KVR Audio

Oops. But same suggestion-- a video is worth 1000 lines of code.

Good, then I can still make the script 943 lines longer before I have to make a video instead

But I get your point. Will look into it...

Still not a video (before that I would have to practise these tunings to give a fair comparison...).
But some diagrams. Base note is highlighted in green, major third in blue and fifth in yellow (so we see a major trichord).

My test case: Playing an arpeggio of chord inversions upwards or downwards (1-4-7/4-7-1/7-1-4/1-4-7 etc.)
For all fourth we can either make a diagonal move up or (when staying in a "block" of width 5) would have to memorize quite a lot of patterns.

For tritone tuning block play is quite easy, going up vertically.

For minor third rotated block play is also quite easy - but we would go horizontally which requires under/over reaching of fingers like on a piano (at least for 1-4-7/1-4-7 etc.).

Ranges are ok with all three variants (all fourth has about half an octave less than augmented fourth but still ok). Minor third rotated is particularly good range wise with one and a half octaves more - almost seven octaves.

Below we see variants where the lower three "strings" are tuned upwards again (so everything is mirrored on the fourth row). This might be interesting when playing the instrument on a shoulder strap, so the left and right hand can play exactly the same shapes.

Here tritone shows it's nice property that mirroring doesn't change anything on the shapes.

For minor thirds rotated , bass mirrored the bass, having only four rows doesn't allow fully isomorphic play in all tonalities anymore, as you need five rows to play the same shape from everywhere (Intuition: A chromatic scale is played on three rows. There are three variants how to play this, starting either on the lower, middle or upper row. To play the "lower row fingerings" on the upper row you need two rows above - thus five for fully isomorphic play).
The right hand has five rows, so there you can use all shapes in all positions.

(The minor thirds rotated thing still has the disadvantage that cell centers are now three semitones apart horizontally. So stopping at the desired pitch when pitch bending becomes more challenging.
Also it is currently not possible to set up this mapping without third party tools, so you loose the plug-n-play aspect, things like pitch rounding or key illumination are not prepared for that etc.)

Edit: Also added "stick tuning" which might also be interesting for shoulder strap playing.

Will play around with these some more...

Here another post that shows a second test case - scales. To understand scales it can be helpful to think about the semitone steps as switching from one whole tone scale to another.


Here we see the one whole tone scale represented as dark green to light green and the other whole tone scale from dark blue to light blue. The major scale is highlighted

With all fourth the structure is least obvious. Horizontally a whole tone scale is placed on every other column. But on the row above it is the opposite. Edit: chose a new fingering that makes the 6-6 pattern more obvious, with semitone steps between rows. As long as you know that whole tone scale positions (on odd or even cells) alternate each row, it is somewhat intuitive that adjacent cells vertically up or down have to be on "the other" whole tone scale.

For tritone tuning the structure is a little bit more obvious - a semitone step (and thus the change from one whole tone scale to the other) means going from an odd column to an even column or the other way around. Of course it also helps that the pattern repeats after two rows.

Minor third rotated tuning shows the 6-6 structure best (at least of these three tunings...). There the whole tone scales are the diagonals. Semitone steps happen when switching (via a vertical step) from one diagonal to the other.

Thanks for these explanations I didn‘t have time to provide myself. This explains easily why I prefer the augmented fourth tuning (sounds better than tritone...; - ).
@Roger, are there still surfaces without bumps? If yes I guess I should order one, just in case...

I have a few but I find the bumps to be so small that they disappear unless I choose to notice them.

How are you guys playing a fourth in all-fourth tuning? This interval occurs quite often. Do you play with two fingers on top of each other (and if yes - with two fingers or one in "barré") or do you try to circumvent the situation by playing both interval notes on the same string six cells apart?
E.g. for the "inversions upwards quest".
This part is challenging me atm. Trying to play with all pitch correction disabled (as being able to play pure intervals is imho a very interesting property of the Linnstrument). Am not a guitarist, so no finger memory on this tuning

That problem was the one which made me try out the augmented fourth tuning. Never looked back... Though my personal instrument history included violin (fifth) and bass (4th) I never had a problem to get into augmented fourths...

By the way, thanks NothanUmber for the helpful posts. I think we are collectively designing the note interface that may be a standard in years to come. And this topic is an important element of that design discussion.

NothanUmber wrote:How are you guys playing a fourth in all-fourth tuning? This interval occurs quite often. Do you play with two fingers on top of each other (and if yes - with two fingers or one in "barré") or do you try to circumvent the situation by playing both interval notes on the same string six cells apart?
E.g. for the "inversions upwards quest".
This part is challenging me atm. Trying to play with all pitch correction disabled (as being able to play pure intervals is imho a very interesting property of the Linnstrument). Am not a guitarist, so no finger memory on this tuning

For myself for chords quantise stays on, using a split if necessary with left split on and right split off.

Chords on any fretless instrument take a long time to master, I'm too old for that with the linnstrument, don't know how many years I have left

Though the muscle memory is different with each instrument anyway, independant of the tuning. I,have no problem to switch between bass, violin and LinnStrument.
My time is limited as well, but the decision for augmented fourth was fixed pretty fast, simply after playing it for maybe two weeks. Within that time I was trying the others as well...
It does especially help to learn harmonic relations, because of its symetric order. Much easier to grab than any other order.

I've been reading this thread with interest. Yesterday I went to my old Musix Pro app (which, by the way, has been updated) and tested the tritones layout. Today I've been playing with it on the Linnstrument and I'm liking it.

I have had a go at the augmented fourths and apart from everything being in the wrong place I can see some benefits

I think I will try that idea of 2 weeks and see what occurs.

I have to say I have returned to the default tuning. I like the symmetry of it all but I was stretching my fingers too much (I don't use the thumb for playing). Tuning in 4ths have the problem of moving to 5ths and 8ves but it is not a big deal - in my opinion.

By the way tuning in minor thirds gives also pretty simple fingering for chords and only two fingers needed to move up and down scales but again the drawback is a shorter range.

I think the salient issue is how easy it is to finger common 4-note chords. I feel that fourths tuning does that best, but I'm enjoying this discussion.