I’ve been checking my tuning the second I pick up a guitar, with an open G chord since nearly day 1, I think tuning the B and E strings any differently would fuck me up way too much. I’m not smart in the head enough to transpose that fast and far too lazy to adapt it.
I’d be curious to hear what the benefits are for those that do it, though.
I've been using the 4ths tuning for around 4 years now.
After playing in the standard tuning for close to 10 years, I switched to P4 when covid hit.
This was mostly inspired by Tom and a few others who play in this tuning. (Alex Hutchings, Ant Law)
Almost all of them play jazz fusion stuff.
Holdsworth has said that he would tune in P4 if he could start over again.
Although this isn't because of the tuning, I had spent my years noodling, working on technique and doing scale runs.
I was physically able to play most stuff but couldn't improvise much.
During Covid, I started learning drop voicings and arpeggios.
And the kink (G/B) in the standard tuning, had me learning different shapes and moving the intervals for those two strings.
Because of this, I just tried P4 on a whim and never looked back.
Pros:
1. Improv is easier.
Intervals and shapes being uniform across the fretboard, once you have the intervals internalised by playing around, moving around is much easier, imo.
I can't fully express how big a deal this is when you switch between lines, double stops and triads as you improv.
2. Chord Shapes
It takes time to learn the voicings for Maj, Min and Dom chords and internalise them.
Add extensions on top of that..
Then there's the other chords m7b5 etc.. their voicings.
And this is just the Major scale.. you still have the Melodic Minor and it's chords/modes to explore!!
All their voicings..
I've not even looked at the Harmonic Minor / Harmonic Major.
This is
way more work in Std. tuning vs P4.
Cons:
1. Chord Melody is more difficult.
Major scale diatonic chord melody is easier in standard tuning because of how the notes align.
This isn't as big a deal as the open chords though.
Melodic Minor diatonic chord melody is easier in P4 for the same reason.
2. Open Chords/ Bar chords are tough-er
This is the most obvious downside.
Full bar chords are tough but if you just play the triads on the higher strings, it's not too bad.
The chordal stuff with open strings that one plays in E (in Std. tuning) can be moved around and played in Bb or F.. (in P4)
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Every now and then, I'd switch to the standard tuning and can make it work for single note improv stuff but with drop voicings, I hit a road block.
Now that I can navigate the intervals a little better, I guess I could spend some time and switch back to standard but the only thing I gain is the advantage of cowboy chords. I never play those things anyway and mostly live in closed voicings.
Sorry, tuning is a big deal and it ended up being a long post.
