"Regular" tunings (same interval between all strings)

Playing Technique
#1

While “regular” may seem a misnomer (term via Regular tuning - Wikipedia) I’m curious this community’s experiences with tunings with the same interval between each set of strings.
(forgive my lack of theory knowledge ahead) After playing each of the following 3 tunings for a whopping total of maybe an hour, I’m curious what mechanical / mental advantages could be gained from these. My goals on guitar are just to play along to my favorite songs (which are 99% of the time extreme metal riffs/solos), so of course using a different fingering may be strange - but I mention this as FYI that I’m not really into acoustic chord voicing, etc.

It seems the most common of these 3 is tuning 5 semitones apart (seen called “perfect fourths” or just “fourths”) and of course standard tuning is very close to this. Troy has a video that touches on this: Tuning In Fourths — Efficiency Boost Or Creative Challenge? Feat. Wim Den Herder - YouTube . You can find quite a few videos / discussions on this online. (E,A,D,G,C,F) An advantage I noticed while playing was ability to mimic fingerings of “stuff written on lower strings of standard tuned 7-string” on a 6-string (by one more string higher).

Less common than that, tuning 4 semitones apart (“major third” or “M3”) has mentions online. One interesting version would be using a 7-string, so that you get back to range of standard tuning (E,G#,C,E,G#,C,E). I enjoyed the ability to go “straight up/down” chromatically by assigning 4 fingers to 4 frets. The “power chord” spacing of 3 frets vs 2 felt strange, but getting the octave “above vertically” 3 strings above was cool (ala dropped tunings).

Least common (although monsters like Shawn Lane and Ron Jarzombek have apparently used it) is tuning 6 semitones apart (“augmented fourth” or “diminished fifth”). With repeating octaves (B,F,B,F,B,F) you get some interesting options “vertically” but it seemed like more work “horizontally”. Perhaps that would lead to fewer string changes on riffs in tighter intervals; not sure if it’s worth it. Some of the string skipping and arpeggios are pretty fun in this one especially.

Thoughts? While most discussions online about tunings are about creativity, would you expect any of these to mechanically improve / challenge your playing ability?

#2

The above is possibly not the best choice because one can’t bend the C or F strings very much before they break; alternatively, one can drop everything down a semitone and start with Eb.

I tune in 4ths and you should be very careful about doing it. The plus is that you can translate any shape not just up/down frets, but up/down strings (take that, standard tuning!). However, the minus is that barre chords are “broken” (in the sense of being difficult if not impossible to finger), making a lot of popular songs difficult if not impossible to play. I believe some people have said that it’s hard to play a lot of folk music as well, but that might not be an issue for you.

#3

Agreed on the “F” bending! I was actually surprised that my local guitar center had a few sets of 8-gauge options.

I wanted to mention that I’ve messed more with the 6-semitone option and actually really like it! Check out how “Arpeggios from Hell” is fingered:
https://i.imgur.com/eHJ2Z1p.png
Look how much of that can be “chunked” mentally! Crazy!

The symmetry of it seems really cool and hopefully it’ll let me focus attention more on right hand. To me, so far the biggest downside is trying to sweep quickly -something like the intro of this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXc-fYP0TLY I have a hard time with the “lack of 1nps in middle of sweep” One alternative would be 3nps via tapping (if memory serves Paul Gilbert did something similar with his three string guitar)

#4

There is no doubt that smart people can benefit from alternate tunings! (I guess it’s particularly convenient with a guitar that doesn’t have a Floyd!)

Oh, yeah, there is one interesting alternate tuning that starts with 5ths but ends with a minor third (likely because physics says, “I will break your string”):

#5

Bumping in case anyone else may have experiences to share. I’ve still been messing with the “tritone” version (each string 6 semitones apart) and am enjoying the mental consistency! I’m by no means a high-level player, but wonder if this tuning may help “level up”!

Here’s Mr. Grady’s “pop tarts” lick (plus extra octave)

One cool thing is having range from E1 to E4, and ability to partial capo rather than pitch shift (say you want to play along to “drop” b, c, or d songs that use open low string).

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#6

Pretty high level mechanics to me man.

As far as I’ve learned the guitar is a true solo instrument, by that I mean playing alone, no band. Thats why it’s tuned eadgbe. so you can strum a chord and then play a melody over it. If you alter this tuning you have a far harder time playing full chords. If not impossible time.

For myself as kgk said

I’m not one of them lol

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