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Old 07-03-2013, 07:41 AM
JanVigne JanVigne is offline
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Default Alternate tunings

The most I've dabbles into alternate tunings has been drop D.

With my finger still unable to play my acoustic guitars, I'm back to spending time with my lap steel. The issue with the steel though is the tunings. C6 is common along with E9. Right now my steel is tuned to open G. However, steel players often talk about various methods of the same generic tuning. "Low G" and "High G" are different ways to tune to the same generic tuning. The technicalities of these various tunings are beyond my experience.

I can play in any tuning by looking at tabs, but that can only take me so far. What's the accepted way to learn playing alternate tunings using notation? Looking at standard tuning for my acoustics, it makes sense. One note follows the other chromatically from open sixth string to up the neck on the first string. Tuned in fourths (mostly) I can follow the flow of the notes on the page with the note positions on the neck.


How do you begin to learn alternate tunings while reading notation? Is there a common method for learning, say, open G, E9, C6, etc? Or, is this just simple rote memorization for each tuning?

Are there any good (free) on line resources for this sort of approach?
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Old 07-03-2013, 01:11 PM
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Doug Young Doug Young is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JanVigne View Post
How do you begin to learn alternate tunings while reading notation? Is there a common method for learning, say, open G, E9, C6, etc? Or, is this just simple rote memorization for each tuning?
Very few people read standard notation in alternate tunings. But if you wanted to, I'd learn the same way you learn for standard tuning. The notes in the notation don't change, you just have to learn where the notes are on the neck. So you could set out to memorize all the note positions, just as in standard. If I need to read standard notation in a new tuning, I usually find myself "translating". Let's see, the notation indicates a C, which in standard tuning would be on the 5th string, 3rd fret, but I'm in Open G, and the 5th string is down a whole step, so that C will be up two frets. And so on. Tedious, but if you stick with one or two tunings, you'll eventually learn where the notes are.

There are some online generators that will show you all the notes for various tunings, so that might help a little.
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Old 07-03-2013, 01:38 PM
stanron stanron is offline
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I suspect that if I had this as a one off task I would do a transcription into tab. If I planned to do a lot of pieces in the same tuning I might try direct reading but I imagine it would be difficult. The last piece I arranged was for four guitars. I did the arrangement in notation but read from tab when learning and recording it. It was easier.
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Old 07-03-2013, 03:21 PM
JanVigne JanVigne is offline
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Thanks. Yeah, lap steel seems to be kind of a different bird. Two sets of triads to form the open chord and then, in something like C6, there is one string which serves as the "6". So far it messes with my brain. Then, to make matters worse, most steel tabs read more like Stephan Grossman's early tabs and you're squinting at the chart trying to decide which string should actually be played.


Boogers!

Thanks for the help though.
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