[adkadskhj]

> It's enchanting and wonderful. Sure, music theory can be annoying there are many weird and semi-arbitrary rules about how things are called and there's lots of historical baggage attached to everything

I'm in the same boat as you (almost identical, different FP though), but i'm actually fascinated by the music theory.

In the way that some games touch the "software engineer" side of my brain (Satisfactory, Factorio) but is tiring, music theory weirdly gives me similar vibes without being tiring. Maybe it will be when i know more, but currently music theory just feels like patterns and patterns and patterns. It's remarkable how much you can learn with a handful of patterns. While you're learning one thing you'll often noticed patterns for another.. it's really interesting to me.

I also am a novice guitarist and i find piano much more interesting from the music theory standpoint. The patterns on the guitar are dynamic (based on tuning) and it feels like the guitar makes music theory more difficult. I've enjoyed piano much more for this reason.

I agree, piano is good fun to learn at any age. I highly recommend it.

[ronyeh]

But why bother with alternate tunings for the guitar? Just learn the standard EADGBe tuning and all the scale shapes and chords will make sense eventually. Piano is also a stringed instrument, with one common tuning that most of us westerners play in.

[adkadskhj]

Because the voicings change quite a bit with what you're able to reach in different tunings.

I'm not saying alternate tunings are mandatory, just that you can't learn a single tuning with guitar and expect to only ever know just that. It's Very common to change tunings in guitar. Not so in Piano, that i've seen yet at least.

> Piano is also a stringed instrument, with one common tuning that most of us westerners play in.

Are there different tunings for Pianos? I'm not even sure what different tunings would look like, non-sequential pitch ordering? C next to G or something?

The only Piano "tuning" i'm familiar with is temperament, however that's functionally different than what we're talking about with Guitar.

[ronyeh]

Fair enough. I was just responding to your statement that guitar makes music theory more difficult. I'm not an expert in either instrument, and I think they each have their advantages and disadvantages. I like how scales and chord shapes (i.e. barre chords) are movable up and down the neck. It really taught me about transposing music and playing in different keys. On piano, a major triad chord looks different depending on the root note.

Today I was trying out the Sweet Child O' Mine intro and that's in a different tuning, although the shapes remain the same. (it's like capo -1). I know Drop D or other tunings can change the shapes for sure. However, for a casual guitarist, we can just concentrate on standard tuning and learn all the music theory that way.

For piano, I only know of Just Intonation and Equal Temperament, which still have the notes in the same orders. Although theoretically you could string and tune a piano differently....