The Steel Guitar Forum

Anyone that has played with this tuning please comment but I hope Roy, Mike, and Bill H give their input.

What are limitation(s) or downside(s) to the Leavitt tuning?

I've heard Mike's and Bill's and Roy's stuff and they are top of the game - I'd guess they could make barb wire over a stovepipe sound really good so please don't get too esoteric with your responses!

Thanks...

Traditional lap steel tunings rely on the big 6th chord. Playing the Leavitt would require more of a pedal steel approach to lap steel, meaning you'd have to use grips and some blocking and not a whole lot of strumming.

Don't listen to me, I've never played the tuning!
Go for it! We need to hear from Bill Hatcher and gang.

Judson Bertoch wrote: What are limitation(s) or downside(s) to the Leavitt tuning?

The player.

That is the biggest limitation to most tunings.
If you do not have a knowledge of chords and voicings and chord melody and voice leading etc, then no tuning will just jump up and give you that. You have to hear what you want to play and then pick a tuning that has the least path of resistance to letting you actually work that out and play it.

The Leavitt tuning has great potential for complex chords. There are just so many there.

I have expanded the tuning out to 8, 10 and twelve strings not so much for more chords, but for the ability to play melodies over the chords. I did not expand the intervals with the same Leavitt intervals just up an octave, but I took from the Alkire tuning and the Jerry Byrd diatonic and came up with something that works for me. If you think about a piano player, he can play the melody in the right hand and the chords in the left. A non pedal player doing that??...that is a tough one to pull off. With the Leavitt extended, you can do just that. Great jazz piano players do not play these big massive chords with the root in them. They will play inversions of maybe 2 or three notes. The Leavitt is perfect for that as you never have the low root in the chord. You have to know inversions and substitutions to make the Leavitt work for you. So by combining the Leavitt in the bottom for the chords and then extended notes in the top for melody I have found some interesting things.

In regards to substitution...it means two things to me. You can play any song with just the basic easiest chords....or you can "substitute" more chords in order to spice the tune up a little and also give you some more harmonically interesting things to solo over. The other substitution thing is knowing what chords you can use for several different things ie. using a G major chord to sub for an E minor or using a D min chord to sub for a B-7b5 chord or using a C #9 chord to sub for an F#6 chord and on and on and on. As long as you are not using the root in the bass then many chords will interchange.

I also learned that the use of open strings is paramount. The combination open strings with barred strings opens up a tremendous potential. When I am working out a tune, I will first of all pick a key that has some of the melody of the song in the open strings. It gives you a lot of help when you need to make a bar jump to grab something. You can have the open string ringing and you can lift the bar and move and still be nice and legato with the phrasing.

I could ramble on more about all this tech stuff, but if you will listen to some of the examples I have put on the forum, maybe you can hear that the tuning is not the limiting factor.

Best thing to do is just string a guitar up in Leavitt and have at it.

To me, the Leavitt Tuning is a pianistic approach to lap steel. You can harmonize every melody note with 2, 3, 4 or 5 notes on ANY chord type.

The problem is you have to use unconventional string grips like strings 2, 5 & 6 or 1, 4, 5 going to 2, 4, 6 etc.

On 6 string Leavitt, you can't slide from one voicing to another very often, you're always changing grips on each melody note, which is why I think of it like a piano player. The dangerous part of all that is, unlike C6 where you almost can't play a bad note, if you pick a wrong string, OUCH, it can be a really bad note.

As with anything new, it's give and take, you "give" up some of the sliding of Hawaiian but "take" the hip Jazz voicings of the Leavitt and you don't have to use any slants.

When I want the Jerry Byrd sound I go to C6/A7, when I want Jazz chord melodies, I go to the Leavitt Tuning.

Bill and Roy have done a great job of expanding the tuning with open strings and a wider range of pitches. There's really no limit to the possibilities.

I hope that helps. Get a copy of my music/tab book "A Different Slant" and check it out for yourself.
http://steelguitarmusic.com/music/mikeihde.html

Definitely buy Mike's book. If you just play around with the Leavitt tuning acapella - i.e. solo, without hearing the background harmony - you're missing the real power of the tuning. Play a standard tune like Where or When (from Mike's book) with the background chords and bass line and you'll really hear how the tuning gives you all the hip jazz voicings. Like the Alikire EHarp tuning, there's a certain stiffness in losing the ability to strum but despite the pianistic aspects of the tuning that doesn't mean that you can't gliss in and out of single notes and diads, ad slants, etc.

The Leavitt is another world for a newcomer and
can be a real mystery. That's why I included
Several pages of chord location charts in my
Leavitt 2 Course. I use it myself quite frequently
when transcribing from fake books etc.


With a degree of mastery any style of music is
possible on this tuning and not only Jazz standards
sound good on it. Pop, Country, Hawaiian and Gospel
etc. play great.

The other point I will mention is the Leavitt
tuning requires a certain level of Technique.
The better the right and left hand..the better the
result. I beleive that's why the Alkire tuning did
not become more popular. You just can't "fire" into
it like C6th, E13th, etc. You must watch where you
are going so to speak.

Having said all that I use the Leavitt on a regular
basis and have it on the back neck of my Gibson
Consolette. I enjoy it very much and even more
when we have guys like Mike Ihde and Bill Hatcher with their great arrangements and input.

Great question.....great responses......great thread.......

This is what the SGF is all about.........

Roy, can you describe your Leavitt tuning courses in more detail? I've got Mike's "Different Slant" course, so should I progress straight to your second course? I read up on your description of the second course when it came out; is the first one just tab (similar to Mike's) or is there some chord charts/theory/whistles n' bells as well? Thanks, I'm close to buying

Regards,

Blake

The more I play my steel, the more I like Jerry Byrd. He talked about the Leavitt tuning as a great 2nd tuning. Given what I play, C6 is the best 1st tuning for me. I'm very melodic and single stringy. I do lot's of sliding. And my approach is very traditional swing and pop steel. But I have experimented with other tunings, including Leavitt. It is one of the two 2nd tunings that I'm strongly considering adopting for the following reason- I want my second tuning to be a sharp contrast to my first tuning. I want it to do the things that my 1st tuning just won't. C6, E13, A6, G9, G6, D9, etc, have their differences. But they are different ways of doing more or less the same thing. At this point I see little sense in mixing and matching them. My advice would be that if you want two tunings, take one of the above and pair it with Leavitt.

Hello Blake,

If you click on my ClicTab signature at the bottom
of my message it will take you to my site and
samples of both courses are available for listening.
Probably the best one to start with would be Leavitt
2 as it contains considerable information on the
chord locations. I did the charts in the Key of C
but by transposing up and down the fretboard you
garner a substantial Chord library which I use
myself whenever I am transcribing from Sheet Music,
fake books etc. Saves a lot of time.

Leavitt 1 is Straight Tablature with matching CD.
The songs are more difficult and different styles
are features. So it is not just Jazz standards.

Hope that helps.

Here is a sample Gospel song from Leavitt 1
which will help show the versatility of the
6 string Leavitt Tuning. Both my courses are
for six string BTW.

Link:
http://freefilehosting.net/download/411ci

The samples for both courses are impressive. I have Mike's book. I think I need yours as well. But I have a disabled finger on my left hand. It sounds like you may employ some string pulls. I guess I can just leave that part out. You can definitely expect my order in the next couple of months. I especially liked the snipet from, "Whispering." Can't wait till Mike's next Leavitt book comes out.

Roy,

Love the Leavitt examples on your website!

Drew

Hi guys,
I looked at another thread here recently and I thought I noticed someone saying that the 8 string version of the Leavitt tuning is exactly the same notes as the tuning I use but slightly differently arraigned. If you take a C6/A7 six string tuning and then add a maj 7 (B) to the top and a dominant 7 (Bb) to the bottom you get what I see as the Hawaiian version of the Leavitt tuning. All the same notes but a big, strum-able 6th chord in the middle. And its full of great chords. I'm now making a 10 string version which will be this 8 string version plus a 9 note on top (D) and an F# note on the bottom keeping the C6/A7 still in tact right in the middle. This gives you a comfort zone while you get used to the other strings.
I've been a pedal steel player for many years but I have fallen love with standard steel guitar lately. Its really fun and I know of no downsides. Don

I've had similar thoughts, Don. I think the thread was called Leavitt C6. I have currently woked out a 10 string version that goes from hi to lo (D-Bb-E-C-A-G-E-C#-(B)-C) The 9th string B is a 1/2 step below the 4th string C. And of course the first two strings are Chromatic. But I have real doubts about my ever being able to play such a tuning. My current thinking is that it's better to separate them out. But who knows what might happen after I actuall learn to play both of them well.

Great thread and very informative! Don Mclellan's tuning does,indeed, include the same intervals as the Leavitt tuning, and with the C6th intervals also,well, it's a win/win situation. In my humble opinion,the only real weakness of either tuning is the absence of a Maj3rd interval on the bottom end. This could easily be remedied by adding a "C" note to Don's tuning or an "A" note to complete the ADom7th.
If "strumability" is not an issue,you can add an "F" note just over the middle "E". This gives you a JB diatonic tuning plus Leavitt;similar to Bobby Black's version of JB's diatonic. So many choices. Lets all convert over to 12-string lap steels so that we can have it all! Hmmm,then I guess we could add pedals
~~W.C.~~

Wayne Cox wrote:Great thread and very informative!
snip

So many choices. Lets all convert over to 12-string lap steels so that we can have it all! Hmmm,then I guess we could add pedals
~~W.C.~~

That is why I went to 12.

Now I would like to try 13 or 14!

Wayne, a few years ago you played at the Medicare Jam, and sounded great. Were you using the Leavit tuning? I remember it was a tuning I wasn't familiar with, just don't remember what it was.