Playing with Robert Fripp tuning

A C-pentatonic stacked with a minor third is really versatile and cool

I tuned my guitar to CGDAEG today and immediately started playing some jazzy (for me) stuff

Just messing around. This is so-called New Standard Tuning, and it is interesting.

One of the more enjoyable aspects of guitar playing is easily accessing different tunings. It's possibly the single biggest difference between the guitar and other instruments (although its not as cool as a sitar where you can move the frets). That and the sheer number of ways you can play the same note or chords all across the neck with different tone, timbre, and texture, but that's a future post….

Alternative or “alternate” tunings allow a guitarist to unlearn and relearn the notes and chord voicings of the fretboard. It's a change in perspective that can refresh your playing. And in this case allow you to access notes not available in standard tuning. But more on that later…

I tuned iile (my moon-modded les paul knockoff) and put on some distortion and minutes later I had this

It felt like playing dark sounding scales on a viola. That's because the top 4 strings (CGDA) are the same tuning as a viola (or cello, or tenor banjo.) So in effect I was, just with frets.

In fact, this is me below attempting to play from memory a classical piece I originally learnt on viola when I was a proto-moon. I can't remember the name of it. I improvised the high bits (just extended the melody idea outside the range of the viola) to show off the range of the tuning

This particular tuning is really cool because it gives rise to more playable notes, being both a major third lower and a minor third higher than a regular guitar tuning. Here below is the tuning - you can see the stacked pentatonic on the bass clef (top 4 strings of the guitar - that's the viola) and the minor third on the treble clef (bottom two strings of the guitar):

Penta means five, which relates to the interval of a so-called fifth (or ‘perfect’ fifth.) Music is weird. You count the 5 semitones by including the 1, in this case C. Anyway, in this tuning the numerous fifth intervals gives rise to particularly harmonious overtones; C is the root and fundamental tone. G as a fifth reinforces C, D as a fifth reinforces G, and A as a fifth reinforces D. E both as a fifth reinforces A and as the fifth overtone of C, reinforces C. Finally G, as the sixth overtone of C, reinforces C.

The minor third represented by the bottom two strings feels funny to me to play because it is such a small interval that it means my index and pinky fingers are hitting the same notes. That's very limiting in some ways but could open new creative doors in the future.

For example, in this noodle I get to some really high notes and also get to show that overtone series every time I hit that slow pedal C (it sounds better in the room):

Robert Fripp tuning? Yep, the tuning is credited to the King Crimson creative force, tech wizard, and all round cool dude Robert Fripp. But it doesn’t seem to have been widely adopted at all. I have no idea why.

I will be digging more into this tuning in the coming weeks.

Why? Why should you care? Because I just ordered a tenor banjo, whoop whoop!!! I’m SO excited. So I plan to get a lot more familiar with this all fifths style tuning. More details in a future post …

I'm wearing my spurs hat because we're top of the league!