My son and I have been learning the guitar together for about three years now. We’re just starting to approach the corner that leads to the path that will eventually bring us to the beginning of the end of the beginner stage. It’s been awesome, especially jamming together.
He recently started playing an Eb alto saxophone and wants me to play with him. Clearly standard guitar tuning isn’t sounding right. His sax is correctly registering as Eb on our clip-on tuner, so that’s good.
Am I right that Eb is one and a half steps above C (C>Db>D>Eb)? That’s a minor third, right? And if that’s the case, then if I want to sound good with him, I should tune up so that:
E > Gb
A > C
D > F
G > Bb
E > Gb
Will that give me access to the entire fretboard if I play in 'C' (or rather, the frets that correspond to C)? I know of but not about alternate tunings; could tuning up that high hurt the neck?
Or could I just play up and down the fretboard in Eb major (i.e. flattening all the Es, As and Bs an playing all the rest as natural notes)?
If it’s harder for him to hit that low C (he’s only been playing for a month now and this is post-practice fun-time), am I right that we could simply start on whatever note he’s comfortable with as the root and it’d just be a mode of C (as long as I start on the same relative root (i.e. a minor third up from what he's starting with) and keep the correct flatted notes)?
I realize that we could just work all this out by ear, but theory is extremely important. Since I don’t really know theory myself, I thought it wise to check here before heading down a misinformed path.
Submitted October 11, 2021 at 04:11PM by Rhythmdvl https://www.reddit.com/r/Learnmusic/comments/q639nk/can_i_tune_a_guitar_up_to_sound_good_with_an_alto/?utm_source=ifttt