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    All Fourths Tuning for Jazz Guitar
    All Fourths Tuning for Jazz Guitar
    All Fourths Tuning for Jazz Guitar
    Ebook134 pages53 minutes

    All Fourths Tuning for Jazz Guitar

    By Yasser Mattar

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    About this ebook

    All fourths tuning refers to tuning one's guitar such that the intervals between the stings ascend in fourths. Why should you tune to fourths?

    • Chord, arpeggio and scale shapes are uniform
    • It's ergonomic
    • One has control over jazzy voicings
    • One has control over intervals
    • It's easy to make quartal chords

    This book includes:

    • Over 100 fingering diagrams
    • 14 sheets of song transcriptions
    • Copious explanations of jazz theory
    • Tips on composition and performance

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherYasser Mattar
    Release dateJan 23, 2020
    ISBN9781393834014
    All Fourths Tuning for Jazz Guitar

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      Book preview

      All Fourths Tuning for Jazz Guitar - Yasser Mattar

      All Fourths Tuning for Jazz Guitar

      (for noobs and nerds alike)

      Yasser Mattar, PhD

      Copyright © 2020 by Yasser Mattar

      All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

      All scores and tablatures were written on MuseScore (musescore.org).

      Cover design by Felix Oking.

      ISBN: 9781672547185

      Contents

      Introduction

      What is all fourths tuning?

      Why should one tune to fourths?

      Moving across string sets and along the neck

      Control over intervals

      Ergonomy

      Fretboard Layout

      Scales

      Chord Voicings

      Drop 2

      Quartal

      Drop 2 3rd inversion

      Tertian shell

      Upper structure

      Rootless

      Open

      Chord Proximity

      Walking Bass

      For songs in a major key

      For songs in a minor key

      Boogie-woogie blues

      Arranging

      Tonal jazz

      Playing the boogie-woogie

      Using the bass as a melody

      Playing a head with a walking bass underneath

      Chord melody

      Modal jazz

      Latin jazz

      Negative harmony

      Rubato

      Conclusion

      Post-Script: Noodles ‘fore Toodles

      Additional Resources

      About the author

      Introduction

      Music is composed of four pillars: melody, harmony, rhythm and timbre. This book is primarily premised on the first two, at the outset. Tuning one’s guitar to fourths allows one to see the fretboard in a simplified and logical way, according to Stanley Jordan (cited in Jim Ferguson’s article Stanley Jordan in Helen Casabona and Adrian Belew’s book New Directions in Modern Guitar). This simplified and logical sequencing allows melodic lines to be clarified visually. It also allows for harmony, in the form of chords and chord voicings, to be clearly visualized according their intervallic qualities.

      Rhythm has no place in tuning. It does, however, have a place in jazz. Adam Neely in his video How and Why Classical Musicians Feel Rhythm Differently (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEbUNDW9bDA) strongly suggests that classical musicians react to rhythm while jazz musicians internalize rhythm. For this very reason, I believe that rhythm is of utmost importance to jazz and it would be as near a capital crime as it can get for me to leave rhythm out of this book. In this book, I have embedded rhythm into our discussions of how to apply all fourths tuning in musical contexts, such as the walking bass, Latin jazz, rubato and elsewhere.

      Timbre is something that I do not account for at all in this book. Timbre concerns the quality of the sound that distinguishes one instrument from another. Scientifically, it involves the relative pitches of overtones produced by the instrument in question, as well as the attack, sustain and decay of those overtones. It also distinguishes the mid frequencies of bebop from the trebles of early black metal and the bass frequencies of brostep. However, I seek solace in the understanding that one can tune one’s guitar in all fourths and play jazz without needing to account for timbre much.

      This book is meant for noobs as well as nerds. Noobs need only read the introduction to every section, and find meaning in the diagrams and sheet music provided. There will be words which confuse noobs but honestly, did you really understand every word in your comic books when you first read them when you was but a young whipper-snapper? No? Well, the same applies here. Nerds will be given servings of nerd sauce, sometimes quite liberally. I do tend to pour the sauce on pretty thick, but I guess that’s how jazz theorists like their biscuits. Soaked in sauce.

      This book will firstly look at an introduction to all fourths tuning and try to convince you to tune to all fourths. It will then look at the simplified and logical nature of scales, chords and the walking bass. This knowledge will then be applied to arranging songs in all fourths tuning.

      I hope that this book opens up a whole new world of possibilities for your guitar playing and convinces you that all fourths tuning is suitably suited for jazz guitar. I also hope that you gain deeper insights into jazz theory beyond your current realm of understanding. Most of all, have fun! To quote Americana virtuoso Bob Brozman, in every language I've ever encountered, they say play music, not work music (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2p52JNcbDc).

      What is all fourths tuning?

      All fourths tuning refers to tuning one’s guitar such that the intervals between the stings ascend in fourths. The diagram below shows how to tune one’s guitar to fourths.

      In standard tuning, the guitar is tuned to E-A-D-G-B-E. There are also many other alternative tunings aside from fourths, such as

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