Adventures in CGDGBE!

[Rudy4]

I've been playing my nylon-strung acoustic quite a bit lately, using CGDGBE, with the 6th and 5th strings tuned down to C and G respectively. I'm capoed up three frets in this first video. I've got a list of a couple dozen songs I'm using this tuning for, so I thought I'd post a few if anyone wants to try it out.

The guitar is an old Karl Hauser my daughter pulled out of a dumpster and brought to me. I narrowed the neck, put on a new radiused fretboard, bridge, and strings to make it playable. It actually sounds pretty good for a dumpster special.

My steel string guitar has no problem with this tuning either, so it should work pretty well for anyone else.

One of the reasons for doing the video is so others can follow the chord forms I'm using for various songs. The tuning and chord forms work well for both hard strumming and chord-based melodic work, and even delicate fingerpicked melodic stuff.

The tuning is commonly associated with Hawiian slack key music and is referred to as C Wahine or "Keola's C", but it works nicely for a wide variety of music if you are open minded.

Without further Ado, a quick pass through "First There Is A Mountain" to show some chord forms and demonstrate their use:

[FrankHudson]

More than a decade ago when I was having a lot of problem with finger-joint issues that made it difficult for me to make a regular cowboy chord C, I figured I could use an alt tuning to make a similar voicing by lowering the low E and A strings to C and G.

I thought I'd invented the tuning.

As you point out, it's been done before in slack key, but the first song I heard was done using this tuning (disabusing me of the idea I'd "invented" it) was Richard Thompson's "Vincent Black Lightning."

It is a cool tuning with a great song in the chord voicings from the lowered strings. I find the drop of the E to low C can be a little marginal, but if one doesn't pluck it too hard or sustain it long, it sounds true enough.

[SalFromChatham]

Thumbs up! Great contribution! Well recorded too

[Rudy4]

Thanks for the comments, always of interest to me.

Coincidentally, RT's Vincent Black Lightning was probably the first time I ever heard this tuning, too. I'm a huge RT fan and saw him perform it at a live show shortly after he had written it. I've always liked his live band line-ups, especially the current power trio, but his stuff is so raw and visceral when he does his acoustic solo shows.

I want to post a few more examples of songs in this topic to demonstrate more chord forms within the tuning. It's a fun tuning to play with and it's interesting how easily adaptable it is for different musical styles and genres.

I think "Big Yellow Taxi" might be the next thing I post. Joni obviously used this tuning for some of her songs. It's easy to find a lot of "Joni" chords within the tuning.

I'll try to include a chart of chord forms, too.

[zenpicker]

Very tasty indeed. I've always associated that tune with Donovan...I think it was the B side of my childhood 45 of "Jennifer, Juniper." But wait, was Donovan Hawaiian??? Who knew?

That's a nice tuning. I've played with it a bit, and have written a fair number of tunes in its Scottish cousin Orkney (CGDGCD), which shares the bottom four strings and then provides interesting doubling possibilities with strings 6+2 and 4+1. I believe Simon Fox and Alex De Grassi have also used your tuning, though I'd have to check.

Kudos on performance, recording and the whole idea of throwing that guitar into that tuning and then playing Donovan on it. Woo wee.

[Rudy4]

Originally Posted by zenpicker

Very tasty indeed. I've always associated that tune with Donovan...I think it was the B side of my childhood 45 of "Jennifer, Juniper." But wait, was Donovan Hawaiian??? Who knew?

That's a nice tuning. I've played with it a bit, and have written a fair number of tunes in its Scottish cousin Orkney (CGDGCD), which shares the bottom four strings and then provides interesting doubling possibilities with strings 6+2 and 4+1. I believe Simon Fox and Alex De Grassi have also used your tuning, though I'd have to check.

Kudos on performance, recording and the whole idea of throwing that guitar into that tuning and then playing Donovan on it. Woo wee.

Thanks, Edward. I have played First There Is A Mountain , Jennifer Juniper, and Lalena (I immediately ran out a bought a recorder to play that one...) since first hearing them on TV when Donovan used to perform barefoot on a sheepskin rug. Donovan was hugely popular and the first LP was chock full of huge hits.

I had forgotten about it until one of the group of 5 guys I do a side band with brought it to our jam after hearing the Steve Earle rendition, proving you just can't hold a good song down!

[zenpicker]

I remember Donovan on tv too…we are dating ourselves. But I played that 45 with the bright yellow label into the ground on my wee record player with the 3” speaker. Still one of my fondest moments of musical discovery, and thank you for bringing it back. (It was my second record; “Love is Blue” was the first…)

Loved the video, shot in my town of Boulder, not ten miles from here, I believe. That’s a rousing rendition!

[Rudy4]

Here's a quick pass through "Big Yellow Taxi" to show a few more of those big, expansive open chords in this CGDGBE tuning, this time capoed at the second fret to play in the key of D.

[Rudy4]

A pass through "Never Going Back Again", done with flat pick in CGDGBE tuning on nylon strung guitar.

[Rudy4]

A pass through Sting's Fields Of Gold in CGDGBE tuned nylon strung acoustic guitar:

[Rudy4]

A quick pass through Norman Blake's Whisky Deaf Whisky Blind:

[Rudy4]

It's been a while...

Here's a pass through Joseph Spence's "Happy Meeting In Glory" done in CGDGBE tuning, this time done on my lil' size 0 steel string:

[Rudy4]

Another in my series of tunes done in CGDGBE tuning, "South Of The Border", from the Gene Autry movie of the same name. It's played here to demonstrate the 3 parts of the tune and played on a Cordoba Cadete 3/4 size nylon strung classical guitar tuned in CGDGBE and capoed at the second fret.