Maj Scales are built using 5th, its easy to think in to. Its also easy to build Minors using 4th when going backwards. The most important element of music. If it was tuned to octaves you would have to move your hand around more.
And if it was tuned to fourths you would do 3 note per string scales and that is fast but not as fast as 4. But the one note per string arpeggios in fourths tuning are extremely fast but you cant do as much besides straight up and down the arpeggio at fast speeds as you can with 2 notes per string. The fifth tuning is one of several reasons I switched to violin instead of guitar.
I'm a fiddler. A little wine can be good but there is a fine line between the amount that makes you better and the amount that you cant play at all. At least in Spanish tuning. Some folks like to tune their guitars to various open chords, which can be a lot of fun. Tuning in fifths is a beautiful thing. I can still remember how much I loved it when I played my first mandolin after years of guitar. It was so easy and logical to find those notes, to transpose around, just a great and good concept that worked beautifully for the scale of the instrument.
Historically, I cannot recall reading much discussion about the fingering differences between gambas and violin-family instruments except to point out the obvious; that one has a greater range when the instrument is tuned in fifths.
For example, it takes a five string bass tuned in fourths to provide as many notes as you get with a four-string bass tuned in fifths. Almost all the historical discussion on these two families has dealt with the difference in sound. I'm am quite convinced that half the difference is due to gamba construction with flat backs and heavy bracing compared with the lighter full arching of the violin, and half to the natural overtone series that occurs when the strings are a fifth apart.
Somewhere around here unless it vanished during my last computer crash I have some frequency plots showing the strength and distribution of acoustic peaks in the two families. The fifth-tuned instruments have more frequency peaks, stronger frequency peaks, and higher frequency peaks. If you have a willing cellist available, have them tune their instrument in fourths and play something and you will hear instantly what the difference is. Paganini used alternate tunings, Biber has sonatas tuned in alternate tunings and there is a lot of fiddle music that uses alternate tunings.
Many fiddle tunes bring the bottom 1 or 2 strings up, so they resonate more with the key of the tune. Think of how Hardanger fiddles work. Relatively few melody notes land on the lower strings in a number of fiddle styles, but there can be the sense of right finger-wrong note until you get used to the tuning. Cajun music is regularly played tuned down a whole step.
Not everyone notices what I think I do. Check out Darol Anger's playing for someone who is doing a lot of experimenting these days with tunings. He often drops the G WAY down.
There is a limit to how wide an interval you might expand to on the upper strings before the strings are under so much tension that they break or wear out very fast, put undo stress on the neck or end, or don't ring well when bowed.
You really can't tune in 6ths ex. Think of the gyrations cellists have to go through sometimes since the hand holds the space of a 4th or 4th up from open. The interval of a 12th between the 5th and 1st strings is also helpful.
On renaissance lute and vihuela that major 3rd interval is between the 3rd and 4th courses rather than the 2nd and 3rd.
I think the standard tuning of the violin in fifths is due to several factors already mentioned: number of fingers and how far they can be stretched apart being primary, anything else such as modulation to keys up a fifth being secondary.
But I digress. The problem in music is that there are two basic ways to divide the octave, and they don't go together exactly. Carvalho has described these two ways as linear and bent, and that's a good way to put it. For another way to demonstrate the difference between the two tuning systems, play a major tenth on a piano. It sounds a bit off. Notice how a minor tenth sounds better. But if you have a fine string quartet tune and then play a major tenth, it will likely be perfectly in tune.
This illustrates the difference between the so-called "Just Intonation" that string musicians have learned and the equal-tempered linear tuning of the piano remember Bach's "The Well-Tempered Klavier"? The difference between the systems is what they are based on. In both, the octave is equal, with a ratio, meaning that if A is Hz, the A above it is Hz, and the A below it is Hz.
Those are the frequencies of the pitches, equally tempered, like you'd find on a piano, harp, guitar, etc.
We already noted that the octave interval has a ratio of The major third is , the perfect fourth is , and the perfect fifth is , to name a few. Now compare those frequencies to the frequencies of the equally-tempered scale. Even though the octaves are the same, the pitches in between are compromised. Now let's compare the cello C to the violin E. In order for the major third to sound in-tune to our ears, there should be that integer ratio of If we assume that the E is perfectly "in tune" a rather subjective term, we see then the C should vibrate at a frequency of That's a hair sharper than the C string is tuned to, but the difference is noticeable, especially at such a slow frequency -- it's nearly a quarter-tone.
In closing finally! Carvalho described. That's a tall order, of course, and even more challenging when playing with an equally-tempered instrument like a piano.
But you learn with time. And besides, open-string tuning doesn't make you play out of tune; putting your fingers in the wrong places does. Considering that our key system is based on I, IV and V, tuning a fifth isn't so great.
Tuning the two strings to fourths gives me those three notes within a short distance of each other. I can move from root to fourth very easily and now the fifth is just little further away.
This will be mirrored in every position on every string. This is desirable for any instrument expected to play bass notes. This is the same reason a guitar tunes its bass strings in fourths normally.
When you begin to shorten the scale length and expect your instrument to mainly play melodies this distance from root to fourth becomes less of an issue technically. Lastly, six string electric basses usually tune all in fourths. The reason is the same as above and also because playing chords like a guitar isn't that great- the instrument is big and those low notes can get muddy quickly.
In that case symmetrical fingerings are preferable. I play the double bass and I know if it were tuned in fifths it would require a lot more shifting. No double bass player has the finger span to have the strings tuned in fifths.
I say no double bass player because the instrument goes up in sizes to fit the player. It may be possible to tune in fifths if someone who normally played a full-size were to play an eighth size double bass because their finger span would be too large for the instrument, but they would probably be playing the instrument like a cello anyway. It was common in the French Schools of the 19th century to tune in fifths.
At that time the German and English bassists were switching to fourths. It was noted that the German and English bassists didn't need to work as hard as their French counterparts. The French were reluctant to leave fifths as they felt fifths tuned basses blended better with the cellos violas and violins as their harmonic series was similar. I don't know what time the switch was made. Here is an American bass method book from that is for three string basses tuned low to high, C, G, D.
I love it! Also check out Joel Quarington's website to learn more about fifths tuned contract bass. The bass waltzes composed by Dragonetti have a lot of paired notes that go from 1st to 4th finger across strings to minimize shifting.
The same can be said for the 6 Vivaldi sonatas and Benedetto Marcello sonatas. It seems that composers in that period took into account the tuning in 4ths and made pieces that fascilitated the playing to bassists. I'm aware Dragonetti played a 3 string bass, But I believe the tuning was still in fourths. The pieces in question would have been annoying difficult to play at speed if the bass were tuned to 5ths. I'm not a really experianced bassist, but that it how the pieces seem to be structured.
I might be totally wrong, but this is how I see it. It seems the Spanish decided the fourth tuning best suited their guitar that was an instrument that mainly provided chords to backup dancing or singing. Playing the chord positions on the double bass would be more difficult on an instrument tuned in fifths. The Italians had a different point of view. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.
Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Why is the double bass the only instrument in the violin family tuned in fourths? Ask Question. Asked 6 years, 4 months ago. Active 1 year, 8 months ago. Viewed 28k times. Wikipedia states The double bass is generally tuned in fourths, in contrast to other members of the orchestral string family, which are tuned in fifths. Why is it so, when the other three are tuned in fifths? Improve this question. Shevliaskovic Shevliaskovic Just speculation, but were it tuned in fifths reaching the fourth of an open string in first position might require an uncomfortable hand span, I guess.
Not a problem with the violin. Part of the reason is it's not in the violin family! While it is in the string section, it is technically a viol and not a scaled up violin like the viola and cello are. One name for it is "contrabass viol". Viols are tuned in 4ths. ToddWilcox it's not clear if it is in the viol or the violin family. See the first paragraph — Shevliaskovic. Ok: telegraph. Without a clear lineage, we can only guess at reasons why it is tuned the way it is. Playability is probably the best guess.
Show 2 more comments. Active Oldest Votes. The argument goes like this: About two centuries before the violin, viola and cello were invented, there was the viola da gamba family : the violone the double-bass viol , the viola da gamba, the tenor viol, and the treble viol.
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