Reaching for a C chord at Calton Pass in the Barras, 1987
This is where I will be writing about the guitar tunings I use most of the time, how I arrived at them and the players from whom I learned about them.
Playing in the street for many years, I met and talked with lots of people, and not surprisingly, many of those were guitar players, who were interested in hearing about the guitar tunings I was using, just as much as I was interested in talking about them. SO - when I'm writing this, I'll imagine I'm speaking to those people - that's what I'll imagine, here in my lamplit room...
You're a guitar player, so you know that the basic guitar tuning is EADGBE. And you'll also be aware that you can tune the 6th string down a tone to D (DADGBE) , and that this changes the way the guitar sounds, and that this tuning is good for playing in and around the key of D. SO: you have changed the tuning you started with by de-tuning just ONE string, and you now have a new tuning which is very close to your original one but which sounds different and plays different and makes you think differently (as well as making possible some things you couldn't do in the tuning you began with).
Over time, I came to see most tunings I use as being closely related in just this same way. Looked at in this view, you're seeing a small number of basic tunings, three or four, let's call them tuning "families". Each of these can be altered in the way described above, by de-tuning just one string, to produce (or even say, to reveal) another closely-related tuning which sounds, plays and "thinks" completely differently from the first, and which can itself be altered in the same way to produce another tuning, and so on. SO: the basic tuning forms or "families" (they're closely related) that I play are:
Playing in the street for many years, I met and talked with lots of people, and not surprisingly, many of those were guitar players, who were interested in hearing about the guitar tunings I was using, just as much as I was interested in talking about them. SO - when I'm writing this, I'll imagine I'm speaking to those people - that's what I'll imagine, here in my lamplit room...
You're a guitar player, so you know that the basic guitar tuning is EADGBE. And you'll also be aware that you can tune the 6th string down a tone to D (DADGBE) , and that this changes the way the guitar sounds, and that this tuning is good for playing in and around the key of D. SO: you have changed the tuning you started with by de-tuning just ONE string, and you now have a new tuning which is very close to your original one but which sounds different and plays different and makes you think differently (as well as making possible some things you couldn't do in the tuning you began with).
Over time, I came to see most tunings I use as being closely related in just this same way. Looked at in this view, you're seeing a small number of basic tunings, three or four, let's call them tuning "families". Each of these can be altered in the way described above, by de-tuning just one string, to produce (or even say, to reveal) another closely-related tuning which sounds, plays and "thinks" completely differently from the first, and which can itself be altered in the same way to produce another tuning, and so on. SO: the basic tuning forms or "families" (they're closely related) that I play are:
EADEAE
I’d been trying for some time to play harp tunes composed by the Irish harper O'Carolan. Although the tunes were intriguing and charming, a treasure trove of music, I couldn’t find a tuning that sounded right for them. Then I came across this, in “Acoustic Music” magazine, August 1980, from Davy Graham: “ I use a pipe tuning for playing the Irish pieces. The B string is tuned down a tone to A, and the third, the G, is tuned down a tone and a half to E, so you get EADEAE. Martin Carthy taught me the tuning. I’d been using D tuning for quite a long time, but I found that it was limited, it would only play Oriental scales, but it wouldn’t play Irish pipe tunes.”
This was exciting! The EADEAE tuning was one I’d never heard of and my simple settings of the harp tunes began to work well in it. I’ve been playing the tuning since that time; I call it the " A tunng" because the 5th string (A) is your tonic, the 4th string (D) is your sub-dominant or IV, and the 6th string (E) is your dominant or V.
Now if you take EADEAE and lower the 6 th to D (DADEAE)....the result is a new tuning closely related to EADEAE. In this tuning, you can play in the key of A, and you have this wonderful deep bass D, for your IV chord on the 6th string, or you can play in the key of D.
Notice the intervals? DADGAD has these intervals (low to high): a 5th, a 4th, a 4th, a 2nd and a 4th on top, or 54424 as I think of it. The "A tuning" uses the same set of intervals as DADGAD but with the fifth moved up to the top (low to high): a 4th, a 4th, a 2nd , a 4th, with a 5th on top,or 44245. So the 4424 "core" is the same as DADGAD, but the 5th in the bass of DADGAD is moved up to the treble in the A tuning, making that tuning suitable for melodic playing, as Davey wrote in Guitar International August 1990: "Deriving from Martin Carthy, this tuning is perfect for melodic playing. It would be of advantage to learn some pieces tuned this way as you may well discover a natural preference for melodic music - which forms by far the greater part of music on the globe." Yes, David - it was of advantage. Thank you.
I’d been trying for some time to play harp tunes composed by the Irish harper O'Carolan. Although the tunes were intriguing and charming, a treasure trove of music, I couldn’t find a tuning that sounded right for them. Then I came across this, in “Acoustic Music” magazine, August 1980, from Davy Graham: “ I use a pipe tuning for playing the Irish pieces. The B string is tuned down a tone to A, and the third, the G, is tuned down a tone and a half to E, so you get EADEAE. Martin Carthy taught me the tuning. I’d been using D tuning for quite a long time, but I found that it was limited, it would only play Oriental scales, but it wouldn’t play Irish pipe tunes.”
This was exciting! The EADEAE tuning was one I’d never heard of and my simple settings of the harp tunes began to work well in it. I’ve been playing the tuning since that time; I call it the " A tunng" because the 5th string (A) is your tonic, the 4th string (D) is your sub-dominant or IV, and the 6th string (E) is your dominant or V.
Now if you take EADEAE and lower the 6 th to D (DADEAE)....the result is a new tuning closely related to EADEAE. In this tuning, you can play in the key of A, and you have this wonderful deep bass D, for your IV chord on the 6th string, or you can play in the key of D.
Notice the intervals? DADGAD has these intervals (low to high): a 5th, a 4th, a 4th, a 2nd and a 4th on top, or 54424 as I think of it. The "A tuning" uses the same set of intervals as DADGAD but with the fifth moved up to the top (low to high): a 4th, a 4th, a 2nd , a 4th, with a 5th on top,or 44245. So the 4424 "core" is the same as DADGAD, but the 5th in the bass of DADGAD is moved up to the treble in the A tuning, making that tuning suitable for melodic playing, as Davey wrote in Guitar International August 1990: "Deriving from Martin Carthy, this tuning is perfect for melodic playing. It would be of advantage to learn some pieces tuned this way as you may well discover a natural preference for melodic music - which forms by far the greater part of music on the globe." Yes, David - it was of advantage. Thank you.
DADGAD The late Davy Graham is widely credited with the invention of this tuning (see the links page for links to Davy's website and his Wikipedia entry). DADGAD has these intervals (low to high): a 5th, a 4th, a 4th, a 2nd and a 4th on top, or 54424, as I think of it. (more to follow on this)
DGDGAD Related to DADGAD (I'll get to this one!)
