New Standard Tuning - Artists Who Use NST

Artists Who Use NST

Robert Fripp has used the New Standard Tuning since 1984.

Fripp has taught NST in his Guitar-Craft courses. In Guitar Craft and since 2010 in the successor Guitar Circles, students use only New Standard Tuning. Having to use a new tuning, the students are challenged to approach their playing with greater mindfulness, putting to rest their habitual use of automatic chords or licks. With the new tuning, guitarists have to find new ways of musical expression.

The tuning is used by students of Guitar Craft, of which there have been three thousand. Guitar-Craft alumni who continue to practice NST are called "crafty guitarists" or "crafties". Some crafty guitarists formed The League of Crafty Guitarists (LCG), which toured with Robert Fripp and released several albums. The Guitar-Craft experience and the League of Crafty Guitarists trained guitarists who went on to form new bands, such as the California Guitar Trio and Trey Gunn; the California Guitar Trio and Gunn toured with Fripp as The Robert Fripp String Quintet. Other alumni of the League of Crafty Guitarists include members of Los Gauchos Alemanes, such as U.S. guitarist Steve Ball; Ball is associated with the Seattle Guitar Circle, along with LCG alumnus Curt Golden. The collection A Plague of Crafty Guitarists features the following Guitar-Craft alumni, who were listed in a review by Barry Cleveland: Tobin Buttram, Nigel Gavin, Geary Street Quartet, Bill Hibbits, Janssen and Jensen, Sur Pacifico, Playmovil, and Santos Luminosos. NST is used also by the following guitar-artists: Gitbox Rebellion, BigTime Trio, Zum, the Atomic Chamber Ensemble, Europa String Choir, Fabio Mittino, Lost Pedro, Tom McCarthy of Chicago's Luminance Ensemble.

NST has been adapted for instruments besides guitar. Trey Gunn (Crimson's touch-guitar player from 1994 to 2003) and Markus Reuter (TUNER with Crimson drummer Pat Mastelotto) have adapted NST for their 8- and 10-string instruments; in 2007 Reuter used a B♭-F-C-G-D-A-C-D tuning. Finnish musician Heikki Malmberg uses a 7-string guitar tuned in NST with an additional low F when he is not playing drums.