Apparently "Legato King" Tom Quayle tunes his guitar in straight 4th's like that, but I see him more as a single line player rather than a chord monster. Either way, he's about as fluid as can be like Alan Holdsworth was.
In this context, it’s really interesting to watch the old video by the late Emmett Chapman, inventor of the Chapman Stick, which is tuned in even intervals across the range, but adds the additional quirk of putting the largest gauges of string in the center of the neck. He loved the uniform intervals that allowed for a slightly wider reach for new chord voicings. I love the idea of it, but practically speaking, when I’ve had the chance to try one out, I find that the “bass” strings are fingered with the left hand, but the strings are flipped from thing to thicker. And the five “guitar” strings are tuned in equal intervals (instead of the asymmetrical B string) and played with the wrong hand.
Some older string instruments tuned to 4ths. Imagine the dude that figured out how to make barre chords easier along the way. Probably had some others all like, "nah man, these kids with their drop tuning, they don't even know how to really play." Just like, well, some guitarists do today XD
I use all 4ths tuning, and have used that as my regular tuning for about two years now. I think some people think of it as kind of limited or kinda like a "gimmik", like Tom Quayle for legato stuff. But I have found that especially as a jazz musician that you break out of that approach after a while, and really find that you can do almost the same stuff as with regular tuning. Its has really just everything to do with your creativity rather than tuning. I have just found that all 4ths makes learning and playing from ear more intuitive. Also you lose almost all of standard repertoire for the guitar, but that's something I wanted on purpose, breaking away from that standard "guitar sound" that can be hard to get away from. Since I´ve realized that I can't play the normal stuff anyways, I now tune in this tuning: C# - F# - B - E - A - D Something that was inspired by a jazz guitarist called Karl Bjorå. He tunes in C# standard. I have just found that this lower tuning resonates better with both me and the guitar. Hope that this helps the small audience who have thought about making these changes
Are you sure tuning C# F#, B, E ,A and D? C# standard tuning doesn’t make sense to me. Nor does E flat standard, or E standard, or B standard nor G standard nor D standard tuning. There is ONLY ONE STANDARD TUNING? Tuning to piano. Guitar notes match piano. Half step lower is NOT standard tuning to me. Half step lower on 6 sting you could call E flat tuning. Van Halen Jimi Hendricks Steve ray Vaughn etc are usually tuned half step low. But I have NO reason to call drop D tuning or C # tuning STANDARD. (into the void) tuning. I’ll never call standard tuning.. I tune my guitar through tuner (set on Standard) or to ‘piano’ is standard tuning to me. Simple. Whole step down D tuning wouldnt be Drop D tuning and neither one should be called STANDARD tuning.
Half step low tuning or E flat tuning Is NOT E flat STANDARD TUNING. Your tuned E flat not STANDARD. STANDARD should be simple understanding. Standard tuning where piano play C chord And you rip through C scale A min it matches. After warming up on MUSICAL finger exorcisms
@@DannyHood-j standard just means the intervals between the strings are the same as normal e standard tuning. So if you were to say e flat standard tuning it means that every note goes flat, but it’s still “standard” because the distance between the notes that the open strings play is the same. If you were to tune to e flat standard and put a capo on the first fret you’ll be back to regular standard tuning. It’s all the same
@@ole-helliklobben-seth143 Me too... I wanted to break out of the cliché licks I kept repeating, and make it easier to improvise. And cut down on all the pattern memorisation... No Caged or similar systems. I tuned to EADGCF, but didn't like the extra tension when bending the top two strings. So now I'm Eb Ab Db Gb B E.
Excellent explanation. Thank you for teaching a 77 year old muso who has never starved because of the guitar, and, as my wife says, my voice that has made it possible to always earn dinner for our family. I play rhythm guitar and because I always sang lead singer, I never studied playing lead patterns. I’m struggling a bit these days but I am enjoying trying to catch up. 🖖👀
This has got to be one of the best videos explaining music theory and illustrating the reasoning behind the fretboard I’ve seen in over 40 years. Thank you for explaining it so thoroughly!
I am curious why you like this video. Is it learning about the circle of fifths, the pentatonic scale, or how he put a color wheel on the notes. I can solo through utilizing scales and modes of those scales, or through justy adding passing notes between the chord tones. I fail to see how the color coding helps in either regard. When he imposed the CAGED chord system over the fretboard, I failed to see how it added anything but confusion. To each their own and if it works for you, then I can't knock it much. I just don't see how any of this is easier than just memorizing the notes on the fretboard. Beyond that learning the fretboard is all memorizing patterns for triads, inversions, and relative motion between chords. I just don't see how it helps there either. Anywho, I was just wondering if anyone has the time and patience to explain what I am missing. With 40 people agreeing that this is the bee's knees, I suspect I am missing something.
@@krisspkriss hi 👋🏼- you’re right, people learn differently, that is always ok. For some people memorizing helps them make sense of how something works. That’s perfectly fine. Others prefer to see how and why it works - what’s the story or rationale behind it (whichever way that resonates with them) for them to expand their knowledge of a particular subject. I like how he explained because of the analytical way I like to learn. By helping me visualize the science and the ergonomics, it opened my understanding not only for the guitar, but for other similar strings instruments. In short it made it more fun to learn - for me. Hope this answers your question. Take care!
I've been playing guitar for 20 years and have known music theory just as long. Because of your excellent video , I can now visualize a few new correlations and patterns that I didn't even know existed until now
Aside from an honestly clunky ~2 minutes at the beginning, this is a WONDERFUL presentation, perfectly edited and displayed. The previews of the +1000 pages of PDFs also look promising. Regards.
I'm a pianist, and I had always wondered about that odd kink in the guitar's perfect-4th tuning pattern. Thanks for explaining it! I tend to forget that practical considerations can be more important than idealized symmetry. 🙂
Perfect fourth tuning? I don’t even know what that is? I tune guitar to piano (standard tuning often.). The notes on guitar match notes on you piano. If you ripped through C scale from lowest to highest on piano I could only go 3 octaves. On 24 frets. If I played Stratocaster it be even less. It might be 3 octaves. Any player get more on 7 strings 24 fret. After adapting 7 strings. Whole month non stop. Don’t touch 6 string adapting 7 stings. If you play out clubs or parties for money. Dont get rid of it WAIT until you have weeks off play 7 string everyday. Now its no big deal i can switch
@@DannyHood-j this is bad advice. If you get a seven you can play it as well as any other instrument. If your goal is to only be able to play one specific instrument at a time I guess this would work but I think most people would rather be able to pick up any guitar and jam. Playing both instruments won’t magically make you forget things you’ve learned because the fret board is a little bit bigger on one. It will still take you time to get used to the 7 but playing your 6 will not make a lasting difference fast you acclimatize to the 7, but it can stunt your 6 playing. Especially if you’re new. Not playing your 6 string could just end up in you playing it sloppy because now your muscle memory for the last month straight has been trained to play bigger frets. Maybe this did work for you but most people won’t notice much of a difference moving to a 7. It’s just a little bit bigger. I really don’t get why you refused to touch your 6 for weeks. Also the straight piano tuning is really just going to stunt your playing. You can’t play most songs with chords because you don’t have the notes staggered. You can’t play most non chord based riffs because you would needlessly be jumping up and down the board in between each note. I’m sure you could write your own stuff in this tuning and it could definitely still sound good, it’s just very limited. There also the fact that your guitar will now have significantly less notes on it. So that means your music will now have a limited progression.
@dmoore0079 , another way to think of a perfect 4th interval is as 5 half-steps. So for example if you start at E, then moving 5 half-steps up from there hits the notes F, F#, G, G#, A. So A is a perfect 4th above E, and indeed the two lowest open strings of a guitar in standard tuning are E and A. It's easier to visualize intervals on a piano, where each key is a half-step above its neighbor to the left. So to find the 4th of E you can just play E and then play keys up from there, counting until you reach 5. All the intervals have unique half-step counts. The octave is 12, the perfect 5th is 7, the minor 3rd is 3, and so forth.
The Perfect Fourth is the confusing name for 5 semi-tones. A Perfect Fifth is 7 semi-tones. That's the 'distance' (interval) from the 1st to the 4th/5th notes of any major scale. 2-2-1 or 2-2-1-2.
Wow, that was a lot more informative than I thought it was going to be. Been playing for 30-ish years and never really thought about why standard tuning is what it is. Thanks for the video!
I just wanted to say that this is the best explanation covering standard tuning and the circle of fifths that I have come across. The visualisations make it so easy to understand. Thank you! 🙏🏼
I have beeb studying and learning Piano for a year - I have now moved to the Guitar - I have been perplexed by the layout of the neck and strings - I have searched everywhere for - WHY ! your video is perfect - thankyou - at last an explanation and extremely well explained
I love you, man. Never has this been explained in such a clear, concise and relatable way before (for me at least). You have yourself a new follower. I wish I would have seen this many moons ago. Thanks!
My first instrument was violin, so I couldn't understand why the tuning wasn't consistent, string to string. Then, I got to barre chords and knew functional why. This video helps understand the theory behind it. Brilliant!
@@robwagner7545 if you haven’t already, look into tenor guitars. Most are tuned similar to instruments in the violin family - octave down violin tuning (GDAE) or viola (CGDA). I understand the practical reasons behind standard E guitar tuning, but always struggled with it due to it throwing off the “grid” due to the B string major third interval. Playing a tenor guitar for the first time was a revelation. Everything makes so much more sense (to me, everyone is different obviously.)
Awesome video. I have been playing the guitar for over 40 years and you hit the nail on the head at 7:10 that the shift in the bottom two strings has always been bothering me. My guitar teacher simply said it’s so you can play bar chords, which didn’t satisfy me because that might explain one string, but not both. I finally understand - thank you!!!
@@michaelprozonic Thank you! I don´t know how people see a deeper connection here. If he wouldn´t talk all the time non-stop and repeat himself over and over, more people would realise that there is not much more to this video than a nice colored fretboard and the circle of fifth. Two minutes would be more than enough, I mean, TH-cam offers a rewind and pause option, why not use it at least for music theory? Blablabla, I play notes, I know their name. I watched it 2 times all the way through, and now Í´m angry and not even a bit smarter. May the Simpsons would have a different tuning, because less fingers? Thoughts like that would justify a long video.
Excellent explanation with terrific graphics. Nice work. I don't think more than 1 in a hundred guitar players understands the brilliance of standard guitar tuning. Now I'm one of those 1 in a hundred. Thanks.
First time here, and at the beginning I almost left thinking "this is just beginner stuff", but then I watched the rest and was treated to my best guitar lesson ever!
Juan Bermudo, circa 1550s, said the “guitarra” which was like the modern ukulele at the time, or strings 1-4 only of a modern guitar with a capo around 3rd fret or higher, was the same idea as the “vihuela” (basically a Spanish 6 string lute), with an added bass string and treble string. So vihuela=guitar with 2 added strings. These were thought of as idea for intabulating vocal music (motets that had 5 or 6 vocal parts typically). That gives a similar tuning to ours, EADF#BE (capoed at 3 or higher). Only the third string is different. He also said to glue the frets in position for the shitty singers of the time (frets were tied by string and could move to better intonate the instrument as desired), basically at what we call Equal temp today (!!!! 470 years before Cher used auto tune!!!😂). One of Bermudo’s buddies, Luis de Venegas realized a few years later, that the Vihuela tuned lower (take off the capo) was better for catching ALL the vocal motets he encountered (the range of human voices perfectly matched with a standard pitch modern guitar, in other words, with third string tuned down to F#). So they liked the body style of the guitar better, and it was WAY cheaper to make guitars than Vihuela, so over time they added strings BELOW (starting with 5th being A) and finally 6 in the 1800s (took for ever to reinvent the E pitch vihuela), but we keep the 3rd at G instead of F#. So the real answer as to why the guitar is tuned and pitched like it is, is because of the range of the HUMAN VOICE.
It also was impractical at the time to tune any HIGHER because they just couldn't make good enough strings to deal with more tension than the high E. This is still a little bit of a problem, although 12-string sets have an octave G which is higher, and Robert Fripp's New Standard Tuning switched from a G at the top to an A once suitable strings became available. (Now CGDAEA).
Exactly, and there is no devil involved. Do more research. Also, if one changes the G string to F#, one will get Renaissance tuning just like a lute. JMHO
I discovered something yesterday that blew my mind. If you take any scale except Locrian, you will place it in the key of E. The 1st string is E, which is the 1st part of the chord (1), the 5th string is B, which is the 3rd part of the chord (5) and the 6th string is E, which is the 1st part of the chord (1). The remaining 3 strings are left to play every chord from the scale from the beginning of the fretboard to the 12th fret (octave). Playing all 6 strings, each chord sounds very atmospheric for a given scale because the context of the key is preserved by the 1st, 5th and 6th strings. I recommend checking it out, fun for a few hours.
Once the scales are in the circle you refer to say, BD&E, are “related” but I don’t how those next to each other are related. Amazing teacher, you are!
I didn't know this was the best arrangement for ease of playing. It's more difficult now after ripping of my middle finger in a log splitter accident. but after learning how to make chords differently I'm doing better.Thank's for explaining.
Mike- after years of playing guitar, asking lots of questions (and not getting an answer) of why is the standard tuning of a guitar EADGBe, you finally have answered my question. Thank you!
Great explanation and visuals! I have been teaching myself how to playforr just a few months. this is first video I've seen on music theory that doesn't make me feel like they are speaking another language.
None of the theory here made any particular sense to me, but I do now understand why the first and second strings are tuned differently from the others. Ergonomics makes sense to me. It seems most people accept standard tuning as a given. I’ve never come across an explanation before, so I thank you for that. The rest was lost on me. Why does the chromatic scale begin with C instead of A? Color wheel? This is no doubt due to my near complete ignorance of music theory. I am pretty much a self-taught guitarist, which means I have had an ignoramus for a guitar teacher my whole adult life. I limp around on the fretboard writing songs for my own personal need to express myself. I’ll check out some more of your videos, and watch this one again, of course, to see if any of your ideas penetrates my thick skull. Thanks for this one! Will subscribe in another second or two.
The chromatic scale used to start with A a few centuries ago. Today it starts with C because there are no sharps or flats in the key of C making it easier to grasp.
These are brilliant observations! For me, being given the "big picture" , at least, quells the myriad of 'whys? ' & makes patterns and systems meaningful. Now, who came up with this back in history?
Finally, the question I've been meaning to find an answer to since I started. I had figured the shift was probably to do with ergonomics, but it's nice to know the theory behind it. Also, the pneumonic I've always used for tuning is the Jacksfilms classic; Ears Are Dope, Great Britain's Evil
3:50 -> I think you're wrong here. Saying the 4th and the 5th are the two closest armonic notes from a note is vague. In an armonic sense, the two more "armonic" notes would be the first armonics following the natural subharmonics scale, which would be the 5th and then the 3rd, not the 5th and the 4th. If you disagree, please explain. I can agree that the 4th and the 5th CHORDS are the most important chrods, but chords and notes are different things. I'd love to read your response.
Also I think you should develop more your points since most of the are very vague. Like saying "The connection between this pitches are exactly the same as the colors in the color wheel"... I mean, that's a pointless statement since you coul make any circle with any amount of random notes and asign them the colors in order and all of that would still be true. Do you see the problem? You are not saying anything with a lot of those points. I mean, you could just say "I will assign colors to the notes in this cirlce in order so later you can see better correlation" that would be more correct by just simplifying.
I like to think that the small shift to E and B is to restart the circle without passing to all 12 notes, so serves to add repetition. Thinking in 7 string guitar, it also has the lower B, so both are repetition. You need repetition to play chords on all strings. Specially because the guitar has more strings than we have fingers. Also, when we play a harmony that goes on the fifth circles, we usually dont go all way in the circle, there is always a shortcut.
I really appreciate standard tuning, and the more ways I can learn to look at it, the more I appreciate it. However, you lost me when you were talking about the colors. But I will rewatch it again and hopefully catch your point. Yes, truly, music is geometry. A very interesting geometry indeed. I appreciate the elegance of standard tuning. The maximum of circle of fourths, tempered with the least amount of adjustment for diatonic forms, but with the most effect. I invented, or discovered, or rediscovered, an alternate tuning for playing Irish Traditional Music. Most Irish music is in modes of Dmaj pentatonic, so I tune the G down to an F#. I can also drop the low E to a low D. Although I keep it E for E dorian tunes sometimes. Dmaj69 chord. In standard tuning, if you simply tune the G down to an F# you actually transpose that kink a fourth down, which works well with Irish music, and probably an interesting tuning for all guitarists to check out. It is fun playing tunes in what I call "E dorian pentatonic." That is the dorian mode of the D maj pentatonic starting on the E....
Over many years, I tried to understand the fretboard. You made it much more understandable. I played for quite a while and tried unsuccessfully to play guitar. This will really help.
A) get a cheap keyboard in a toy store ( 10 bucks max, it needs to be in tune thought) it's easier to understand the theory on a piano keyboard, it lays there in a linear fashion UNLIKE guitar. B) think of the guitar nut as a sixth finger...meaning EADGBE is a E chord (a weird one but a chord) hence the barre chords... C) music theory is simple mathematics, really , 12 items and a set of discriminating rules : if Jack and Peter are in the same room they will fight, so you can never invite those two in the same group (scale). You have to choose. Peter or Jack. 3) building chords: when you done set the group (a.k.a scale) with ONE simple discriminating rule you can build little harmonious groups : Jack, Frank , Maurice and Janet can go along , then Paul, Robert and Janet they are ok but if Frank is here Robert has to go, unless you want to "ruin" the party kind of...Peter can't get along with any of that group, plus him and Jack will for sure fight. don't give up, there's no bad students only bad teacher
Basses are actually tuned in perfect 4ths all the way through, a 4 string is usually EADG, a 5 string is BEADG (still following the pattern of perfect 4ths), and a 6 string is BEADGC so it's all tuned in perfect 4ths which is interesting that it's not tuned like a standard guitar would be
The tuning is staggered on the B string most likely becuase the D, G and B open is a triad G chord. So then long ago a three string instrument as a predecessor to the guitar , a strummed open or bar up the neck ( barre only if you are French ) would always be a major chord . The lower E and A strings would have been added to play bass notes , and like the G is a fourth up from the D , so would the D be a fourth from the added bass string A , and so on the A a fourth up from the low E. The high E was also added a fourth up from B string to be consistent for an instrument tuned in 4ths . Therefore the modern guitar is tuned in 4ths from string to string with the exception of the G and B string which is only this way for the open string tiad G , allowing bar chords up the neck on the original three string instrument. The design of fourths is similar to fifths on a violin , each string being a fifth higher , yet the violin has no open three string triad as the guitar which in turn leads the modern guitar to be tuned in 4ths , but with the b string offset by a half interval.
Barred minor chords make more sense, as it's a lot easier to put one finger in front of a bar than behind it. So I think it's the GBE triad that is primary, not DGB although that is extremely useful when it's time to show off with harmonics.
Some str. instr are in what is wrongly assigned as "perfect fourths" , others (violin, cello, etc.) are in "perfect fifths". Now p4 and p5 are INVERSIONS to each other, so "fourths" are suited to harmony, whilst "fifths" are suited for melody (but not exclusively).
Well said! I love having open string perfect fifths as a cellist because it sounds really rich and harmonious to play across multiple strings. Not as easy to fret chords on a cello, however! Definitely different muscle memory from guitar playing.
Robert Fripp's New Standard Tuning is entirely in fifths except for the highest string which he'd LIKE to be a high B but there aren't any strings up to the task so he compromises it to another A. CGDAEA.
Thanks for the video. Also picked up the PDFs; I've been wanting something that'll show me what chords go together, I'm really musically dumb and the PDFs look really nice.
@Mike George>>> Your animation is brilliant, I need to watch this video again and again until I get it drilled into my thick skull. Fantastic teaching there Mr. Mike you have a new subscriber... Cheers from Canada
I have watched a few videos on this now and holy crapola.. Something about the way you linked the concepts together, with the shapes and colours was just *penny drop*. Finally feel like I "get" it now and it's not just some abstract concept 🎉
E and B are the sounds of the thickest strings in a seven-string guitar, and there the 4ths based patern interval is also preserved. So the two thinnest strings can be considered as a repetition of a seven-string guitar's two thickest strings in the higher octaves. String duplication is a popular procedure to enrich the sound. And why did they add two thinner ones in the six-string guitar instead of going with the tuning lower? Most likely, it seemed impossible for them to achieve this on a classical instrument, or simply higher tones seemed more useful. It makes no sense to me, of course, but let's remember that back then they didn't know what an overdrive was, lol.
The secrets this video asserts are distractions and opinions that may be superficially interesting, but may mislead beginners about the standard tuning. The two best points are that the strings all play overlapping chromatic scales and that the shapes of chords and scales are repeated across the fretboard, but both of those things are true in any tuning, just with different shapes and placements of specific notes. I was hoping for some beginner-friendly presentation of history of or logic behind the decision to compromise on ergonomics, voicing, range, and keys with this tuning -- perhaps comparing it to other standard tunings, e.g. 5ths for violins, 3rds for Russian classical guitar. Instead, it asserts the significance of the geometry, but it's not siginficant because it's a direct consequence of how notes are defined (equal temperament and octave equivalence), so the geometry is at best a way to visually explore those definitions rather than a way to find new properties, e.g. showing that a scale shape remains symmetrical through rotation just shows that music can be transposed, which is probably better shown on the guitar with a capo. I also don't love his use of color as a metaphor. I think it's because his method using colored shapes to teach where the notes are on the fretboard, but calling the circle of fifths a color wheel conflicts with the more typical use of color to explain differences of quality, e.g. how Collier refers to modulation and extensions having brighter colors when moving clockwise and dark counterclockwise on the CoF. But as he uses it, he's saying that G has a similar color to D but very different from G#, but relative to what? Most listeners can't differentiate an isolated G vs G#, so as absolute pitch in any given octave, they have the closest possible "color". And as for shifting colors around the wheel, they all have the same stacked-fifth harmonic color, so again, in isolation, most listeners wouldn't hear a difference between playing C G D and C# G# D#, thus their colors aren't very different. But as I said, I think it has to do with his fretboard system, so maybe it will help his students learn the notes, then by the time they start learning about harmonic color, they won't be using his metaphor anymore and it won't confuse them.
I follow many good guitar authors.. Paul Davis.. Jack Lizzo...Richy Beato .. etc etc but this is the first time I have heard such a fact about the meccanic of the guitar👍👍👍👍thank you so much
Ohhhhhh Voooooowww..!!! This is the first time I came to know about the Construction and Anatomy of the Guitar Fretboard..!!! Thank you soooooo much for the very useful information. Lord Swaminarayan bless you and your family and your Team.
i have another insight, consider the most common situation, could be playing with a piano, so, the piano is organised around the major key of C, no sharps or flats, With the standard guitar tuning, every diatonic chord in the key of C can be played open! for example, cmajor 7th, D minor 7th, Em 7th, Fmajor 7th, G dom 7th, Am 7th, & Bm7 b 5 !
Nice. I also think it's worth noting the the top three strings are tuned to an Em chord while strings 2-4 are tuned to G. Since the guitar evolved as an accompaniment instrument, those easily accessible chords make a big difference (as you noted at the end).
Funny to say but I always thought it was to enable a C chord from the natural placement of the hands & fingers. The trouble with that idea is it makes the G & F more difficult.... ! When I started everything was in E. I think the attraction was, and still is, the open strings ringing. The more of those the better I thought - but why is a full 6 string B7 so rich and maybe my favourite chord. G is good too. The A inversion where you can drop the F shape to several open strings also works well. I also like the D7/9 (C7 shape moved up 2 frets) but it doesn't work for every toon. There you are - that's 75% of all I know after 65yrs of trying. So your explanation is brilliant - but as I always say - it's the practical side that produces the goods. Let's hear wotcha got man!
Each Added Dollar Gets Betty Earings...persoanally I do well viewing things from a kids perspective when learning. It keeps things fun and fresh! But I always appreciate other perspectives! Thanks for the video!
Great video!! I essentially taught myself the guitar almost 40 years ago after taking about 5-6 1 hr lessons from a guy that taught me the basic pentatonic scale. I can’t read music with any sort of speed whatsoever. I just learned the patterns and practiced over and over and over. Thank you so much for explaining the science behind it!
You obviously went to a lot of work making this video, which is excellent. The only reason I am hesitating about buying your written material with color illustrations is that I don't have a color printer. I know i can view the pdfs in color on my computer, but I prefer hard copy because when I'm playing my guitar I'm not sitting in front of a computer. I suppose I could have the pdf printed at a copy shop, but that wouldn't be cheap - you say there are 1200 pages!.
The guitar is tuned in fourth, because if it whould be tuned in a bigger interval, you whouldn't be able to play a melody within the same hand position. There are alternative patters though, for example the standard lute tuning has the shift between the 3rd and 4th string. That divides the lute into three bass strings and three treble strings, what could be considered an advantage due to more symmetry. Still major and minor chords are easy to play.
Within the harmonic relationship of the circle of fifths is an interesting fact, Starting with the note C, it's harmonic series of overtones are from fundamental to C-C-G-C-E-G-Bb the first 6 partials in the series make up the C major chord, the 7th partial creates a dominant 7th chord.(CEGBb) and this generally leads one to the next note in the circle of fifths.... F major. The note F has a directly proportional harmonic series with the 7th partial creating a F dominant 7th chord, leading to Bb major and so on around the circle.
Eat All Day Get Big Easy.. courtesy of D. Marks, literally, words to live by from a great guitar teacher. And thx for showing this note pattern easy to visualize, maybe this will help when I move a key sharp or flat on the board
The guitar is tuned that way so bar chords are louder. Not because of some pefect symmetry of color or shape. Also you can still play chords in pefect fourths they just a-rent as large and dont led themselves as well to strumming. Tune your guitar however you want if it means your have more fun
For decades I have wondered why the top two strings are not F & C. Thank you so much for this precise and clear explanation.
Apparently "Legato King" Tom Quayle tunes his guitar in straight 4th's like that, but I see him more as a single line player rather than a chord monster. Either way, he's about as fluid as can be like Alan Holdsworth was.
All 4th tunings can be cool for some stuff. Like model music since the scales/modes and triads have same shapes/patterns across the strings.
In this context, it’s really interesting to watch the old video by the late Emmett Chapman, inventor of the Chapman Stick, which is tuned in even intervals across the range, but adds the additional quirk of putting the largest gauges of string in the center of the neck. He loved the uniform intervals that allowed for a slightly wider reach for new chord voicings. I love the idea of it, but practically speaking, when I’ve had the chance to try one out, I find that the “bass” strings are fingered with the left hand, but the strings are flipped from thing to thicker. And the five “guitar” strings are tuned in equal intervals (instead of the asymmetrical B string) and played with the wrong hand.
Some older string instruments tuned to 4ths. Imagine the dude that figured out how to make barre chords easier along the way. Probably had some others all like, "nah man, these kids with their drop tuning, they don't even know how to really play." Just like, well, some guitarists do today XD
@@thegreatgambeeno , when the second person hit a rock with a stick, the first person told them they were doing it wrong.
I’ve played guitar for 67years (self taught). This is the first explanation I’ve seen that is articulated masterfully. Thank you!!
Eddie Ate Dynamite Good Bye Eddie.💥🎸🎶
🤣😂
I use all 4ths tuning, and have used that as my regular tuning for about two years now. I think some people think of it as kind of limited or kinda like a "gimmik", like Tom Quayle for legato stuff. But I have found that especially as a jazz musician that you break out of that approach after a while, and really find that you can do almost the same stuff as with regular tuning. Its has really just everything to do with your creativity rather than tuning. I have just found that all 4ths makes learning and playing from ear more intuitive. Also you lose almost all of standard repertoire for the guitar, but that's something I wanted on purpose, breaking away from that standard "guitar sound" that can be hard to get away from. Since I´ve realized that I can't play the normal stuff anyways, I now tune in this tuning:
C# - F# - B - E - A - D
Something that was inspired by a jazz guitarist called Karl Bjorå. He tunes in C# standard.
I have just found that this lower tuning resonates better with both me and the guitar.
Hope that this helps the small audience who have thought about making these changes
Are you sure tuning C# F#, B, E ,A and D? C# standard tuning doesn’t make sense to me. Nor does E flat standard, or E standard, or B standard nor G standard nor D standard tuning. There is ONLY ONE STANDARD TUNING? Tuning to piano. Guitar notes match piano. Half step lower is NOT standard tuning to me. Half step lower on 6 sting you could call E flat tuning. Van Halen Jimi Hendricks Steve ray Vaughn etc are usually tuned half step low. But I have NO reason to call drop D tuning or C # tuning STANDARD. (into the void) tuning. I’ll never call standard tuning.. I tune my guitar through tuner (set on Standard) or to ‘piano’ is standard tuning to me. Simple. Whole step down D tuning wouldnt be Drop D tuning and neither one should be called STANDARD tuning.
Half step low tuning or E flat tuning Is NOT E flat STANDARD TUNING. Your tuned E flat not STANDARD. STANDARD should be simple understanding. Standard tuning where piano play C chord And you rip through C scale A min it matches. After warming up on MUSICAL finger exorcisms
@@DannyHood-j standard just means the intervals between the strings are the same as normal e standard tuning. So if you were to say e flat standard tuning it means that every note goes flat, but it’s still “standard” because the distance between the notes that the open strings play is the same. If you were to tune to e flat standard and put a capo on the first fret you’ll be back to regular standard tuning. It’s all the same
@@forderfdidnt knew about that. Thanks
@@ole-helliklobben-seth143 Me too... I wanted to break out of the cliché licks I kept repeating, and make it easier to improvise. And cut down on all the pattern memorisation... No Caged or similar systems. I tuned to EADGCF, but didn't like the extra tension when bending the top two strings. So now I'm Eb Ab Db Gb B E.
Excellent explanation. Thank you for teaching a 77 year old muso who has never starved because of the guitar, and, as my wife says, my voice that has made it possible to always earn dinner for our family. I play rhythm guitar and because I always sang lead singer, I never studied playing lead patterns. I’m struggling a bit these days but I am enjoying trying to catch up. 🖖👀
Every Alcoholic Drinks Gin Before Eating
Ein Anfänger Der Gitarre Hat Eier
Eh, don't care for that one.
@@minhuang8848 no, that's not quite right.
@@minhuang8848 funny, when I translate to english, the letters don't work.
We getz mein freund😊
@@gothaelworks in Deutche
Elephants And Donkeys Grow Big Ears ! Excellent explanation of the fret board Mike. Thank you for your effort. Keep up the great work. Dave
This has got to be one of the best videos explaining music theory and illustrating the reasoning behind the fretboard I’ve seen in over 40 years. Thank you for explaining it so thoroughly!
@@InfoInContext absolutely agree.
I am curious why you like this video. Is it learning about the circle of fifths, the pentatonic scale, or how he put a color wheel on the notes. I can solo through utilizing scales and modes of those scales, or through justy adding passing notes between the chord tones. I fail to see how the color coding helps in either regard. When he imposed the CAGED chord system over the fretboard, I failed to see how it added anything but confusion.
To each their own and if it works for you, then I can't knock it much. I just don't see how any of this is easier than just memorizing the notes on the fretboard. Beyond that learning the fretboard is all memorizing patterns for triads, inversions, and relative motion between chords. I just don't see how it helps there either.
Anywho, I was just wondering if anyone has the time and patience to explain what I am missing. With 40 people agreeing that this is the bee's knees, I suspect I am missing something.
@@krisspkriss hi 👋🏼- you’re right, people learn differently, that is always ok. For some people memorizing helps them make sense of how something works. That’s perfectly fine. Others prefer to see how and why it works - what’s the story or rationale behind it (whichever way that resonates with them) for them to expand their knowledge of a particular subject. I like how he explained because of the analytical way I like to learn. By helping me visualize the science and the ergonomics, it opened my understanding not only for the guitar, but for other similar strings instruments. In short it made it more fun to learn - for me. Hope this answers your question. Take care!
@@InfoInContext Thank you!
I've been playing guitar for 20 years and have known music theory just as long. Because of your excellent video , I can now visualize a few new correlations and patterns that I didn't even know existed until now
video,* now.* Indeed.
Aside from an honestly clunky ~2 minutes at the beginning, this is a WONDERFUL presentation, perfectly edited and displayed. The previews of the +1000 pages of PDFs also look promising. Regards.
I'm a pianist, and I had always wondered about that odd kink in the guitar's perfect-4th tuning pattern. Thanks for explaining it! I tend to forget that practical considerations can be more important than idealized symmetry. 🙂
Perfect fourth tuning? I don’t even know what that is? I tune guitar to piano (standard tuning often.). The notes on guitar match notes on you piano. If you ripped through C scale from lowest to highest on piano I could only go 3 octaves. On 24 frets. If I played Stratocaster it be even less. It might be 3 octaves. Any player get more on 7 strings 24 fret. After adapting 7 strings. Whole month non stop. Don’t touch 6 string adapting 7 stings. If you play out clubs or parties for money. Dont get rid of it WAIT until you have weeks off play 7 string everyday. Now its no big deal i can switch
@@DannyHood-j this is bad advice. If you get a seven you can play it as well as any other instrument. If your goal is to only be able to play one specific instrument at a time I guess this would work but I think most people would rather be able to pick up any guitar and jam. Playing both instruments won’t magically make you forget things you’ve learned because the fret board is a little bit bigger on one. It will still take you time to get used to the 7 but playing your 6 will not make a lasting difference fast you acclimatize to the 7, but it can stunt your 6 playing. Especially if you’re new. Not playing your 6 string could just end up in you playing it sloppy because now your muscle memory for the last month straight has been trained to play bigger frets. Maybe this did work for you but most people won’t notice much of a difference moving to a 7. It’s just a little bit bigger.
I really don’t get why you refused to touch your 6 for weeks. Also the straight piano tuning is really just going to stunt your playing. You can’t play most songs with chords because you don’t have the notes staggered. You can’t play most non chord based riffs because you would needlessly be jumping up and down the board in between each note. I’m sure you could write your own stuff in this tuning and it could definitely still sound good, it’s just very limited. There also the fact that your guitar will now have significantly less notes on it. So that means your music will now have a limited progression.
@DannyHood-j Perfect 4ths refers to the interval between the open strings. The B string breaks the pattern.
@dmoore0079 , another way to think of a perfect 4th interval is as 5 half-steps. So for example if you start at E, then moving 5 half-steps up from there hits the notes F, F#, G, G#, A. So A is a perfect 4th above E, and indeed the two lowest open strings of a guitar in standard tuning are E and A. It's easier to visualize intervals on a piano, where each key is a half-step above its neighbor to the left. So to find the 4th of E you can just play E and then play keys up from there, counting until you reach 5.
All the intervals have unique half-step counts. The octave is 12, the perfect 5th is 7, the minor 3rd is 3, and so forth.
The Perfect Fourth is the confusing name for 5 semi-tones. A Perfect Fifth is 7 semi-tones. That's the 'distance' (interval) from the 1st to the 4th/5th notes of any major scale. 2-2-1 or 2-2-1-2.
Wow, that was a lot more informative than I thought it was going to be. Been playing for 30-ish years and never really thought about why standard tuning is what it is. Thanks for the video!
I just wanted to say that this is the best explanation covering standard tuning and the circle of fifths that I have come across. The visualisations make it so easy to understand. Thank you! 🙏🏼
I have beeb studying and learning Piano for a year - I have now moved to the Guitar - I have been perplexed by the layout of the neck and strings - I have searched everywhere for - WHY ! your video is perfect - thankyou - at last an explanation and extremely well explained
Fun lesson.
Pneumonic ("noo-mon-ik") = related to the lungs
Mnemonic ("ne-mon-ik") = a memory aid using a pattern of letters, ideas, or associations
@@AaronSegalMD lol
@@AaronSegalMD i think autocorrect did you dirty
@@AaronSegalMD not "new-mon-ik"?
@@jakefriesenjake new-mon-ik would still be the lung word... Pneumonic
In the first example, Johnny gets sick and dies.
I love you, man. Never has this been explained in such a clear, concise and relatable way before (for me at least). You have yourself a new follower. I wish I would have seen this many moons ago. Thanks!
My first instrument was violin, so I couldn't understand why the tuning wasn't consistent, string to string. Then, I got to barre chords and knew functional why. This video helps understand the theory behind it. Brilliant!
@@robwagner7545 if you haven’t already, look into tenor guitars. Most are tuned similar to instruments in the violin family - octave down violin tuning (GDAE) or viola (CGDA). I understand the practical reasons behind standard E guitar tuning, but always struggled with it due to it throwing off the “grid” due to the B string major third interval. Playing a tenor guitar for the first time was a revelation. Everything makes so much more sense (to me, everyone is different obviously.)
Awesome video. I have been playing the guitar for over 40 years and you hit the nail on the head at 7:10 that the shift in the bottom two strings has always been bothering me. My guitar teacher simply said it’s so you can play bar chords, which didn’t satisfy me because that might explain one string, but not both. I finally understand - thank you!!!
Great graphics while you explain👍🏻
My remembering the string names:
E very
A sshole
D eserves (to)
G et
B eat (up)
E ventually
Idk, it worked for me 😆
😂
@@Scottocaster6668 metal ash 🤘🏻
Connection between circle of fifths , pentatonic scale and color wheel….Mind Blown!! Thanks
but totally meaningless. it has nothing to do with why the strings are tuned the way they are.
@@michaelprozonic Thank you! I don´t know how people see a deeper connection here. If he wouldn´t talk all the time non-stop and repeat himself over and over, more people would realise that there is not much more to this video than a nice colored fretboard and the circle of fifth. Two minutes would be more than enough, I mean, TH-cam offers a rewind and pause option, why not use it at least for music theory? Blablabla, I play notes, I know their name.
I watched it 2 times all the way through, and now Í´m angry and not even a bit smarter.
May the Simpsons would have a different tuning, because less fingers?
Thoughts like that would justify a long video.
1:03 goodbye eddie! 👋👋
@@potors That's the one I learned, and drugs, too. Hehe
Excellent explanation with terrific graphics. Nice work. I don't think more than 1 in a hundred guitar players understands the brilliance of standard guitar tuning. Now I'm one of those 1 in a hundred. Thanks.
First time here, and at the beginning I almost left thinking "this is just beginner stuff", but then I watched the rest and was treated to my best guitar lesson ever!
Excellent video. Your graphics kill it. Well done!
Not only did you explain the standard guitar tuning but also helped me understand music theory better 😭
Omg! This deserves more reach!
Seen so many video none of them made it this easy to understand everything!
That's what you call quality content. Literally marvelous.
Juan Bermudo, circa 1550s, said the “guitarra” which was like the modern ukulele at the time, or strings 1-4 only of a modern guitar with a capo around 3rd fret or higher, was the same idea as the “vihuela” (basically a Spanish 6 string lute), with an added bass string and treble string. So vihuela=guitar with 2 added strings. These were thought of as idea for intabulating vocal music (motets that had 5 or 6 vocal parts typically). That gives a similar tuning to ours, EADF#BE (capoed at 3 or higher). Only the third string is different. He also said to glue the frets in position for the shitty singers of the time (frets were tied by string and could move to better intonate the instrument as desired), basically at what we call Equal temp today (!!!! 470 years before Cher used auto tune!!!😂). One of Bermudo’s buddies, Luis de Venegas realized a few years later, that the Vihuela tuned lower (take off the capo) was better for catching ALL the vocal motets he encountered (the range of human voices perfectly matched with a standard pitch modern guitar, in other words, with third string tuned down to F#). So they liked the body style of the guitar better, and it was WAY cheaper to make guitars than Vihuela, so over time they added strings BELOW (starting with 5th being A) and finally 6 in the 1800s (took for ever to reinvent the E pitch vihuela), but we keep the 3rd at G instead of F#.
So the real answer as to why the guitar is tuned and pitched like it is, is because of the range of the HUMAN VOICE.
I suggest that you make a video of this explanation. It is good! Thank you for your insight.
Don't forget hands
It also was impractical at the time to tune any HIGHER because they just couldn't make good enough strings to deal with more tension than the high E. This is still a little bit of a problem, although 12-string sets have an octave G which is higher, and Robert Fripp's New Standard Tuning switched from a G at the top to an A once suitable strings became available. (Now CGDAEA).
Exactly, and there is no devil involved. Do more research. Also, if one changes the G string to F#, one will get Renaissance tuning just like a lute. JMHO
Playing for 54 years. Never seen the reasons for eadgbe so clearly explained.
That is the best explanation i have seen on how the guitar is arranged, circle of fifths and all that. Thanks Mike!
I discovered something yesterday that blew my mind. If you take any scale except Locrian, you will place it in the key of E. The 1st string is E, which is the 1st part of the chord (1), the 5th string is B, which is the 3rd part of the chord (5) and the 6th string is E, which is the 1st part of the chord (1). The remaining 3 strings are left to play every chord from the scale from the beginning of the fretboard to the 12th fret (octave). Playing all 6 strings, each chord sounds very atmospheric for a given scale because the context of the key is preserved by the 1st, 5th and 6th strings. I recommend checking it out, fun for a few hours.
Once the scales are in the circle you refer to say, BD&E, are “related” but I don’t how those next to each other are related. Amazing teacher, you are!
@@GilbertGryfud-mu3zi Yeah, I’d also like to know what you meant by related … this is the bit I’m stuck on
Ive been playing EADGCF since the 1970s. Dan Armstrong suggeated it to me when we used to jam at his home in London. It has a few advantages.
Hey thank you very much you gave me a better insight of why the guitar is really built as it is. Hope this comment boosts you in the algorithm.
Thanks! This explains so much of how it all is tied together. Great video. At my age however, I’ll have to rewatch it several times.
One of the best explanations out there!! Thank you so much for doing this! I learned something today!
Elvis ate drugs goodbye elvis
I didn't know this was the best arrangement for ease of playing. It's more difficult now after ripping of my middle finger in a log splitter accident. but after learning how to make chords differently I'm doing better.Thank's for explaining.
Mike- after years of playing guitar, asking lots of questions (and not getting an answer) of why is the standard tuning of a guitar EADGBe, you finally have answered my question. Thank you!
Great explanation, meanwhile I've been playing in various open tunings and DADGAD so long I forget sometimes standard exist.
Great explanation and visuals! I have been teaching myself how to playforr just a few months. this is first video I've seen on music theory that doesn't make me feel like they are speaking another language.
None of the theory here made any particular sense to me, but I do now understand why the first and second strings are tuned differently from the others. Ergonomics makes sense to me. It seems most people accept standard tuning as a given. I’ve never come across an explanation before, so I thank you for that. The rest was lost on me. Why does the chromatic scale begin with C instead of A? Color wheel? This is no doubt due to my near complete ignorance of music theory. I am pretty much a self-taught guitarist, which means I have had an ignoramus for a guitar teacher my whole adult life. I limp around on the fretboard writing songs for my own personal need to express myself. I’ll check out some more of your videos, and watch this one again, of course, to see if any of your ideas penetrates my thick skull. Thanks for this one! Will subscribe in another second or two.
The chromatic scale used to start with A a few centuries ago. Today it starts with C because there are no sharps or flats in the key of C making it easier to grasp.
@ Well, that makes sense to me. Thanks for the comment!
Thank you sooo much for your kind effort and help!
Mike; this is BRILLIANT! Thank you
I have always asked this question and no-one has been able to give me an answer I could accept
Thank you! I learned more from this video than I did from years of instruction.
This is a brilliant explanation. Thank you.
Great lesson mate… I was hanging on your every word. Well done
These are brilliant observations! For me, being given the "big picture" , at least, quells the myriad of 'whys? ' & makes patterns and systems meaningful. Now, who came up with this back in history?
Finally, the question I've been meaning to find an answer to since I started. I had figured the shift was probably to do with ergonomics, but it's nice to know the theory behind it.
Also, the pneumonic I've always used for tuning is the Jacksfilms classic; Ears Are Dope, Great Britain's Evil
Very nice explanation of the "imperfect" fretboard - very informative!
Thanks never had it explained in such a practical way 😊
3:50 -> I think you're wrong here. Saying the 4th and the 5th are the two closest armonic notes from a note is vague. In an armonic sense, the two more "armonic" notes would be the first armonics following the natural subharmonics scale, which would be the 5th and then the 3rd, not the 5th and the 4th.
If you disagree, please explain.
I can agree that the 4th and the 5th CHORDS are the most important chrods, but chords and notes are different things.
I'd love to read your response.
Also I think you should develop more your points since most of the are very vague. Like saying "The connection between this pitches are exactly the same as the colors in the color wheel"... I mean, that's a pointless statement since you coul make any circle with any amount of random notes and asign them the colors in order and all of that would still be true. Do you see the problem? You are not saying anything with a lot of those points. I mean, you could just say "I will assign colors to the notes in this cirlce in order so later you can see better correlation" that would be more correct by just simplifying.
Really good stuff. I love the animated visuals to highlight the relations. Surprisingly simple and clear to the point. Thumbs up
I like to think that the small shift to E and B is to restart the circle without passing to all 12 notes, so serves to add repetition.
Thinking in 7 string guitar, it also has the lower B, so both are repetition.
You need repetition to play chords on all strings. Specially because the guitar has more strings than we have fingers.
Also, when we play a harmony that goes on the fifth circles, we usually dont go all way in the circle, there is always a shortcut.
I really appreciate standard tuning, and the more ways I can learn to look at it, the more I appreciate it. However, you lost me when you were talking about the colors. But I will rewatch it again and hopefully catch your point.
Yes, truly, music is geometry. A very interesting geometry indeed.
I appreciate the elegance of standard tuning. The maximum of circle of fourths, tempered with the least amount of adjustment for diatonic forms, but with the most effect.
I invented, or discovered, or rediscovered, an alternate tuning for playing Irish Traditional Music. Most Irish music is in modes of Dmaj pentatonic, so I tune the G down to an F#. I can also drop the low E to a low D. Although I keep it E for E dorian tunes sometimes. Dmaj69 chord.
In standard tuning, if you simply tune the G down to an F# you actually transpose that kink a fourth down, which works well with Irish music, and probably an interesting tuning for all guitarists to check out. It is fun playing tunes in what I call "E dorian pentatonic." That is the dorian mode of the D maj pentatonic starting on the E....
Mine is now "Eat All Day Get Bowel Explosion". At least for now. Great explanation, it makes imperfect sense.
great stuff, always interesting and well produced
Over many years, I tried to understand the fretboard. You made it much more understandable. I played for quite a while and tried unsuccessfully to play guitar. This will really help.
A) get a cheap keyboard in a toy store ( 10 bucks max, it needs to be in tune thought) it's easier to understand the theory on a piano keyboard, it lays there in a linear fashion UNLIKE guitar.
B) think of the guitar nut as a sixth finger...meaning EADGBE is a E chord (a weird one but a chord) hence the barre chords...
C) music theory is simple mathematics, really , 12 items and a set of discriminating rules : if Jack and Peter are in the same room they will fight, so you can never invite those two in the same group (scale). You have to choose. Peter or Jack.
3) building chords: when you done set the group (a.k.a scale) with ONE simple discriminating rule you can build little harmonious groups : Jack, Frank , Maurice and Janet can go along , then Paul, Robert and Janet they are ok but if Frank is here Robert has to go, unless you want to "ruin" the party kind of...Peter can't get along with any of that group, plus him and Jack will for sure fight.
don't give up, there's no bad students only bad teacher
Wow... Now it all makes sense... This is brilliant! 🎉
Basses are actually tuned in perfect 4ths all the way through, a 4 string is usually EADG, a 5 string is BEADG (still following the pattern of perfect 4ths), and a 6 string is BEADGC so it's all tuned in perfect 4ths which is interesting that it's not tuned like a standard guitar would be
Very informative, and your graphics really supported your explanation. ❤
Holy moly. This is a fantastic video. Thank you!
Wow, this is cool. 51 and just learning guitar. Very helpful to understand the Why.
The tuning is staggered on the B string most likely becuase the D, G and B open is a triad G chord. So then long ago a three string instrument as a predecessor to the guitar , a strummed open or bar up the neck ( barre only if you are French ) would always be a major chord .
The lower E and A strings would have been added to play bass notes , and like the G is a fourth up from the D , so would the D be a fourth from the added bass string A , and so on the A a fourth up from the low E. The high E was also added a fourth up from B string to be consistent for an instrument tuned in 4ths .
Therefore the modern guitar is tuned in 4ths from string to string with the exception of the G and B string which is only this way for the open string tiad G , allowing bar chords up the neck on the original three string instrument. The design of fourths is similar to fifths on a violin , each string being a fifth higher , yet the violin has no open three string triad as the guitar which in turn leads the modern guitar to be tuned in 4ths , but with the b string offset by a half interval.
Barred minor chords make more sense, as it's a lot easier to put one finger in front of a bar than behind it. So I think it's the GBE triad that is primary, not DGB although that is extremely useful when it's time to show off with harmonics.
Some str. instr are in what is wrongly assigned as "perfect fourths" , others (violin, cello, etc.) are in "perfect fifths". Now p4 and p5 are INVERSIONS to each other, so "fourths" are suited to harmony, whilst "fifths" are suited for melody (but not exclusively).
Well said! I love having open string perfect fifths as a cellist because it sounds really rich and harmonious to play across multiple strings. Not as easy to fret chords on a cello, however! Definitely different muscle memory from guitar playing.
Robert Fripp's New Standard Tuning is entirely in fifths except for the highest string which he'd LIKE to be a high B but there aren't any strings up to the task so he compromises it to another A. CGDAEA.
Thanks for the video. Also picked up the PDFs; I've been wanting something that'll show me what chords go together, I'm really musically dumb and the PDFs look really nice.
@Mike George>>> Your animation is brilliant,
I need to watch this video again and again
until I get it drilled into my thick skull.
Fantastic teaching there Mr. Mike you have a
new subscriber...
Cheers from Canada
I have watched a few videos on this now and holy crapola.. Something about the way you linked the concepts together, with the shapes and colours was just *penny drop*. Finally feel like I "get" it now and it's not just some abstract concept 🎉
E and B are the sounds of the thickest strings in a seven-string guitar, and there the 4ths based patern interval is also preserved. So the two thinnest strings can be considered as a repetition of a seven-string guitar's two thickest strings in the higher octaves. String duplication is a popular procedure to enrich the sound. And why did they add two thinner ones in the six-string guitar instead of going with the tuning lower? Most likely, it seemed impossible for them to achieve this on a classical instrument, or simply higher tones seemed more useful. It makes no sense to me, of course, but let's remember that back then they didn't know what an overdrive was, lol.
Brilliantly insightful, and if anything, makes the guitar even more fascinating than it already is. Thank you!
great stuff. its been decades since i learned this but never seen it so well done other than mel bay did it.
The secrets this video asserts are distractions and opinions that may be superficially interesting, but may mislead beginners about the standard tuning.
The two best points are that the strings all play overlapping chromatic scales and that the shapes of chords and scales are repeated across the fretboard, but both of those things are true in any tuning, just with different shapes and placements of specific notes.
I was hoping for some beginner-friendly presentation of history of or logic behind the decision to compromise on ergonomics, voicing, range, and keys with this tuning -- perhaps comparing it to other standard tunings, e.g. 5ths for violins, 3rds for Russian classical guitar. Instead, it asserts the significance of the geometry, but it's not siginficant because it's a direct consequence of how notes are defined (equal temperament and octave equivalence), so the geometry is at best a way to visually explore those definitions rather than a way to find new properties, e.g. showing that a scale shape remains symmetrical through rotation just shows that music can be transposed, which is probably better shown on the guitar with a capo.
I also don't love his use of color as a metaphor. I think it's because his method using colored shapes to teach where the notes are on the fretboard, but calling the circle of fifths a color wheel conflicts with the more typical use of color to explain differences of quality, e.g. how Collier refers to modulation and extensions having brighter colors when moving clockwise and dark counterclockwise on the CoF. But as he uses it, he's saying that G has a similar color to D but very different from G#, but relative to what? Most listeners can't differentiate an isolated G vs G#, so as absolute pitch in any given octave, they have the closest possible "color". And as for shifting colors around the wheel, they all have the same stacked-fifth harmonic color, so again, in isolation, most listeners wouldn't hear a difference between playing C G D and C# G# D#, thus their colors aren't very different.
But as I said, I think it has to do with his fretboard system, so maybe it will help his students learn the notes, then by the time they start learning about harmonic color, they won't be using his metaphor anymore and it won't confuse them.
Big Kudos and Chapeau…! for such an elaborated presentation and explanations.
Thanks for sharing,,, and...
Subscribed…!
I've been playing way too long and never realized or had this explained the way you just did it. Unbelievable.
Brilliant decoding !
Guitar mysteries are well explained. The lesson has strengthened me. Thanks Mike.
There it is, the pentatonic scale hidden in plain sight. This has been a revelation.
Thank you for this clear explanation. Very helpful.
I really started appreciating standard tunning when I was finally physically capable of doing Barre Chords
I follow many good guitar authors.. Paul Davis.. Jack Lizzo...Richy Beato .. etc etc but this is the first time I have heard such a fact about the meccanic of the guitar👍👍👍👍thank you so much
Ohhhhhh Voooooowww..!!! This is the first time I came to know about the Construction and Anatomy of the Guitar Fretboard..!!! Thank you soooooo much for the very useful information. Lord Swaminarayan bless you and your family and your Team.
i have another insight, consider the most common situation, could be playing with a piano, so, the piano is organised around the major key of C, no sharps or flats,
With the standard guitar tuning, every diatonic chord in the key of C can be played open! for example, cmajor 7th, D minor 7th, Em 7th, Fmajor 7th, G dom 7th, Am 7th, & Bm7 b 5 !
Nice. I also think it's worth noting the the top three strings are tuned to an Em chord while strings 2-4 are tuned to G. Since the guitar evolved as an accompaniment instrument, those easily accessible chords make a big difference (as you noted at the end).
Funny to say but I always thought it was to enable a C chord from the natural placement of the hands & fingers. The trouble with that idea is it makes the G & F more difficult.... ! When I started everything was in E. I think the attraction was, and still is, the open strings ringing. The more of those the better I thought - but why is a full 6 string B7 so rich and maybe my favourite chord. G is good too. The A inversion where you can drop the F shape to several open strings also works well. I also like the D7/9 (C7 shape moved up 2 frets) but it doesn't work for every toon. There you are - that's 75% of all I know after 65yrs of trying. So your explanation is brilliant - but as I always say - it's the practical side that produces the goods. Let's hear wotcha got man!
Each Added Dollar Gets Betty Earings...persoanally I do well viewing things from a kids perspective when learning. It keeps things fun and fresh! But I always appreciate other perspectives! Thanks for the video!
Even After Dinner Giant Boys Eat
Excellent job MIke! Thank you for sharing!
your animation is already in my head but i can't explain to people. I will use your video to explain this.
Finally a clear coherent explanation!!!!
Great video!! I essentially taught myself the guitar almost 40 years ago after taking about 5-6 1 hr lessons from a guy that taught me the basic pentatonic scale. I can’t read music with any sort of speed whatsoever. I just learned the patterns and practiced over and over and over. Thank you so much for explaining the science behind it!
Excellent and concise explanation.
Great video, clear explanation. Many thanks.
You obviously went to a lot of work making this video, which is excellent. The only reason I am hesitating about buying your written material with color illustrations is that I don't have a color printer. I know i can view the pdfs in color on my computer, but I prefer hard copy because when I'm playing my guitar I'm not sitting in front of a computer. I suppose I could have the pdf printed at a copy shop, but that wouldn't be cheap - you say there are 1200 pages!.
The guitar is tuned in fourth, because if it whould be tuned in a bigger interval, you whouldn't be able to play a melody within the same hand position. There are alternative patters though, for example the standard lute tuning has the shift between the 3rd and 4th string. That divides the lute into three bass strings and three treble strings, what could be considered an advantage due to more symmetry. Still major and minor chords are easy to play.
I’ve been adopting, ‘Every Apple Does Go Bad Eventually,’ since.
Within the harmonic relationship of the circle of fifths is an interesting fact, Starting with the note C, it's harmonic series of overtones are from fundamental to C-C-G-C-E-G-Bb the first 6 partials in the series make up the C major chord, the 7th partial creates a dominant 7th chord.(CEGBb) and this generally leads one to the next note in the circle of fifths.... F major. The note F has a directly proportional harmonic series with the 7th partial creating a F dominant 7th chord, leading to Bb major and so on around the circle.
Everything is so clear now. I get it Awesome
Fascinating. Thankyou,look forward to more.
Fine work Sir 👏
Thank you. A friend shared the link. Appreciate you. 💙🌻💙
Eat All Day Get Big Easy.. courtesy of D. Marks, literally, words to live by from a great guitar teacher.
And thx for showing this note pattern easy to visualize, maybe this will help when I move a key sharp or flat on the board
The guitar is tuned that way so bar chords are louder. Not because of some pefect symmetry of color or shape. Also you can still play chords in pefect fourths they just a-rent as large and dont led themselves as well to strumming. Tune your guitar however you want if it means your have more fun