Fourths Tuning - Chords and Inversions

Book 1 — Fourths Tuning: Chords and Inversions

Instant PDF download · 48 pages

Five of the six string pairs on your guitar are a perfect fourth apart. One is a major third. That single inconsistency between the G and B strings is why chord shapes bend out of alignment when they cross those strings, why barre chords have that awkward finger, and why nothing on the neck transposes cleanly. It's a workaround you've been paying for since the day you started.

Tune the B up to C and the E up to F and it's gone. Every pair a fourth, every shape valid on any set of strings, the whole neck symmetrical.

Learn a third of what you used to. In standard tuning a chord type has to be learned separately for each string group, because the shapes don't survive the crossing. In fourths they do — one voicing, moved anywhere, unchanged. Roughly two thirds less to memorise for the same vocabulary.

What's inside: over thirty chord types — open chords, closed triads, spread voicings, and on through the extended and altered chords you need for jazz. Sequenced so each type builds on the last rather than arriving as an isolated grip, with diagrams you can read at a glance.

This is the place to start with fourths tuning. Books 2 and 3 cover scales and arpeggios, and modes.