Favorite tuning for Great American Songbook and why?

[Carey Hofer]

What's your favorite tuning for Great American Songbook tunes and why? (I'm thinking 8 string), songs (harmonic wise) somewhere between Western Swing and modern jazz where every other chord is an altered dominant Not that I don't enjoy playing altered chords. . . Just saying.

[Bill McCloskey]

Alkire 10 string tuning. No question. No other tuning gives you the range of chords, ease of scales: over 50 four note chords per fret and all the inversions. All I play are jazz standards.

[Carey Hofer]

Any suggestions on how to tune my 8 string to Alkire?

[Bill McCloskey]

Bottom to top: F, F#, G, G#, A, B, C#, E

[Bill McCloskey]

Major Triads Strings:

1,2,4
1,3,5
2,5,8

Minor Triads:

1,3,6
1,2,5

Dom7
3,4,7
1,2,4,6
3,6,8
2,3,5,8

Major 7
1,2,4,5

Minor 7
1,2,4,7
1,2,3,5

6th
3,5,7
1,2,4,7
1,2,3,5

Minor 6
1,2,3,6

Dim
1,2,6

7b5
2,3,6,8

Maj9
1,2,3,4,5



That should get you started.

[Bill McCloskey]

Here is my youtube channel which is devoted to the tuning. I have a few 6 string examples on there. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKR7dv ... wREitVw9Og

[Carey Hofer]

Very helpful. Thanks Bill!

[Bill McCloskey]

No problem. I have hundreds of pages of eharp lessons, most for 6 string, in a dropbox. Let me know privately if you ever want access, should you decide to give it a try.

[Joe A. Roberts]

Close to the 8 string Alkire is one of my favorite tunings, John Ely's F# harmonic minor: E C# B A G# F# F D.

This tuning has a D on the bottom instead of the G string of the Alkire above.
For 8 strings, I like this configuration a lot. It gives you the top 6 strings of the Leon McAullife tuning: E C# B G# F# D, and the top 4 of A6th: E C# A F#.
But those two added strings, A and F natural, add a lot of possibilities if you're careful not to hit them at the wrong time.
You can hear this tuning here: https://soundcloud.com/doug-beaumier/a- ... eel-guitar

With the same string gauges you can also tune to C diatonic... E C B A G F E C#. Andy Volk has a really gorgeous arrangement of "The Shadow of Your Smile" in his 6 string C Diatonic E-book, among others: https://www.volkmediabooks.com/products ... c-diatonic
Both of these tunings really are best played with four picks, and many of the grips are wide or unorthodox.

Even the 6th string C6th/A7th is ridiculously powerful. I highly recommend Mike Neer's amazing chord solo arrangement of Sunny Side of the Street: https://steelinstruction.com/?page_id=66
This too, in the same tuning. I don't have it though but it sounds great based on the midi: https://www.volkmediabooks.com/single-a ... l-download

Another option would be an expanded Leavitt. I personally use F D# D C Bb G E C#, tuned town a half step to be more like a B11th: E D C# B A F# D# C. The advantage of the Leavitt tuning is that there are a lot of popular standard arrangements tabbed out by William Leavitt. These are supposedly for sale by Mike Ihde, along with some of his own tab books, though in my experience my emails were unanswered!
Roy Thompson also has, available digitally, two books of Leavitt arrangements of old songs that I bought and have been enjoying.
The TOC for the second book:


There is also this arrangement of Doug Beaumier's that was posted publicly on the forum in the early 2000s, it is beautiful!

[Mike Neer]

Carey, this is as honest as I can get: the tuning ultimately is just a part of the equation. Most of the music is coming from you. All the tunings have the same notes on the neck, they are just organized differently. So, if you have ideas about how these tunes should be played, you can find the notes in any tuning. The question is, which tuning is going to open things up and give you more possibilities and help you play what YOU hear?

I find that you really can get a lot of music out of triads and other small note groupings. It just depends on how deep you are willing to go into the harmony and come up with ideas that expand your possibilities. But whatever you play, the most important goal is to make it sound good. That has different meaning to different people, but to me it means to play it like I mean to play it with the right touch, pitch, and interesting choices. It is easy to get sucked into playing in the same positions and it all comes out sounding the same to me.

I still study music heavily just looking to get deeper into the harmonic language but with the intention of it being playable on my instrument, in my tuning. My tuning happens to be C13:
C Bb C E G A C E, made famous by Jules Ah See. I do have my own variations to make certain things happen, for instance, to emulate an Oliver Nelson horn section with very close harmony. If you listen to my CD Keepin’ It Real, you will hear some 60s jazz repertoire played in C6 (6 strings) with my subtle tweaks. I think you might like some of it. There is a link in another thread for free download.

If I had more time and years left, I would definitely take another look at Alkire tuning as an auxiliary tuning. I think it would come in real handy for me for some very modern music, with all those chromatic strings. I think there is a lot of untraveled road there.

Remember this: the steel excels as a melodic instrument—adding harmony to it is essential and beautiful. Using specific voicings with 2, 3, 4 notes, especially major and minor triads in all inversions (for augmented and diminished there are a lot of possibilities, especially using dyads (also in all inversions)). There is a lot of work to be done but you can start simple. Pick one or two tunes, get settled with a tuning, and get to work. Much of what you already know will come in handy. You’ll also learn a lot more than you think because you are going to be problem solving in a big way. It’s a personal journey that many have taken and it is incredible.

[David DeLoach]

My main tuning in Leavitt tuning and I've found it works well for a lot of great songs. I've arranged more than 150 songs with this tuning and have found it to be my go-to tuning for songs with more complex harmonization.

I learned my way around it thru the 6 string arrangements of Bill Leavitt, Mike Ihde, and 8 string arrangements Roy Thompson, then started doing my own arrangements. My arrangement of WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD is below.

But as Mike Neer said, you can do wonders with any tuning if you explore it long enough.

[Jack Hanson]

C6. Why?

1) Abundance of tutorial material available.
2) Lots of variations available by tweaking a string or two.
3) Most of my guitars are set up that way.
4) If it's good enough for Jerry Byrd, Joaquin Murphey, Buddy Emmons, Curley Chalker, Mike Neer, et al, it's good enough for me.

[Frank James Pracher]

C6. Why?

1) Abundance of tutorial material available.
2) Lots of variations available by tweaking a string or two.
3) Most of my guitars are set up that way.
4) If it's good enough for Jerry Byrd, Joaquin Murphey, Buddy Emmons, Curley Chalker, Mike Neer, et al, it's good enough for me.

What Jack said...

[Carey Hofer]

A lot of really good food for thought everyone. Thank you.

[Jim Kaznosky]

Just some additional thoughts. What situation would you be envisioning playing? I mention this as that might help to narrow it down. I'm only using C6 and its variants, but as others have said, it is well suited for ensemble playing without interfering with some of the other sonic space happening. If there is space, a gigantic dense chord is lovely, but that is sort of the exception in my situation, which is at least four and as many as six musicians. As Mike said, there's a lot of mileage in dyads and triads and that's kind of where I fit in.

I can see Alkire or Leavitt as a serious contender for solo, backing track, or small group playing.

[Carey Hofer]

Right now I am playing 8 string C6th in a duet. He is a singer songwriter who writes well in many styles. Works well. I play a lot of thirds, sixths, and slants as I get better at them. Actually played my first paying gig with him recently. Play mostly guitar but we are adding steel to a few of them. I'm finding like you guys have been saying, you can say alot by implying chords. Playing ascending and descending major and minor thirds for diminished 7ths and augmented, arpeggios etc. I play chords and fills around his singing play solos between verses and so on.

Because of my jazz guitar background I seem to hear some stuff I can't seem to get out on the steel . . . Yet
I've been studying B11th, A B C# D# F# A C# E, low to high. Doug B has a chord movement chart that's helpful. I am just building on that. I'm finding that: strings 1-4 same as C6th/A6th, strings 3-5 a diminished chord, strings 2-5 is a dom inant 9th with the 3rd in the bass or a minor 6th chord or a minor seventh flat five, easy to change a min 7th to a min 6th. Should be lots of things I can do with the diminished triad over dominant chords. Then of course there's the big old 9th chord two frets down from whatever 6th chord I'm playing.

I'm planning on staying on one tuning for the most part and then always having a side project tuning to keep growing if that makes sense. Later on I would like to do solo stuff as I'm able.

[Bill McCloskey]

Check out Rich Arnold’s stuff on Facebook. He is pretty amazing

[Twayn Williams]

E13 for me. Close intervals for melody lines, and all the main chord groups on a straight bar: M6/m7, M7, dom9/m6/m7b5 etc.

My preference is always to play the melody pretty straight and unadorned, both on steel and guitar. I dislike chord/melody playing

YMMV.

[Travis Brown]

Check out Rich Arnold’s stuff on Facebook. He is pretty amazing

I googled and couldn't find him. I think the vids have been taken down.

[Bill McCloskey]

Here you go https://www.facebook.com/rich.arnold.9480

[Travis Brown]

Here you go https://www.facebook.com/rich.arnold.9480

Thanks!