a benefit when playing: When your right hand is playing hi-melody just above the TWELFTH fret, and your left hand is playing the lo-melody just above the SECOND fret, the notes lie upon the strings beneath your hands exactly identically.

That is, if you played the notes beneath your two hands, relative to the second and the twelfth fret, you'd be playing the same notes with each hand.

If you've got Bi-Melody Tuning then your two hands are now ONE octave apart. If you had BassBottom Tuning then your two hands are now TWO octaves apart. Very simple, and you can double your learning speed by practicing both hands simultaneously, using either of these two tunings.

You could arrange the strings normally ("crossed"), or Uncrossed, using this tuning, and the benefit would still hold true.