High Bass

High bass is the smallest cross-tuning a fiddle has. One string moves — the lowest, up a whole tone — and everything else stays exactly where it was. You buy a low A that rings under a tune in A, and you pay almost nothing for it.

The retune, string by string

Derived from pitch arithmetic against standard GDAE — one row differs, and that row is the whole tuning:

ADAE — 1 string moves (4).

What the open strings spell

The distinct letters now sounding are A, D, E, which reads as Dsus2 or Asus4. Three letters rather than two, and unlike cross A or sawmill the set actually stacks: it is a suspended chord, readable from either end. So high bass is not modal in the same austere way. There is still no third, but there is a root and a real fifth, and tunes settle onto it more definitely.

The drone, and the bow arm

The ringing A sits at the bottom of the instrument, one string away from the D — which means a melody played in first position on the middle strings has a drone permanently underneath it and a single crossing away. That is the least demanding drone arrangement on this site, and the reason high bass is the tuning to try first. It also leaves the E string where it belongs, so the top of a tune loses nothing.

What survives, and what does not

The standard double-stop library does NOT apply here — a stopped string moved, so any pair naming an interval against it now names a different one. Read the scale of that, though: strings 3, 2 and 1 are untouched, three of four. Every pair on the double-stop pages that stays off the lowest string is still exactly right, and in first position a great many of them do.

This is the one tuning here you can half-commit to. Keep playing what you know on the top three strings, treat the low A as something you brush rather than stop, and reverse it in thirty seconds when the set moves to a tune in G. If you decide you want the fuller sound, cross A is one more string away. First position is where both of them are played.