Tuning In Fourths - Efficiency Boost Or Creative Challenge? Feat. Wim Den Herder

The amazing ‪@wimdenherder‬ plays his song "Mad Max" and talks about experimenting with all-fourths tuning, and its effect on improvisational creativity. Check out the interview, with complete transcription to "Mad Max" in all its impossible picking glory, along with two other songs and 39 musical examples, right here: troygrady.com/i...

[@extrajava9175]

P4 tuning makes the guitar truly isomorphic. The shapes of chords and intervals is the same no matter what key or note youre playing in. This is so much more intuitive for me

[@MrMetalhorse]

Dude, the internet era of guitar players makes me feel like Spider-Man in Sam Raimi's trilogy when he fights the Sandman. "Where do all these guys come from"

[@troygrady]

Amazingly, same here. The world is a large place!

[@andyquanmusic1]

As a guitarist who started off on bass, 4th tuning would be SO much easier.

[@thorndog100]

I have played in 4ths for the past year or two and it feels home to me. I love the symmetry and ease of playing lead lines. I took inspiration from Alex Hutchings and Tom Quayle and their playing is just amazing. I can still play in regular tuning but I'm a 4ths kind of guy now. Its worth checking out. The only real thing that gets lost is the barre chords but they are a little bit redundant in a band situation. Too many notes. Its probably better to use shell voicings for most chords. And its easy to remember them in 4ths tuning.

[@alexjackson8841]

How long did it take for you to start comfortably improvising in the 4ths tuning and stop instinctively playing the old familiar standard tuning licks?

[@thorndog100]

@@alexjackson8841 Hmm good question. It took a little while, Im not going to lie. Maybe even two attempts but when it clicked...well Ive not looked back. I can still play in standard but 4ths is home for me and it makes sense. Losing Barre chords isnt so bad. You only really need half of the chord itself anyways. But doing lead work is just amazing. I dont copy other people and have my own style so its easy for me to just jam away for hours and not get stuck in a rut or stale. 4ths is very easy to learn and you dont have to give up everything you already know, you just have to modify it a bit and I always do that with my playing anyways. Hopefully soon I will post soon playing on YT so people can see how easy and lovely 4ths is. Give it a go...Peace 🎸🎸🎶🎶🎸🎸🎶🎶🎸🎸✨✨

[@HuugyBearInc]

You ha made a great case for tuning in fourths

[@thorndog100]

@@HuugyBearInc It really is worth a try. If you have a few guitars try tuning one to 4ths and give it a go. Its not like cheating I promise...😁😁🎸🎸🎶🎶

[@warmtoiletseat5596]

Same. I have permanently switched to DGCFBbEb tuning and it's greeeaaattt!!!

[@mattdowie92]

Damn, I had never heard Wim Den Herder before... He is a monster!!

[@CodyAverett]

I have also been using fourths for a few years now. I had always found it difficult to keep track of musical note letters in my head and recall them quickly on the fly, so fourths reduced the information I have to keep track of. Now I find it easy to remember different types of sounds by their shapes on the fretboard. I also like to think of sounds as interval offsets and numbers too. So, basically I use this tuning to get past a mental and creative block I had.

[@archniki_]

Fretboard is similar to cello, as cello player back in time it was impossible to get why guitar so wrong xD

[@DaveMacara89]

I played in P4 for a couple of years and found it was really useful for jazz playing to reduce the number of shapes and to improvise by intervals than having to constantly compensate for the tuning difference like you would in standard. I always think in relative intervals so having all intervals be the same on distance the neck was very useful. For other styles giving up the convenient common tonic and 5th provided by the E and B strings makes it not worth the trade off. Having this string grouping is so useful for the pentatonic shapes that are so prominent in rock and blues. A tuning is always a compromise at the end of the day.

[@dwainwhitejr5626]

This dude is a beast!! Interesting to hear his perspective on fourths tuning. I actually quit guitar for a year because of standard tuning lol. I came across Alex Hutchins and Tom Quayle and tuned to fourths and been rocking since. I have recently fallen in love with D Fourths and that is MY tuning. So much inspiration from it!

[@albinullanger7862]

Im floored! What a player! 🙏 Herregud!

[@leomachine23]

Man, this is SICK! 😳🤯🔥

[@troygrady]

Wim flexes every kind of chop on this outing, mechanical, compositional, you name it. He has a really unique and (to me) appealing sound.

[@ObieCS2]

Hold on, let me just collect my jaw from the floor. I liked how this interview got psychological with stuff like pattern recoginition and its relation to creativity. Interesting concepts to think about.

[@jackdellad4602]

Indeed.

[@Scotty_Russell_Music]

It's good when someone studying is prepared to say they tried a different game changer of an idea but got bored with it and came back to the previous rules and is then open and honest in their recollections of the experience. Good work. I am away to tune an acoustic to 4ths tho and see how it works out.

[@martinschulz9176]

Love how he's flipping off everyone 😂 Great playing btw

[@BiiaatchProper]

I play an 8 string guitar, and tend to shy away from traditional chord shapes and open chords, therefore I find 4ths tuning to be MUCH better than traditional tuning. F# B e a d g c f is my preferred tuning on 8 string guitars as it makes the instrument much more intuitive and really helps with visualisation of intervals specifically.

[@iganpparamarta8813]

Hi I think you meant to write … d g c f I wonder how a an open power chord F# would sound. My guess is 8.9 Richter scale

[@BiiaatchProper]

@@iganpparamarta8813 yes! Thank you for letting me know I made that mistake! Hahaha okay so anything below about an A or A# sounds pretty bad but man those lower power chords sound amazing. My reasoning for preferring the 8 string is that it opens up a lot of possibilities as far as Interesting bass notes you typically wouldn't be able to play in a chord, as well as for some really neat piano like chords that span many octaves. Most people using these guitars are focused on metal but I really believe it has a place in all genres especially jazz.

[@Fernandozada]

P4 tuning is the most amazing thing I do in a few months. oposite to him I feel so much inspirate to play with simetrical tuning

[@RichardGarcia93]

That’s some insane technique. I gotta try this tuning.

[@toquita3d]

Yay! Another long video!

[@boosh90]

This is class. I love messing about with tunings to trick my brain into coming up with new ideas. One that I fell upon one day while working on a song idea was EADGAD, essentially flattening the two high strings a tone. Can lead to some interesting voicings

[@pbjwizard]

that's pretty similar to DADGad, the tuning Hozier uses for Wasteland, Baby!

[@adriyanmusic]

It is interesting how ppl have set of mind playing in their own style , thank you man for making these videos 🤠🎸

[@TheEnderBand]

I just tried tuning to consummate fourths earlier this week so the b and high e are c and f respectively. I find for scalar improvising it’s nice because I’m not constantly adjusting for the tuning discrepancy but whenever I want to grab a quick double stop or triad or any cluster of chords, sometimes the new interval change makes thirds a little harder to access. For strict single note lead playing I’d say it’s almost better but for chordal playing it takes adjusting Alex Hutchings I believe uses that tuning to great effect, as he is extremely proficient with it

[@DaVinci0963]

Thanks Troy and Wim!

[@themechanix393]

Alex Hutchings even uses custom built guitars to utilize both 4ths Tuning and the usual open string notes

[@MechanicalRabbits]

I had no idea who this guy was and in the first minute I'm already completely blown away! Best and most innovative guitar playing I've heard in a LONG time

[@chumbo]

So glad it's finally being released! Been waiting a looong time for this one!

[@bradsims5116]

Thank you. ! this is my tuning. It"s good to know there is another great p4 player out there.

[@corex72]

Mad playing.

[@WolfgangSambs]

I can totally relate to that „inspiration by restriction“ idea! By the way, that’s also what Wayne Kratnz has propagated with his „four fret zone“ idea, if anybody’s interested! 🤘

[@googe2312]

Man...that was awesome playing 👍👍👍

[@GigstarterNl]

Wonderful Wim!

[@MatthewBreithaupt]

I love all 4ths because every shape (chords and scales) works everywhere, so there is only one shape called major, etc. Downside is you can only finger 4 strings at a time so no full Barre chords possible. It's actually easier than piano, no worrying about black keys, no worrying about the G-B "kink"

[@luckylicks3497]

Oh man, what a player!

[@Bmxmusikian]

Damm that was stunning

[@auto1nfanticid3]

i had this idea coming from 6 string bass. makes diatonic scale shapes more regular, but common chord shapes harder.

[@numbersabcdefg]

Keep your 4th back-up guitar in 4ths

[@simondavid9971]

That’s great man

[@OgamiItto70]

The dissonance built into the standard tuning of a guitar is why songs written on guitar are almost always more interesting than those written on keyboards, I think. It's been the engine for all the songs I've written. Dissonance ---> resolution.

[@davestagner]

I actually have one thing in fourths in my repertoire… “The Bricklayer’s Beautiful Daughter”, a fingerstyle piece by William Ackerman. It makes very interesting work of chord shapes moving horizontally across the neck. This led me to stumble into another tuning, DADGCF, in which I composed another fingerstyle piece, “Untitled #1”. That piece is in C, with a bridge in F, despite the DAD on the low end - it uses lots of octave bass runs. I love alternative tunings, especially for fingerstyle.

[@lookwhoneedsahobbie]

this guy is amazing. thank you for introducing me to him?

[@Ghaos]

On 6 string I still used standard tunings, for anything 7 strings or higher (or bass) I used straight 4ths, its just easier to visualize on the fretboard.

[@zvonimirtosic6171]

The voice of the guitar immediately reminded me of Maton 808 body style guitar, and … there it was: Wim Der Herder plays a Maton guitar indeed.

[@michaelblack9458]

I am looking forward to trying this tunning

[@boxerfencer]

Liked the video, but not so sure about his assesment. If it were true that an unbalanced tuning is more inspiring then why dont we have +5 string bass players all using standard guitar tuning or the like, rather than perfect tuning? Are bass players uninspiried? And what about having to practice more means its more inspiring? Seems to me, and im npeaking from experience, inspiration comes when you're fresh, not exhausted from having to practice a third more. This makes no sense.

[@elementsofphysicalreality]

Yo I tune 4ths. I could talk about it for days. I have entire charts for every scale chord and arpeggio you can think of.

[@floatingshoppinglist5193]

Goddamn this is dope man thanks for this

[@courtlaw1]

This man got skills. Reminds me Don Ross.

[@vintagesounds5150]

Nice Playing Troy 🎶🎶

[@samcomfort6564]

Next level

[@01k]

Amazing video, I loved the part about Manhattan

[@troygrady]

Ha. If you live here, it's on your mind all the time that the older parts of the city have all the crazy streets.

[@arpeggioblues5924]

I converted all my guitars to EADGCF.. now all triads, chords, scales, modes.. have the exact same pattern.. you learn the guitar 300% faster when you get rid of the 1st and 2nd string shift.. this is an old antiquated tuning created for spanish guitar in years past, and it just stuck and no one challenged it except for a few guitar masters, some of the best guitarists in the world are doing this. Just saying.. I converted 3 years ago, and I can play fusion jazz, I can listen and figure out any song I hear. because my fingers know the patterns, and all i have to do is find my tonic.

[@BeamRider100]

Fantastic, his playing reminds me of Tommy Emmanuel.

[@dreadful_name2924]

That dude is awesome!

[@ATX0705]

Tried 4ths tuning years back and I personally much prefer standard tuning. I guess it would be cool though to have a guitar dedicated to 4ths tuning just to mess around.

[@thinkpad20]

Amazing player! Reminds me a little bit of Ewan Dobson, both monster players. You really find some incredible guitarists Troy!

[@JobForAMaxboy]

This was some.great insight

[@MisterPoppy-sc1sj]

it's like Sylvain Luc , look at Sylvain Luc he's a incredible guitarist

[@virtusetglorie]

Makes me want to pick up guitar again and simultaneously give it up for good

[@svenjansen2134]

Never stop start playing now!

[@Guitaroverkill]

Nice picking

[@ArtbyPaulPetro]

*speechless*

[@joebegly733]

Tumeni Notes trapped in a Glass Prison! Killer tone, and looks effortless. The new RDT section of the Primer is SO great!

[@joebegly733]

WTH how did this comment get attached to this video??? I swear I was watching the newer one of the RDT DBX arpeggios...

[@CaptainBohnenbrot]

Stanley Jordan plays in a fourth tuning, Obviously his technique is very different from Wim's.

[@MrGul]

As do Alex Hutchings and Tom Quayle, both phenomenal fusion players.

[@jakemf1]

Al Joseph, Tom Quale and many others use that also

[@truescotsman4103]

Igor Paspalj please.

[@haikel527]

waw you are great player

[@tangobayus]

I think that with standard tuning there is too much emphasis on chords. I'm more oriented toward melody. I have a soprano uke tuned in 4ths. I can play all sorts of tunes- blues to classical. I tried shifting my guitar to 4ths and I like DADGAD much better because of the sympathetic tones- DADGAD has 3 roots and 2 fifths.

[@jak9990]

Holy Guacamoly 😱😱😱 that was so Dope

[@TypingHazard]

Holy string skipping! That's chops

[@kitomir9962]

He's scary good

[@abdakka0]

That's a biiiig discovery for me and many viewer I suppose

[@armandom28]

Best player so far on this channel

[@tomanderson6140]

Jesus Christ. These guys are impressive, but it's just too much damn work to develop that kind of alternate picking accuracy when skipping strings. Hybrid for the win.

[@Norseman2]

🔥 holy smokes

[@MiKeHendrycks]

Woah

[@thedonrizzguitar]

WOW

[@andrewlee3037]

he soaks his right hand in Red Bull for 5 minutes

[@ericksaulchangperez9388]

Hi Troy, you used to have a free tab download for the intro that strunz and farah did for you, i can see that the free downloas is not available anymore, can you still buy it?

[@olivercharles8736]

♥️

[@simonpsychosis2812]

Upward pick-slanter! Yes, there is hope for us. Well, no way in Hell I'll ever be this good, but still.

[@troygrady]

Absolutely. Everyone has a default or starting point, it doesn’t really matter what it is. Wim does a lot of mixing and matching of different motions to play all this crazy stuff even if his “playing on a single string” motion is the relatively common thing you and I recognize.

[@simonpsychosis2812]

@@troygrady Good point, Troy. It's things like this that keep inspiring me to just try harder and find my own voice.

[@frijo-lito]

Real question is what kind of "pure leaf" tea did he grab?

[@zvonimirtosic6171]

Why is P4 musically better than Standard tuning? Music, like storytelling, is a matter of interpretation. We learn language rules and many words to tell stories in our own way, but don't always quote paragraphs written by others. So I think it was a great mistake by many to teach the guitar by copying "hand positions" of famed players in order to learn songs, instead of interpreting their sound. That is why more intuitive music-making tunings were abandoned for the sake of seemingly "easy copycatting." The guitar playing became harder and more confusing. If the music was really the goal of tuition, then we'd have at least 30-40% of musicians playing in P4, instead of 99% playing in Standard.

[@igorperic5232]

Troy when you play fast how fast are your alternate picking licks? 150 bpm 16th notes, 180, 200 bpm?

[@troygrady]

Depends on the type of joint motion. Different joints have different capabilities. And certain joints, like the wrist joint, can make multiple motions and some of those are faster than others too. It's really interesting. But more importantly, we've learned a lot about speed in recent years. And one thing we've learned is that almost everyone, regardless of what they think, can move their hands in the 180-220bpm sixteenths range immediately, with no training at all. So this idea that only special individuals can do this, or that it takes years of "working up to speed" to achieve fast motion, is not really supported by the evidence. How do we know this? Testing. You can test out the speed of different joint motions with the simple table tapping tests in our instructional material ( troygrady.com/primer/testing-your-motions/ ). Here's one of those tests which we put right here on the channel ( kzbin.info/www/bejne/gmezhnaKlrN0hdk ). Give it a shot!

[@AlexVonCrank]

Tom Quayle’s heart just broke... 😢

[@troygrady]

I was waiting for this. Tom is an awesome player and no slight intended. This is just Wim recounting his personal experience.

[@alpardal]

@@troygrady yeah, and his sound and approach is completely different than Wim's, so it does make sense that they have different opinions on the 4ths tuning

[@AlexVonCrank]

@@troygrady I agree.

[@petermuller161]

I find the tuning of the guitar odd but I assume there’s a good reason for it.

[@troygrady]

Sorry for the confusion! The song you're hearing here is actually played in standard tuning. The alternate tuning was something Wim experimented with, because it seemed to make fretboard shapes easier, but then decided against for the creative reasons he explains in the clip.

[@petermuller161]

@@troygrady What I mean is I find the "standard tuning" of a guitar odd and that 4ths seems to make more sense. It is very interesting to see and hear from Wim's experiences leading him back to the conventional tuning. I've never tried 4ths.

[@billaraskats27]

What kind of sorcery is this?

[@riel8808]

Rick graham pls

[@user-os7vp9uj6g]

Wooooov!!!!!! Its not real!!!!!!!! Super!!!!!!

[@gregdavidson5898]

There's always some guy...........what are the rest of us supposed to do? Thumbs up! btw.

[@SoundingSix]

Sounds like Leo Kottke on steroids

[@mojooftheg5961]

Self taught??

[@Dr.TanmayMehta]

So basically a bass tuned guitar

[@svenjansen2134]

Yes

[@michaeltaylors2456]

Thank god, a bad ass picker. I think I’m gonna puke if I get treated to another “ virtuoso “ self absorbed, smack it, pause, enjoy that long pause, shoulda been a drummer, mainly open string beatin, where dat harmonic at finger style player.

[@procarpenter1788]

Right there with you. Instagram guitar players just love tuning to an open chord and then beating the shit out of a guitar and calling it good music. Glad to see there is a shift against that garbage.

[@imandan1966]

Guy is gonna have major wrist problems

[@dwayne4715]

Why? Explain please If he's doing something wrong I'd Iike to avoid it if I can

[@procarpenter1788]

@@dwayne4715 OP can’t explain it, because it’s jealousy speaking, not concern.