Although I am not sure, it seems to me that Chris Squire was (one of) the first to use a non-standard tuning on an 8-string bass.
The first track I remember are actually two: Changes and Hearts, where the top two strings were tuned as perfect fifths. Chris describes this sound as "kind of gothic" on his Starlicks video. To my knowledge he didn't use this technique by the time of the potato-head 4008, but more so when he played the Ranney bass.
This Ranney bass was also used when playing Roundabout live by the time of the "In the round" tour... (guessing from the fotos on Yesshows), however he wasn't using any non-standard tuning by then.
In the Paris sessions there are one or two songs where an 8-string bass can be heard, but I have trouble to distinguish which bass was used... possibly the Ranney, with standard tuning.
Later on The Ladder, two songs featuring the Ranney bass with Chris alternate tuning (or altered), namely It Will be a Good Day and To be Alive.
The tuning on fifths of the two top strings does limit the playing of a normal bass, you don't want your "single" notes sounding like a power-chord all the time (there are other fifths than perfect ones in a tonality) so Chris has to do most of the regular work on the bottom two strings (normally in octaves) and save the top strings for special places of the song - and no one can do that better than The Fish
Listening to these four tracks carefully you can detect when these strings are used and the special effect they produce, hard to describe how it feels, but I would say it's a strong-serious-imponent feel of the parallel fifth.
The intro of Changes comes to mind (especially the live "extra" intro on post 90125 shows), you can hear that "imponent" sound. But the most beautiful example is all of the intro of Hearts and the passage that resolves to "Many moons cascade one river", just after that. The combination of fifths makes the overall harmony sound unique, somewhat impressionistic due to the resulting open chords, and I think no other instrument could achieve that character.
Inspired by that tuning, after I had my 8-string bass (unfortunately it's not a RIC) I took on Chris' idea and I made another change. I tuned the bass like so, but with the top (G) string having an E above it, thus making a major sixth. With this experiment I wrote a tune that was part of the first alt.music.yes CD "Cyberian Khatru". Its tuning makes the whole structure chord-oriented and takes much use of the open strings, it's a very simple tune that I think tries to show the different colours of the 8-string, the sound of the instrument.
So I would invite you of course to take a listen here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LxcwOs3qj8
and carry on the discussion, how do you feel for Chris' work on the 8-string, his approach to other tunings, and add some more info to what I wrote here... I for one think that this is one of the most interesting sides of Chris' playing, maybe cause I like so much the sound of the 8-string.
A nice weekend everyone!
Miguel
