The Steel Guitar Forum

I've been playing a single neck E9th Seirra
for five or six years now, and I am curious
what some of you who are experienced with both tunings have to say about the difficulty
of each. Since I have never seen a C6th, I have no idea what to expect if and when I finnaly do. Also, a quick question: Could I re-string my guitar with C6th strings, and re-rod for the different pulls to be able to check out this C6th tuning? I am contemplating upgrading from my sierra artist to a doubleneck pro model, and maybe I should check out the C6th tuning first.
Maybe I would not like it, and would want to buy a single neck pro model when I upgrade.
Any thoughts?

Will...there's not really an easy answer to your question. It's all relative. For me E9 was easier at first, but I've heard just the opposite from other guys. The more you know about music (i.e. Harmony/Theory), the more you'll learn about either tuning. I've heard some guys who really don't know too much music thoery play great E9, whereas I don't think I've heard any great C6 players who weren't pretty knowledgable musically.

I guess it's all about what kind of music you want to play...

C6 is capable of more full voiced jazz chords (alt 7's etc) with the root in it's lower bass range. To get into those kind of chords on E9, you actually have to know quite a bit about music to know what partial upper voicings to play so you can leave the bass notes to your bass player. I like playing solo jazz chord melody stuff, so C6 is my preference for that...but E9 is still a great love of mine!

To answer your question about re-rodding for a test drive...I wouldnt do it!!! Too much trouble. Just use your E to Eb KL to get a feel for the open 6 chord.

BTW, Have you checked out the Universal tunings?

The E9th plays easier for anyone who has experience on a regular guitar and the C6th has more possibilities on the open tuning. I've heard some pretty cool stuff played on the C6th neck with no pedals used. I don't think I've ever heard anyone do much on the E9th without using any pedals, though.

The addition of pedals makes both tunings equally adept, but the approach is still very different.

They're both a lot of fun!

It's all the same to me.

------------------
<small>Larry Bell - email: larry@larrybell.org - gigs - Home Page
2003 Fessenden S/D-12 8x8, 1969 Emmons S-12 6x6, 1971 Dobro, Standel and Peavey Amps

E9th for sure.

Here's how I see it.. I have found E9 was a snap for me to learn because of my guitar background... I listened to old country rock[New Riders etc}and the E9 licks were in my head to stay. I found C6 impossible.. I never was a big jazz or swing guy,and I did not have that sound in my head or hands.

Many of the best C6 players used that tuning on non pedal steels years ago and adapted to the C6 pedal guitars well.Some did have trouble on the E9 tuning.

I have know SEVERAL "old timers" that were good C6 players that found the E9 pedal bouncing style IMPOSSIBLE...I would play a few basic E9 scale runs and they would think I was the best steel player around, just as when I would see a good C6 player play a simple non pedal chord melody and be blown out of the water by it... The very best steel players are equally proficient on both necks AND non pedal guitars as well. As for me,its basic E9 with lots of pedals and knees or I CANNOT play ... I say E9 is MUCH easier..bob

The E9th tuning is easier for me. This year I am going to devote more time to practice and learning more about the C6th tuning. Let the fun begin.

I think that E9th is easier for country licks, and C6th is easier for jazz chords, but they are equally hard for playing music. The skills you need are in your hands, your legs and your brain, not in your choice of tunings.

The real question is whether you can hold two different mental images of the pedal steel music-making system in your head. Some people find it easy to do, others find it difficult. Some people believe that by sticking with one tuning for a long time, they can concentrate more on the skills required for making music. I must admit that they have a point.

------------------
<font size="1"><img align=right src="http://b0b.com/Hotb0b.gif" width="96 height="96">Bobby Lee - email: quasar@b0b.com - gigs - CDs, Open Hearts
Sierra SD-12 (Ext E9), Williams D-12 Crossover, Sierra S-12 (F Diatonic)
Sierra Laptop 8 (E6add9), Fender Stringmaster (E13, C6, A6)</font>

Neither is "easier" but each has it's own strengths,
and is therefore easier for certain things.

I suggest that rather than re-rod, just tune to the same relative notes in E6

Low to High
C.....F.....A.....C.....E.....G.....A .....C......E......D.. or...G

I.....IV....VII.....I.....III.......V....VI.......I.......III......9....or...V

E....A....C#.....E...G#.....B....C#.....E.....G#.....(F#)..or..B
( the F# is good, the B is too high.)

Ok I just detuned to this
it is nice sounding, the E to F lever is like the C to C# lever,
the A pedal still works but a bit oddley
if you have the Franklin changes
s5 B to A
s6 G# to F#
s10 B to A
These will work.

you cansort of quarter pedal the C and get something.

Still this will get you a good idea of the open tuning. Which by itself is very powerful and pretty.

Go look at threadzille The C6 modal theory thread,
(forum FAQ in Feedback) for ideas of this tuning without pedals.
Just know that WITH pedals it becomes much more powerful.

Mess around with slants too.
This will give you a cheap seats tour of C6.

You can re-rod S-10 to C6 no problem, but don't do it till you have another steel to do E9 on.

If you REALLY want to try a partial re rod
make A and B into p5 and p6

A pedal to (P5)
5 + s10 whole tone raise
to s5 and s9 ( whole tone raise
= one rod change

B pedal ( to P6)
s3 + s6 half tone raise
to s5 half tone lower and s9 half tone raise

on C pedal lossen completely s5 so it does nothing
and back off s4 so it is only a half step, this would be like your VI to VII raise lever.

This would get you a pretty good idea.
but don't bother with others.
This would give you the diminish and half diminished, IV9 and 7ths.

But it is NOT recomended to re-rod if you don't know under your steel REAL well....<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by David L. Donald on 31 January 2005 at 02:45 AM.]</p></FONT>

I think often the question can be related to the type of MUSIC that really drives you. If you are really a fan of strait ahead CW music then you will find the E9th your passion and may find that you will overcome the oddities to get to the music.

But on the reverse. if you are a fan of the big chords and the bluesy/jazzy tones then C6th will do it for you..

I don't think it as much of which is harder rather than which one do you align with.

Many are intimidated by the C6th..for whatever the reason, probably because they come from the school of 6 string guitar and can relate the E intervals on the E9th.

What I have done to maintain my own sanity is view the C6th as an E Instrument ( 4th fret) with a C under the E. I relate as much as I can to the 4th fret as the root position with the E intervals relative to that point. Works for me...crazy as it sounds..

t<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Tony Prior on 31 January 2005 at 10:31 AM.]</p></FONT>

I HAVE SOME FRIENDS WHO ARE GREAT PLAYERS WHO HAVE ASK ME TO HELP THEM WITH THE C6th NECK. THEY SAY THAT I GET SUCH A FULL SOUND. I STARTED PLAYING IN 53 WHIH NO PEDDLES AND WAS LATE GETTING INTO THE PEDDLES. THAT BOTTOM NECK WAS SO EASY TO LEARN FOR ME BECAUSE I HAVE BEEN WITH SOME GREAT SWING AND BLUES BANDS THAT WANT THAT FULL SOUND. I USE THE C6 NOW MORE THAN SOME BAND LEADERS WANT, BUT I HAVE BEEN TURNING MORE TO THE TOP SINCE I GOT TO PLAYING THE NEWER COUNTRY. HERB RIMMINGTON HAS A S10 AND HE USES A A6th AND GITS GREAT SOUNDS PLAYING WHAT SOME CALL THE HAWIAN SOUND. GO TO SOME OF THE STEEL CONVENTIONS AN WATCH HERB WALLACE AND BUDDY EMMONS, THEY DO SONE WILD STUFF ON THE BOTTOM NECK. I HEARD SOMEONE SAY THAT THE TOP NECK WAS THE NASHVILLE NECK AND THE BOTTOM WAS THE FUN NECK. TRY IT YOU MIGHT LIKE IT.

I think Tony nailed it. It really depends what kind of music drives you.

I played E9 for 25 years before getting my 1st D10. My instructor way back then put it in my head that C6 was a mystery and that no one played it.

Since I have always been multi-instrumental, it was easy for me to justify staying away from C6 because I had too much too do anyway.

I'd like to give that instructor and myself a good swift boot, because I think C6 is the coolest thing I've ever played. I connected with C6 right away and have been running with it. I have always loved all kinds of swing, jazz and blues blues, so why I haven't played C6 all these years really escapes me. I owe it to the forum for opening my eyes to it.

------------------
MCI D10 8+5, ZB 11/10 8+3 Early 30s Dobro, Harmony Lap Steel, ad infinitum

<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Webb Kline on 31 January 2005 at 05:23 AM.]</p></FONT>

Tony is absolutly right. It all depends on what you are playing and what you feel in the song. I would be lost without either one. If I had to go to a single neck it would have to be a universal, but that's just not for me. Too set in my ways. I learned to play E and C-6 on my dads D-6 Fender and love both tunings. If you play guitar it's probably easier to relate to the E tuning. I started on steel.

When i started to play i had the straight E9 tuning, just 10 strings and the pedals. But using the pedals with no teacher in the area i was in, I got bored with playing them same licks over and over. SO i went to the universal, Then finaly to the double neck. this added a lot, cause it taught me with the new pedals that steel was steel no matter what or where i was playing on the guitar. I don't understand though where people say the C6th is the jazz neck. If you think it out mentaly you can play almost everything on the C6 you can play on the E9th.It might not be just like the record but it is there. I think it depends on where and what you are playing with. When i practice a lot by myself, I find that using the bass strings adds to the music where the E9 doesn't. But when i am playing with a band I believe you should play alot of E9 and let the bass guitar do its thing. To me this question is like what side of the piano do you want to do without. A lot of things realy determine which neck to me.

<SMALL>I don't understand though where people say the C6th is the jazz neck.</SMALL>

Easy question to answer. The standard C6 string and pedal configuration creates stacked thirds, which is the underpinning to traditional jazz. This is why traditional jazz chords such as major7, dim7, 7#11, m7b5, 13th, #9, b9b13, 7alt, minor7, min(ma7), etc. can all be found in mutiple places on the neck, usually sitting on a root note in a logical fret location and easy to pick 4-6 note harmonies with a standard 3-pick setup. The whole tuning lends itself to traditional jazz harmony. While you can find this kind of stuff on E9, it much harder to locate, difficult to play with 3 picks, does not tend to be in logical places, and it is generally not as available in multiple fret positions. Check out my link below for some more insight.

------------------
Jeff's Jazz
<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Jeff Lampert on 31 January 2005 at 11:21 AM.]</p></FONT>

I am going to skip the first question and make a suggestion; it is too subjective. Take the leap to D-10. There will be enormous growing pains but you will probably not regret it. I cursed, cried, and screamed for a year while learning but now I love C6. I spend far more time practicing on it, than on E9.

I recently started taking C6 lessons with Al Vescovo, for which I consider myself a perticularly fortunate guy. Al pointed out the other night (and I agree) the differernce between the two tunings:
E9 is about the singer/ story
C6 is about the music

I also believe that playing in one tuning helps with the other, although transitioning between the two is sometimes confusing, as a novice .

Me, I prefer the C6 sound.

C6 is easier. I have played Dobro and E9 pedal steel for several years. When I first tried C6 on friends' D10s I couldn't find anything. Also, I was not really interested in playing swing or jazz on pedal steel. About a year ago I got a universal, mainly to get the extra low strings on E9 for blues and rock.

I worked half-way through Jeff Newman's basic C6 course and learned how to play some basic swing stuff using pedal 6 (which is LKR on my uni) like you would the AB pedal on E9. Pedal 6 changes you from the tonic 6th chord to the IV7 chord. Move up two frets and you have the V7. You can play swing and blues all day with those three chords, with the occassional II, or IIIb or relative minor. Playing with pedal 6 seems to work best if your grip skips one string between your thumb and index finger (or play with four picks and pick four string chords). And for variety you can go up the neck to get the IV6 and V6, just like you would on lap steel. This is easier playing than the E9. You cannot hit a wrong note and you don't have to skip strings like you do on E9 (except the next to the last string, which is way down out of the way and holds a secret all its own, see below).

Not only can you not hit a wrong note going up and down the strings, you also cannot hit a wrong fret going up and down the neck, because the 6th chord is a movable chord in swing and country of the '40s and '50s. You can literally just take that 6th chord anywhere up the neck to play fills and melody. This is one of the secrets of C6. The C6 neck was the predominant tuning in '40s and '50s country as well as swing. And the common style was to just move this chord anywhere you go under the riff or melody you are playing on a single string. If you want the harmony a little more straight, you can skip the 6th note and go up the strings rather than up the neck, on the notes that come from a straight chord. So you can play a heck of a lot of '40s and '50s sounding country by mixing up those two ways of playing.

Of course most of the pros back in the day used some slants. And playing slants (or using the pedals that accomplish the same thing) will make your playing more versatile and complex. But you will be surprised how far you can go with no slants - just playing C6 like a lap steel with one pedal (no. 6). I read once here on the Forum that one of the legends who played on a lot of Hank Williams' songs did not use slants. I forget which one it was, either Don Helms (my first guess) or Leon McCaulif. And sure enough, you can play along with Hank's songs on C6 like a lap steel with no slants and get most of it. It almost seems like cheating to just move that one chord around everywhere, but that is in fact what they did, and that defines the style from those years - which is why you can still get away with it and sound traditional.

About the time I was working on Jeff's tape, I started playing with a rockabilly group. Rockabilly is full of 6th and 7th chords. Hitting the tonic 6th, then the IV7 is a signature lick in rockabilly. Add the V7 and the IIIb (by just going two or three frets up the neck) and you can just bang around all day Speedy-West-style on almost any rockabilly song. Don't try to be careful and precise the way you would on E9, just get wild. It really works.

For jazzy blues, those tonic 6ths and IV and V 7ths can take you through almost anything - think of Stormy Monday. And here's where you can literally clomp up and down the chromatic scale with that 6th chord and sound pretty cool.

Here's another secret of C6. If you use the next to the bottom string as the root, you get a IV9 chord - so the C6 neck becomes an F9 neck, and of course the uni B6 neck becomes an E9 neck. If you take that chord to what would be your V chord fret, it is a I9. In other words, if you are playing with C6 as your tonic, and you go to the G fret and drop down and use the next to last string as the root, you have C9. Then you play with the same frets you would use in the key of G. This is another movable chord, with a very Latin jazzy sound. You can take that chord all up and down the neck and play bossa nova until the cows come home. One of the beauties of the uni is that this F9 position on the C6th neck becomes E9 on the uni - the neck we all know - and you can go up and down the strings without skipping any - nothing could be easier. Then if you start integrating that 9 chord way of playing with the open 6ths and the pedal 6 7ths, you can began to get some fairly complicated jazz going.

Now this is all my idiots way of playing C6, but it goes a very long way for simple traditional country, swing, blues and jazz. But if you want to play that bebop stuff like Buddy Emmons, Doug Jernigan and Jim Cohen, that is an entirely different thing. Now you gotta learn to use all the pedals and at least two to five knees. I can't do that (and maybe never will). But at the heart of what they are doing is this very easy to play C6 neck with intervals that give you no wrong strings, and a few movable chords that give you no wrong frets. Try it, you'll love it. Real C6ers wont be impressed, but audiences, non-steeler musicians, and E9ers will think you are great.

BTW, I think the quote (from who?) is "The E9 neck is the money neck, and the C6 neck is the fun neck." <FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by David Doggett on 31 January 2005 at 01:17 PM.]</p></FONT>

Start with a universal and don't look back. http://www.b0b.com/infoedu/future1.htm

Regards,

Ron

Thank you everyone for your input. The way that David Dogget describes the C6th tuning, I think it would be something I would really be into. I love swing and rockabilly music. And somehow, I think the C6th tuning is speaking to me, calling my name. I don't know how to describe it, maybe you could call it intuition, but I think I should be playing C6th.

Will, I love C6, I started playing E9... because it came on the other neck.
But I got the D-10 because I wanted a C6 PSG.

Try my suggestion of retuning with out re-roding.
And then mess with it a bit.
DD

C6 is easier in the beginning because you can get away with missed grips and bad blocking. If you hit a wrong string it's usually still right in the chord you are playing anyway.

I would definitely recommend it as a great tuning for swing and rockabilly, but really that's equally possible on E9, Universal and probably the Sacred Steel variants, too.

Will-Thanks for starting this post. A good one.

David Donald-Changing your open tuning from C6 to E6 is a good idea. For guitar players and new D10 players. Way to go!

Then it would be a lot easier to relate to the E9 tuning, which is as they say, "the money neck".

When you play E9 and play E6 on the bottom neck, All the bar positions are the same, so it is easier to learn .

G is on the 3rd fret in either neck. C is on the 8th fret on either neck. what could be better than that.

Even most of the E6 notes are the same as E9. Check out David Donalds open tuning chart along side of the C6 chart.

With E6, your subdominant chord is A6, that is almost the same as your Pedals down on E9. Easy to remember.

All the same C6 tab and lesson material can be used. All the C6 pedals and Knee levers now on the D10 will work the same way on the E6 with NO rod changes or anything.

All you have to do is put a new set of strings tuned with the F# 1st, same as E9, G# 2nd , which we are all familiar with .

C# 3rd, take that string from the D# 2nd string on E9. You can use most of the E9 Set of strings.

10th string E9 B can be used for the 9thstring A. The 9th string D can be used for the 8th string C#. You can still use the G#'s, B's,and E string off the E9 set.You only need to get a Guitar low E for the 10th string.

Try it, you'l like it. Let's just think about it for awhile......al

------------------
My Website..... www.cmedic.net/~almarcus/

<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Al Marcus on 02 February 2005 at 11:28 AM.]</p></FONT>

I once heard Jeff Newman say that C6th was easier than E9th and I was shocked to hear him say that. I didn't play C6th then and I had a sort of fear of it for some reason. Now I play only C6th and I really think Jeff Newman was right. The C6th does not require nearly as much pedaling for one thing (not the way I play, anyway) and right hand tecnique is different too. There's alot of thumb struming with the C6th that you don't do with the E9. All the chords are picked rather precisely on the E9 neck. You can get away with being a little sloppier on C6th. Single notes on an up-tempo country song are very easy on E9 where as single notes on up-tempo jazz tunes on C6th is not so easy at all. Apples and oranges I guess.

Al Marcus, thank you for the kind assesment.
A part of my reasoning is that you can pretty much instantly try the tuning out with out even changing strings, some will be a bit loose, but will let you see and you can hear how it works.

But absolutely for the new 6 tuning player E6 is more intuative at 1st,

Here is a chart I did for the back neck open

It is done by scale degrees relative to bar placement, based on Denny Turner's stuff.

<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by David L. Donald on 07 February 2005 at 11:25 PM.]</p></FONT>