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The Cipher System’s Five-Degree (Perfect-Fourth) and Seven Degree (Perfect-Fifth) Calculation Lines, used for plotting musical materials on the Guitar and Mandolin fretboard’s respectively, also work on Chapman Stick and similar instruments.
The tuning options for virtually all Stick, touch-style, or tapping fretboard instruments, are comprised of some combination of straight 5ths or/and straight 4ths. All but the 8 string instruments can usually be conceptualized as having two logical tuning halves: a bass half and a melody half. Typically, the bass strings will be tuned in 5ths (like “lefty” mandolin, tenor banjo, or violin), and the melody strings are tuned in 4ths (like standard bass or guitar). So if you’re already familiar with The Cipher applied to any other common string instrument you’ll feel relatively at ease, on familiar ground, conceptually. These instruments are unusual birds, but at least you won’t feel lost, you’ll have a clue, and you’ll be able to reuse and apply virtually everything you’ve already learned about music theory and fretboard mechanics to this these new instruments.
Stick’s are tapping or touchboard® instruments. Both hands are used to “chord”. So there’s no separate strumming hand and chording hand like other fretted string instruments. Both hands do double-duty simultaneously. All tapping fretboard string instruments are electric. [Update; there is at least one custom made acoustic instrument in the world now, the Acoustick, maker unknown, played by veteran Stick player Bob Culbertson. While this instrument looks acoustic, I assume it still requires a pickup and amplification in use.] Stick’s come in 3 basic configurations, 8, 10, and 12 string. The 8 string Sticks are more like guitar’s or basses with a few extra lower bass strings added, but they’re still tuned to 4ths (like bass or guitar). All models can use a few or more different tunings. Most common are the Standard and Matched Reciprocal tunings. But even those two tunings are very similar to each other. In a nutshell, the only difference between Standard and Matched Reciprocal tuning (used on 10 and 12 string Stick’s), is that in Matched Reciprocal tuning the melody strings, as a unit, get tuned up an extra whole-step. So the melody strings retain their same overall internal relationships and patterns but everything gets slid up two frets compared to Standard tuning.
There are so many Stick models and possible tunings that I can only give you a basic overview of the instrument here, plus show you how to apply The Cipher to it. I’ll do mostly Standard tuning (on a 10 String Stick) and a little Matched Reciprocal tuning. I intend only to help you get your foot in the door.
This Cipher for Stick section essentially duplicates the all of the fretboard related material in Core Cipher Components — Group Two (fretboard components) section, with all drawings being appropriate to the 10 string Stick fretboard. The text here is also nearly identical to the corresponding guitar and mandolin versions.
Note; the Pattern of Unisons and Octaves for Stick section is somewhat abbreviated here compared to other iterations of it on this web site. There would be just too many drawings required to adequately cover 8, 10, and 12 string Sticks, in two tunings each, plus the exponential increase in necessary pattern study due to the mixing of 4ths and 5ths tunings within a single instrument. Specifically, the special circumstances that arise when you cross over between logical tuning halves. But you’ll have more that enough material and information to get started, and plenty of blank Stick fretboard grids to make as many of your own drawings as you need — for the instrument and tuning of your choice. You can use any other iteration of the Pattern of Unisons and Octaves (found elsewhere on this web site) as the basis and model for the kinds of patterns and relationships you might want to isolate and learn about. Remember, 5ths is like mandolin, 4ths is like guitar or bass.
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