My elder brother took guitar lessons decades ago with a five string guitar. I recall it from my very early childhood. I can no longer ask him, so I am inquiring here. Is there some unique history to five string guitars, or was his instrument likely to have been merely an inexpensive beginner model? :?: How would he have handled the sixth string notes? :?: I recall him commenting once with regard to either ignoring the sixth string notes or playing them on some other string. Is there a consistent methodology he might have applied to transfer sixth string notes to another string that would have worked in general, or would he have had to instantaneously recognize the sixth string note and a corresponding fret position that would be available to play the same note on another string? :?: This last possibility sounds quite complicated to me, and I have long suspected that he might have merely ignored sixth string notes. I inquire because it would seem to have disrupted the bass line of any work inclined to use the lowest strings for bass notes.
I do appreciate your professional insights into this. I presume the instrument was tuned ADGBE :note1: , but EDGBE :note1: might have been the tuning. (I've never played a guitar.)
Thank you.
Hi,
You say that you've never played guitar, but have you ever played any stringed instrument? There's nothing especially necessary about having six strings. You can play a melody line on a one stringed instrument, and you only need three strings to play a chord (some would say only two, if you include 'power chords'). A basic major or minor triad has just three notes.
The site at this link shows just some of the huge variety of ways in which you can play on strings:
You might find something similar to the one your brother had. But even players of modern electric guitars may simply take a string off to simplify things. There's a picture floating around the net of one of Keith Richard's Telecasters with no low E string, for instance.
Banjos commonly have 4 or 5 strings, my mandolin has 8, but they're tuned in pairs, so it's effectively 4, and so on. But we all play the music in a roughly similar way. It's not necessary to play all 6 strings on a guitar, and even if you are strumming rather than picking you are usually either:
a) not strumming all 6 or
b) some of the notes you play will be repeated. I.e. a C Major chord that goes either GCEGCE or CEGCE or just GCE (and a heap of other options all over the neck), depending on how you finger it, what voicing you like, how many strings you strum, what you're changing to and from, and what your skill level is. :)
Cheers,
Chris
Perhaps I will try a five stringed guitar sometime in the future, but I would first like to conceptualize whether regular guitar tabs (for six string guitars), commonly available at this site and others, can be easily implemented with five strings by consistently shifting the notes on the sixth string to one of the others whenever possible.
I'm sure there is an expert in musical intervals out there who can conceptualize whether what I suggest is possible in a consistent and instanteously implementable manner that would not require rewriting tablature. I must admit that I find six strings to be much too intimidating.
Thank you for any recommendation in this regard.
Perhaps I will try a five stringed guitar sometime in the future, but I would first like to conceptualize whether regular guitar tabs (for six string guitars), commonly available at this site and others, can be easily implemented with five strings by consistently shifting the notes on the sixth string to one of the others whenever possible.
I'm sure there is an expert in musical intervals out there who can conceptualize whether what I suggest is possible in a consistent and instanteously implementable manner that would not require rewriting tablature.
Just remember to move towards the headstock by five frets on the higher string and you'll be playing the same note as on the lower string. If you're playing the 7th fret on the E string, then you'd play the 2nd fret on the A string to play the same note.* If you can't move five frets down (down in a guitar context means towards the headstock, not the body), you're out of luck. I'm assuming that your five string guitar would be tuned EADGB or ADGBE. EDGBE would require you to move ten frets down.
Now, since most guitar chords use all six strings, your five string chords would sound somewhat different. In addition, many songs use the lowest five frets on the low E string which are inaccessible to you, and they would not sound quite the same if you played those notes an octave higher. If the guitar was tuned EDGBE, then you would technically have access to all of the notes on a standard guitar, but playing something like, say, an open C-major chord would require you to stretch from the 8th fret on your lowest string to the 2nd fret on the D string. It'd be impossible to play.
I must admit that I find six strings to be much too intimidating.
Any intimidation factor removed by removing one of the strings would be made up for by being unable to properly play most songs, as well as a lack of community support and instruction on an unusual instrument. Besides, I think that the only difference in difficulty for six strings over five would be when you're trying to learn all of the notes on all of the strings (which most guitarists don't really know). Surely if you can memorize the 60 notes on five strings you can memorize 12 more.
*The exception to this is between the G and B strings only. To play the same note on the B string as you would on the G string, just move down 4 frets.
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Perhaps I will try a five stringed guitar sometime in the future, but I would first like to conceptualize whether regular guitar tabs (for six string guitars), commonly available at this site and others, can be easily implemented with five strings by consistently shifting the notes on the sixth string to one of the others whenever possible.
I wouldn't have any trouble working out how to shift notes around, but that might not apply to everybody. It would help to know why are you asking these questions? If you have the idea that a guitar is only played by placing your fingers across the neck and then strumming across all six strings then that's completely the wrong way to look at it. That's just one out of many options.
Are you just looking for an easier way to play guitar, or is there some other reason you would like to play on only 5 strings? If you removed one string on a normally tuned guitar, the most you would lose would be five notes. If you took the low E off you'd lose your 5 lowest notes, and the high E would cost you the highest 5. If you took any of the strings in between off you'd still have the full range of notes available, just not in so convenient an arrangement. But what's the point of all this?
The six strings on a guitar give it a wide range of possibilities, but you don't need to use them all. All songs just use bits and pieces of what's on offer. If you don't think you need all six strings , then don't play them all. You don't need to remove any. In reality that's mostly what happens anyway. If I play lead I might use only a tiny fraction of the guitar, and not touch half the the strings at all. If I'm playing rhythm - i.e. mostly chords, then I might strum all six, but I very often won't. I rather disagree with what Number6 says about "most guitar chords use all six strings". Instead I'd say that many guitar chords CAN be played on six strings, but it's common to play them on less. And many chords are, in reality, not played on all six at all, either because the fingering would be too awkward, or the sound not appropriate. In fact, when I play rhythm guitar with our group I'd rarely strum right across all six strings as a chord. I'd be much more likely to use the low E for throwing a bass note in, and then strum across some or all of the others. Or else just strum on 4 or 5 anyway, depending on what sort of 'colour' or effect I wanted at the time.
I also wouldn't suggest learning music "by numbers" off TAB without having at least some theoretical grounding in what you're doing. The guitar looks complicated (and it certainly can be) but underneath it all, music can be pretty simple too. Most of what's on offer on a guitar is 'multiple choices' of ways of doing things. Once you have an understanding of what you're trying to do on a guitar (or any instrument) the answers can be pretty straightforward.
Good luck with it anyway, if you do decide to take it up. :)
Cheers,
Chris
Thank you all very kindly for your well considered and detailed comments. I believe I will give it a try, tuning it to ADGBE.
The string intervals would then be the notes in parenthesis given by:
a - (a# - b - c - c#) - D - (D# - E - F - F#) - G - (G# - A - A#) - B - (C - D) - E.
The interval between the missing string and the fifth string would be:
e - (f - f# - g - g#) - a.
I don't know anything about music theory, but I think I'll try to simply shift the missing "e string" notes up to the D string. It has a four semi-tone separation from the "a string", which is the interval from the missing "e string" to the "a string". I'm guessing that somehow, musically, that might even work, although it will induce tonal inversions caused by rising up five semi-tones rather than dropping down five semi-tones.
(I'm presuming that tonal relevance in a compositional sense is based upon the musical interval between notes, and thus can be directly transferred to another string with the same musical interval relative to a reference string of relevance, based upon the open tunings of the strings and the resulting musical interval between the strings' open tunings. I do not assert that the approach I hypothesize as being viable here is going to produce the identical composition as would result with a sixth string, a factor established by the occassional, tonal inversions of the walking bass line in "Margaritaville" that would result from use of this approach, but allowing for such tonal inversions associated with the transfer of notes from the sixth string to the fourth, using the same fret positions, the melody should still make sense.)
If you delve into music history, you'll find that you're basically retracing the evolutionary footsteps of the guitar. Notebook will (I hope) correct me if I'm wrong, but if I remember correctly, our current guitar evolved from four strings (techincally "courses" or pairs of strings like a 12 string guitar or mandolin, but for your learning purposes essentially the same thing) around 1200 AD to five (four or five courses being the norm in the Middle Ages and Renaissance), before ending up with the final sixth (lowest) string (around the mid to late 1700s).
Your sentimental memory may be a cultural one! :wink: How cool is that?
Good luck with this. Keep us posted on how things are going.
Peace
Thank you all very kindly for your well considered and detailed comments. I believe I will give it a try, tuning it to ADGBE.
Isn't that equivalent to (Keith Richard's) removing the (low E) 6th string?
(Assuming standard tuning)
I imagine it wouldn't make much difference when playing mostly barre chords.
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Isn't that equivalent to (Keith Richard's) removing the (low E) 6th string?
(Assuming standard tuning)
Yes and no as Keith Richards uses open G tuning with his guitars that he's removed the low E string from, which makes his tuning (low to high) GDGBD. He also uses standard-tuned guitars, but with all six strings attached. Since the most common barre chords (at least in standard tuning) are E or Em shaped, you end up not having a root note in the bass when you take out the lowest string. A and Am shaped barre chords won't sound different, but the E shaped ones definitely will.
Hope this helps.
Peace
I stuck five nylon strings on an instrument body. I played through "Margaritaville" and "Silent Night" on this site and "Greensleaves" on a free classical site. Transferring the sixth string tab positions to the 4th string and plucking works so far. I sat down with a design program, worked something out, and ordered some wood. I think I'll build a Flamenco five stringer. I've got some bald cypress coming in. I'm thinking of using redwood for the top. Any experience with how well redwood goes with cypress? I found a flemenco site that included a recording of a guitar with a cypress body and cedar top. I liked what I took to be the "Spanish" sound (though the site owner warned me that flamenco instruments are usually topped with spruce). Someone somewhere wrote that redwood is "cedar on steroids". Is this true? Does redwood work with cypress? I'd like to know before I waste time putting the thing together.
If you want in-depth information on constructing a guitar, you might have more luck here.
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