Stringjoy is great for specifying the exact gauges you want.
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I second this. Excellent resource.
Cheers!
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I totally understand this mindset.
But it still comes down to the same 12 notes, no matter where they are located.
In my 34-year career as a guitarist, through countless highs and lows, I have certainly struggled at times for inspiration. In those slumps, I’ve thought of changing many things: i.e. strings, tunings, amps, effects… Even instruments entirely.
In retrospect, however, the only way forward, every single time, would prove to be woodshedding. All that to say, while happy accidents do happen, most real success is achieved with brute force and dogged determination.
Anyway, just something to consider before you commit to Fripp’s “New Standard Tuning” (a brazen claim, to be sure, no doubt meant to distinguish himself and provoke debate). I mean, it’s not a trivial endeavor. It will most certainly require a great deal of (redundant) recalibration, not only as a player, but including a full setup (and possibly even customization) of your guitars, in order to accommodate the extreme change in string gauges, in terms of scale, tension, and intonation.
Cheers!
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Thank you very much for putting down your thoughts, much appreciated! The hassle of changing the setup of my guitar (I only own one) and recalibrating is the one thing that’s giving me second thoughts about going NST.
As for the rest, while I do appreciate sharing the wisdom that comes with your experience, I have a very different perspective on “real success” regarding my music. I do it mostly for fun and just like to try new things, some stuff I record if I like it, some ideas are dead ends, but that’s okay. True, there’s only 12 notes, but regarding the layout, I see it more like changing from oil colours to water colours or something. I’m not interested in mastering a specific technique, I just want to explore some new, untrodden path (for me at least), and most of all, enjoy the experience. Actually, the exact opposite of brute force and determination 
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Fair enough.
I certainly know a lot of casual musicians who share your perspective.
It’s impossible to know what someone else aspires to, or otherwise hopes to reap from their musical endeavors, until these conversations are had. Sometimes, they themselves don’t actually know.
For the record, my opinion and suggestions come less from my experience or ambitions as a professional musician, and more from reflecting on the kid I once was, obsessed with learning the guitar.
It’s like asking the question “What would you do if you won the lotto?” to help someone choose a career path. Similarly, I think most musicians, if they could simply snap their fingers, really just want to be able to play fluently, so they can express themselves freely.
To that end, while I know it’s a long road, whenever I see people chasing alternate tunings or collecting gear, I try to encourage them to go back to the well instead. But, case in point, that is not always what they’re after, and I completely understand.
Cheers!
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I posted a little above but then realised the point was pretty similar to what Python suggested. But to the above point, experimental or extended guitar is an entire arena unto itself. And further I suppose in another sense experimental music largely eschews traditional, classical, and musical approaches. ‘playing fluently’ carries with it a lot of baggage and assumptions, that on a fundamental level is a view they may not share. It’s like there’s this ideas there are people who get music and people who don’t. But a lot of people choose not to get music, so for a lifetime the field stays a curious and mysterious field of exploration, rather than some known quantity.
Well, first of all, I’m personally not bound by said baggage or assumptions.
Perspective, in this regard, is a philosophical plight, not a question of musical proficiency. Nor is true creativity or ingenuity negatively impacted by having a wealth of tools at one’s disposal.
Sufficed to say, this is a counterpoint that I’ve heard many times. Yet, I would argue that you’re only able to make such an eloquent case, because you’re fluent in the language that you’re typing in. And that vocabulary doesn’t seem to have robbed you of an opinion of your own. Instead, it has only enabled you to express it.
Music is no different.
Cheers!
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”—Alexander Pope
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Actually music is way different. Sound has no inherent meaning. Words do. You can’t just babble out verbal sounds and expect someone to get what you mean, but you can bash and burn and cut a guitar and call it music.
The point is above you are making statements about ‘casual musicians’ , about dudes like Steve Vai, and playing fluently. It points toward this certain definition of music that not everybody shares. Music is not a universal language. It might be English in some metaphorical classical sense, but there is every other type of language also that can be used to describe it.
I’m just here to offer the other perspective and say fuck it, no one has to do anything anyone says. They can start in the most dumbass 10 different tunings ever and play there for 15 years. There are no rules, and in fact exciting and new music will come from those who choose to break with convention.
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And having a musical vocabulary prevents one from doing that how exactly?
Don’t take my words out of context. Those are three different conversations you’re referencing there. And besides which, we ARE talking about something specific: Fripp’s “New Standard Tuning”.
Why would the tuning scheme even matter, if “sound has no inherent meaning”, and you’d just as soon set your guitar on fire? And if someone were looking to paint that far outside the lines, why would they tune the guitar at all?
I’m referencing other great players, because Robert Fripp is a great player. I’m speaking, in academic terms, of the potential musical advantages and disadvantages of NST, because indeed that is exactly why Fripp conceived of it, and named it thusly.
And I most certainly never suggested that anyone must. That is an argument that you are fabricating presently, based on some rebellious notion it would seem, and it has little to do with tuning schemes or music theory.
Or they’ll just reinvent the proverbial wheel.
We are all standing on the shoulders of giants.
Cheers!
“Where the poets are so hip, they don’t even write poems.”—Craig Cardiff
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It really is though.
There are physical laws that govern the behaviour of waves and some of these behaviours translate to sound to us. It doesn‘t matter your cultural sphere, a perfect fifth will emerge if you play something with overtones. And it doesn‘t matter your cultural sphere, a perfect fifth will be reconginsed as „musical“ around the globe. The only thing that‘s convention here, is the naming of it.
that said, I think @JohntheSavage is advocating the benefits of fluency and proficiency on an instrument, not a particular form of expression based on particular musical ideas.
This idea that music can‘t be free or evolving if someone becomes proficient on an instrument or in the theory of music is just wrong. The better you can navigate your instrument, the better you can express yourself. It doesn‘t have to get in the way of removing yourself and letting spontaneity take over.
As John said, move around the tuning, there will be still the same twelve notes (or at least intervallic relations between pitches) on your guitar no matter the tuning. Unless you‘d change the fret job on a guitar it is always organise in „half-steps.“
So yes, maybe someone will discover something in a different tuning that one wouldn‘t have thought of to play in standard tuning but barring physical limitations, that‘s not on the tuning but rather on that person‘s limited proficiency and/or limiting habits.
In that sense, shifting tuning can help (to recognise and challenge existing habits), but there‘s nothing I see in alternate tunings or in resisting physical and mental proficiency with an instrument that is more free or more expressive than standard tuning and knowing your guitar would allow for.
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A breath of fresh air.
Thanks, hausland.
Cheers!
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Who was the musician who said “First learn the rules, then break them”?
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Someone who got banned from every internet forum?
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OK, edited… 
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Now I want to know what you really said.
Cheers!
“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”—Pablo Picasso
I started learning to play guitar about 4 years ago and must say it’s mind boggling for my experience and point of view how some people manage to experiment with different tunings. Although i came a long way in common tuning I still feel needing 7 more lifetimes to reach the level i like myself to see. It’s so damn much to take and master. Different techniques on electric, acoustic or classic. 7,8 and 12 string guitars. Modes, intervals, solo and rythm, fingerpicking, jazzy, slide, thumb picks, strumming, muting, bending. Memorizing fret board, chord shapes and what not. How on earth do people intergrate all this is one lifetime. I am totally freaking out on the idea of alternate tunings. It’s like re learning a whole instrument or am I totally wrong?
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To reply to some of the above I’m trying to illustrate that while yes, I understand there are intervallic relationships between sound within the diatonic scale that of course are labelled and recognised, these are a conditioned modality of listening. Tuning and microtonal understanding varies pretty widely from culture to culture, though, as you know, but music in many of its forms is conceptual. My throwaway example of burning the guitar is just to show that, conceptually music can be defined however an artist wishes - not just within the bounds of western modalities - perfect fifths or what have you. And I do think that proficiency and fluency can damage and limit understanding of music in the broadest sense. Once an artist becomes too technical, too burrowed into the western tradition, they can lose sight of alternative musics and develop a particular taste, or not even be able to listen to such music, that aren’t as technical or 'musically correct". Let’s just take noise music as an example. Now of course yes this is a discussion on tuning, but there were a few occasions where John wished to dissuade players from exploring tunings and instead stick to the grind of standard tuning playing, however gently, I just wished to offer the other side of that coin. No personal offence intended.
Cheers!
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Phew, I didn’t expect that asking for what strings to use could kick off such a discussion
@mattleaf and @JohntheSavage , you’re both right in my opinion, as for me, it’s all a matter of perspective. If you think it’s better for you to first learn theory and then intentionally forget it, more freedom to you! If you think it’s better to intentionally ignore theory in order not to bias creative impulses, all the power to you! Whatever floats your boats is legit, no matter what anyone says. And on top of that, perspectives can change in time.
A small thing regarding the language example: one doesn’t need to know the definition of an “adverb” or how to name a certain grammatical case in order to speak a language fluently, which is especially true for mother tongues. And I think the same thing applies to guitar or music theory in general. I don’t need to know if the chord I played is called F#add7 or whatever. As long as it sound good to me it’s fine. Sure, there’s frequencies that sound nice together and these relationships are appreciated all across the global and have been for millennia (such as the fifth) by humans. But you don’t have to know the physics behind that to enjoy it.
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I’m a huge fan of alternate tunings on guitar as a listener and a player. The subtle timbral shifts on the instrument that result are beautiful to listen to.
I don’t see any contradiction between fluency and using varied tunings.
I do think Fripp’s name for NST is….cheeky. But 5ths tunings make some voicings easier and others harder.
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& rhetorical
It’s not about control of an instrument, it’s about control over audience reaction.
Putting focus on the latter makes some people uncomfortable because it’s an inexact, doubt-ridden business, while gaining ‘fluency’ is more reassuringly measurable. But look again at what moves people. It’s the early stuff