Bass 4ths meet Stick 5ths on one fretboard.
Bass players are often fiercely dedicated to their role of defining the
groove and harmony from the bottom up. That doesn't mean that a ten-string
Stick, and all of the possibilities it allows, shouldn't be among the
bassist's favorite instruments.
With some excellent feedback from Emmett, I've been working on a new tuning
that bass players would find familiar, and that wouldn't force them to choose
between the role they already know and the magic of the Stick's two-handed
bass in inverted 5ths that Tony Levin and so many other players have come to
love, myself included.
Emmett first expressed his own desire for this kind of a tuning in the early 1980s, with his "double bass" tuning, that lowered the melody strings a major 6th while raising the bass strings a minor 3rd. Any song in C was thus transposed to Eb with the melody down an octave.
The Dual Bass Reciprocal(TM) tuning combines a standard bass 4ths arrangement
with a Stick (inverted bass 5ths) tuning to provide myriad ways to fill the
bass player's role. A 6-string bass tuning covers the first 6 strings,
overlapping onto the 5-string inverted 5ths Stick tuning. Conceptually, it's
a set of 11 strings using only ten, with both sets sharing the common low B.
Here's how it looks (these are the notes at the playable X fret, which corresponds to the nut on regular 34" scale electric bass). Notice that the lettered notes take you consecutively through the cycle of 5ths (two more strings would complete the cycle):
1 - C
2 - G
3 - D
4 - A
5 - E (standard bass low E)
6 - B (5-string bass low B)
7 - F# (going back up in pitch)
8 - C#
9 - G#
10 - D#
Strings 6-10 are only a half-step below the Classic Stick tuning. For
testing, I just tuned my heavy-gauge Classic bass set down. For strings 1-5
Emmett sent me a set that starts out fairly light but gets relatively heavier
as the pitch drops to make the transition from the 5th to 6th string feel
consistent. I'm loving the sound and feel, and think I'm going to have to get
another Stick just to have one always available in this tuning.
Several different playing techniques can work on this tuning:
1. Two-handed interdependent parts on strings 6-10. I love taking advantage of the increased real estate available along the frets for each hand, a huge range of pitches and timbres is available right under your fingertips. This is the classic two-handed Stick bass technique popularized by Tony Levin.
Notes:
Thanks to Emmett and Bob Schrum for their feedback on this tuning concept, and to all the Stick players who've written to say they support the idea.
The sound samples were recorded on a rosewood 10-string with a hybrid Stickup bass/EMG melody pickup, medium gauge DBR string set. Every effort was made to balance the two sides tonally to create a sense of unity between the two sets of strings. Please feel free to send me your feedback about this article and sound samples. email Greg