Misnamed Tunings

[b0b]

"Every Amateur Does Get Better Eventually"

(see https://www.b0b.com/infoedu/steal.html)

[Allan Revich]

My 6 string tuning is G B D F# A D. I call it D/G, pronounced “D over G”. I think that’s better than the chord name G Major 9, don’t you?

I personally prefer “G major 9”, but “D over G” is just as good. It’s descriptive of the tuning, not a misnaming.

[Mark Eaton]

Obviously, whatever works for an individual to help memorize something by using a mnemonic, etc. - great!

Where it becomes foggy is when you have to communicate with other people.


I also prefer G major 9, because the first thing that comes to mind when I see it written as "D/G" or "D over G" is a slash chord on regular guitar (or piano) where there is a substitution for the bass note, as in a D major chord with a G bass note rather than the normal D. So mentally I would apply that idea to a lap style guitar tuning.





It's almost like one needs to write out "D chord over G chord" for this tuning. Because D over G to me sounds like a D major tuning but instead of the 6th string being the customary D it is changed to G. As in the tuning low to high would be: G A D F# A D

But we know that isn't what b0b means in this case. I have a copy of b0b's Stella CD (good stuff) and he utilizes this tuning so I'm already hip to it.

[b0b]

So Mark, by your logic would the tuning name be Bm7/G?

[Fred Treece]

My 6 string tuning is G B D F# A D. I call it D/G, pronounced “D over G”. I think that’s better than the chord name G Major 9, don’t you?

I personally prefer “G major 9”, but “D over G” is just as good. It’s descriptive of the tuning, not a misnaming.

It’s called “b0b”.

[Mark Eaton]

So Mark, by your logic would the tuning name be Bm7/G?

You could certainly call it that since it is the name for the actual chord constructed from the notes.

But I guess you would still have to spell it out for folks. If you were playing out somewhere and someone asked after the show, "what's that tuning? It's a great sound."

If you wrote down Bm7/G on a napkin to help them remember, it only tells part of the story. With the high note being "A" in the chord, more info would be needed so that the questioner understands the "D" flatted 3rd is repeated on string #1.

On the other hand, one could say the same thing about dozens of steel guitar tunings. The name of the tuning on its own only gets your foot in the door.

So we spell out the notes. And in the case of the steel guitar, it's often spelled out high-to-low which can be confusing!

[Fred Treece]

So Mark, by your logic would the tuning name be Bm7/G?

You could certainly call it that since it is the name for the actual chord constructed from the notes.
So we spell out the notes. And in the case of the steel guitar, it's often spelled out high-to-low which can be confusing!

The D/G logic applied to standard 10-string E9 psg would result in something like Emaj9/Bm6. It works fine when it’s 6 strings and basically just a V triad stacked on a I triad. Standard E9 is weedy right from the start, which is part of its appeal imo. I got lost trying figure out what it would be called with Mark’s logic, and the high-to-low nomenclature is no help.

The bass note logic works great with Am7 tuning, ACEGACEG (low to high, of course) versus C6 CEGACEGA. What about GACEGACE? More weeds. It’s all C6, and it sounds that way when you play it.

[Mark Eaton]

It's not even really my "logic" - it's a fact that b0b's tuning, as he pointed out in his last post indeed spells out a Bm7 chord with a G note in the bass (and an additional D on the 1st string).

I don't think you can really apply much of the discussion to E9 pedal steel between the "chromatic" strings and the various pedals and knee levers. But at least with E9 I can "see" the grip for the E major triad if it's written horizontally low-to-high. I don't really "see" it the other way.

I'm still curious where the high-to-low business came from. Surely there's an answer out there beyond "well that's just the way it's always been." That's right up there with the overused phrase, "it is what it is."

[Fred Treece]

LOL, Mark. Absolutely. (Also overused, but not as useless).

In defense of D/G logic, AC#EGACEG low to high would probably best be called C6/A7 (C6 overA7), but it seems more common to write it A7/C6. Could be Am7/A7 too. This may be due to whether the player thinks in terms of low to high or high to low.

[Steffen Gunter]

Although this tuning mentioned in the first post is my main tuning I still don't understand why JB called this C#minor 9th (or did he call it 13th?): E-C#-G#-F#-E-D(-B-G)

The 9 would be a D#, wouldn't it? But there is no D#, only a b9. OK, I have a C#- chord on the first 3 strings, but it's an E6 chord too. And the whole tuning is almost the same as Ah See's E13th tuning and I now call it this way.

But I never understood JB's naming tunings by just making an addition of two involved tunings anyway.

[Fred Treece]

Although this tuning mentioned in the first post is my main tuning I still don't understand why JB called this C#minor 9th (or did he call it 13th?): E-C#-G#-F#-E-D(-B-G).

Definitely E13, definitely not C#m9. But Jerry Byrd could get away with calling it “Arthur” if he wanted to.

[Nic Neufeld]

In defense of D/G logic, AC#EGACEG low to high would probably best be called C6/A7 (C6 overA7), but it seems more common to write it A7/C6.

From what I've seen, I almost exclusively see it as C6/A7. That's how Alan Akaka writes it. Honestly I'm not sure I've seen it noted as A7/C6 before...

There were some times I've seen it just referred to as C6, mostly by Jerry Byrd, who probably just saw it as an extension or improvement of C6 itself...

[Scott Thomas]

I think the place of the secondary slash chord has to do with its location in the tuning sequence and also history. It was probably a straight C6 ECAGEC for years until someone (Jerry Byrd?) realized that tuning the low C up a half step gave him a convenient dominant strum chord. I think this is an additional characteristic of the tuning. The upper strings where most of the music is played is C6. To someone familiar with tunings, C6/A7 is clear.

[b0b]

I can never get used to seeing tunings spelled high to low. I suppose it's because I always spell chord notes low to high. Seeing C6th as ECAGEC or G major as DBGDBG always seems strange to me.

[Scott Thomas]

b0b, do you find this spelling strange?

E
C
A
G
E
C

I think most read from top to bottom. It's quite possible when you or others see this, you are conditioned through years of looking at tunings to automatically read bottom to top. I think to the average reader however, this is counter intuitive.

The horizontal form of this would be ECAGEC, unless one has also out of convention made a habit of reading back to front in the case of tunings.

[b0b]

Scott, the vertical form makes sense to me because I see it as strings and their intervals. I've been making copedent charts for half a century. When I'm forced to write a tuning horizontally, I always think of it in terms of the intervals (C to E, E to G, etc.).

If you ask me the size of the interval between E and B, I would say 7 half steps, not 5. I think "where is B on an E string?". So when I see a tuning listed as E B G# E B E, I'm starting off on the wrong foot, so to speak. I can read it, but I have to think harder to do it.

[Scott Thomas]

I must have developed the habit at the beginning. It was always both ways on the forum (at least in the no pedals section) since I became a member in the mid-'90s. People always specified high to low or vice versa. For some reason, I gravitated to the high to low and it seems "normal" to me. Also my subconscious vocalization of ECAGEC had something to do with it.

Perhaps because of the visual aspect or to eliminate any confusion, vertical seems to be the standard. John ELy's tunings page, Brad's Page Of Steel, Andy Volk's Slide Rules, all use the vertical format.

SO...

I plan to write all tunings as vertical going forward, or low to high if horizontally for the sake of consistency.

[Mark Eaton]

If tunings were always listed vertically, the world would be a better place. But we know for a number of reasons that isn't always convenient.

There's nothing intuitive for me to read from top to bottom when it's spelled out vertically. If someone is new to music and isn't hip yet to "flatted 3rds" asks me "what are the notes in an A minor chord?" I would never start high and go low (E-C-A).

It's always A-C-E. The root is the A. Like the roots of a plant. They start "low."

[Fred Treece]

Very well said, Mark & b0b. Tunings listed vertically with the highest string at the top make logical sense, and Im glad at least that is settled as a convention. I still read them low to high (from bottom to top) because my mind apparently works the same as theirs in this regard. Listing them horizontally low to high just follows that intervallic logic, imo.

[Allan Revich]

Very well said, Mark & b0b. Tunings listed vertically with the highest string at the top make logical sense, and Im glad at least that is settled as a convention. I still read them low to high (from bottom to top) because my mind apparently works the same as theirs in this regard. Listing them horizontally low to high just follows that intervallic logic, imo.

I do the same as Fred. Read them from bottom to top. To me, low to High makes more sense because (as mentioned above) that’s how chords are generally constructed... Root low, and up from the root.

[Nic Neufeld]

I can see the rationale for why low-to-high is better. I also heard rational explanations for why Betamax was superior to VHS and FireWire was better than USB. But for steel guitarists, it seems like the majority went the way of high-to-low, over the years. As a fretted player for most of my life just coming to steel, that did take some getting used to...but because it is so dominant, in my opinion, the only thing worse than having steel guitar tunings "backwards" is not having any consolidation around a usual standard, so you're always having to guess what direction people are writing tunings in. Saw a similar thing in Hindustani music when half the world writes M for tivra ma and m for shuddh ma and the other half does the reverse. You end up having to figure out what the person is meaning by context.

So I'm totally sympathetic to the "low to high is better" argument but it really does seem that it is the minority of usage over the years in the steel guitar community...could be a mistaken perception, just what I'm seeing...so that's why I go for more standardization and use high-to-low when I describe tunings. It's the VHS standard (my parents had a Betamax machine for YEARS when I was a kid)

[Paul McEvoy]

I can see the rationale for why low-to-high is better. I also heard rational explanations for why Betamax was superior to VHS and FireWire was better than USB. But for steel guitarists, it seems like the majority went the way of high-to-low, over the years. As a fretted player for most of my life just coming to steel, that did take some getting used to...but because it is so dominant, in my opinion, the only thing worse than having steel guitar tunings "backwards" is not having any consolidation around a usual standard, so you're always having to guess what direction people are writing tunings in. Saw a similar thing in Hindustani music when half the world writes M for tivra ma and m for shuddh ma and the other half does the reverse. You end up having to figure out what the person is meaning by context.

So I'm totally sympathetic to the "low to high is better" argument but it really does seem that it is the minority of usage over the years in the steel guitar community...could be a mistaken perception, just what I'm seeing...so that's why I go for more standardization and use high-to-low when I describe tunings. It's the VHS standard (my parents had a Betamax machine for YEARS when I was a kid)

Yeah I feel like whenever I get involved in a pedantic argument about something that doesn't involve getting better at playing, my punishment is I have to practice for 4 more hours.

[Jerry Wagner]

HaHa, Paul! Well said.
With all the inconclusive & conflicting evidence, it appears that almost everyone probably accepts tunings listed Hi to Low in a vertical orientation, but if horizontally listed, Low to Hi is the accepted convention. Maybe because of how the instrument orientation is visualized, or how chords or TAB are visualized, or simply because there is a recognized convention. Never mind that every packaged set of strings I've ever seen lists the strings horizontally, 1,2,3.....from Hi to Low. How curious. I guess all those string manufacturers didn't get the memo. Or they're libertarians. Or thought it would just be fun to mess with us. It reminds me of experiments with visual inversion goggles on chickens & people; after about a week the brain rewires itself and everything seems normal instead of upside-down. Opps! I think I just earned myself some more practice time.

[Allan Revich]

The VHS - Betamax is an interesting analogy. Interesting because I see it the other way ‘round!
Low to high is VHS and high to low is Betamax. You know, a small group of die-hards vs the world standard. Looking through the posts on this forum and its predecessor, there seems to be a shift occurring. Before around 2010 nearly everyone posted high to low. After around 2015 nearly everyone posts low to high.

And, like many of us, I like when people stack their written tunings vertically because no matter how you read it, everyone knows immediately what is meant.

And BTW, great posts Paul & Jerry!

[b0b]

When tunings are named by their chords, writing the notes from low to high helps to understand the tuning. I don't really know which is more prevalent; I just know which I prefer.