I fiddled with the piano for a few years starting in high school. Could play some Bach but never felt like it was natural. At the start of lockdown I bought a guitar and tuned it in perfect fourths and it was like a whole world of applying theory was blown open. All I need to do is move my hand up or down a fret and that changes the root of the mode? I don't need to get accustomed to a mode as a specific permutation of black and white keys?

It's like an order of magnitude less complex. It's tough to fully voice intricate chords by myself, but it's more than worth it for a flat grid of notes instead of the hellish terrain of the piano.

Maybe if the Lumatone gets an affordable version I'll pick that up.

(Or I could just get a keyboard that shifts around on the firmware level so I can play any diatonic mode on the white keys... does anyone else do that? I guess that would still make it really annoying to modulate mid-performance.)

  • CuminAndSalt [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    tuned it in perfect fourths

    Even your 2nd and 3rd strings? Does that give you an f on your 1st string?

    • vertexarray [any]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      to tune in P4 I put the top two strings up a semitone, resulting in EADGCF

      • CuminAndSalt [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        What do your bread-and-butter chords look like in p4? So many of the standard tuning chord shapes are built on barring strings 1-5

        • vertexarray [any]
          hexagon
          ·
          4 years ago

          I'm usually playing thrash or doom so I don't usually play barre chords. Also I never learned how to play standard tuning so I don't really know what I'm missing out on :x