The Steel Guitar Forum

Hi group, I have what you really good steel players will probably consider a silly question but I am new to lap steel and always played by ear in my standard guitar days. I have tuned my lap steel to open E to start. Is there a standard for which fret would be a certain key played across the six strings when tuned to open E? I am interested in basic chords such as CDGE. Thanks from a less than sophisticated guitar played. Don Riffle

Hi Don, I am far from an expert player, but I do play mostly blues style lap steel in open E tuning, from high string to low that would be EBG#EBE. (I'm also assuming you have a six string guitar) If that is the same tuning as yours, then the open string strum would sound as an E major chord, E=root(3 of those) G# is the third (1 of those) and B is the fifth (2 of those). By this logic, all your chords are in order as you move up the neck, 1st fret = F major, 2nd is F# major, 3rd is G major, and so on. I don't play a lot of chords on the lap, but when I do I might just pick string 2,3 and 4 simultaneously, leaving out the duplicates. I usually do single string stuff following patterns I know, and just move those patterns up and down the neck as the key of the songs change. C6 is a very popular tuning for lap steelers for other styles of music, you might want to look into that for styles other than blues and rock. Here's a good place to read about lots of tunings:

http://www.well.com/~wellvis/tuning.html

Good luck and have fun!

Damon, yes I do play six string and your post is very helpul to me. When I was playing standard guitar I knew where chord positions were that were used in most country music and also played rythm a lot when a friend and I got together. I also play like you said, picking out the melody when playing by myself but I use a chord rythm machine and using the usual 5th fret C, 7th D, 12 G, it just didn't work out. Shows how much of a professional I am, huh? Any how thank you very much for the info, I now know how it works. I do intend to experiment with different tunings once I get my picking down. Play on.

Don Riffle wrote:...using the usual 5th fret C, 7th D, 12 G, it just didn't work out.

G tuning might be a better choice for you; open strings 2,3,4 on a guitar are a G chord, which is why you get the C chord on the 5th fret and so on. G tuning (lo2hi GBDGBD) is very common (especially for dobros) and has strings 2,3,4 tuned the same as a guitar. The equivalent to the E tuning above would be lo2hi GDGBDG.

Don, here's another cool site somebody else posted on this forum a while back that is very helpful. It is an interactive site that allows you to specify a specific tuning, and then will show you where all the chords and scales are up and down the neck just by clicking on whatever chord or scale type you are looking for. Check it out:

http://www.looknohands.com/chordhouse/g ... ex_rb.html