The Steel Guitar Forum

Hello, everyone,i was just wondering if any one would know the tuning for the above piece???(Santo and Johnny)would any one know how to try and get the tuning if there is no luck with any one coming up with the correct tuning.

Michael, the tuning for "Mona Lisa" is not all that important since Santo plays the tune almost exclusively with single notes. Nearly any tuning will do. From the recording its not clear to me what tuning he used.

That said, Santo did use the C#m7th tuning for many of Santo & Johnny's big hits, including "Sleepwalk," "Teardrop," and "Caravan." He seemed to favor this tuning although the A6th tuning can be heard on their Hawaiian album ("Hawaii Santo & Johnny").

I would personally use C#m7 or C6 to play this tune, depending on what, if any, chords I would like to feature that Santo chose not to use in his arrangement since he preferred to voice his leads like a vocalist would. His "vocalist" approach, in my opinion, gives his playing an appeal that easily extends to the general listening audience and not just to us steel guitar enthusiasts. Perhaps there's a lesson for us there.

I haven't heard the recording about which you speak, but I worked up a version of this tune a while back. My arrangement is in A6 tuning in the key of D.