What Makes a Tenor Guitar a Tenor Guitar?

[Ed Goist]

Is it the four strings? The guitar shaped body? The tuning? The scale? A combination of these things? Something else?

I have recently had two very knowledgeable people independently tell me that my Blueridge BR-40T is not a tenor guitar because I have it tuned GDAE. When I asked one of them what it was, he replied "a single-string guitar-bodied octave mandolin"!

I know this is really a matter of semantics, and there is no absolute answer, but I'm curious what other tenor guitar players think.

Oh, and you should see people's faces at jams when I tell them my instrument is in the mandolin family and not the guitar family!

[mrmando]

I'd never heard of tenors being tuned GDAE until Dagger Gordon started doing it over in Scotland. It's a relatively new phenomenon.

I'm sure the first guy to use the DGBE Chicago tuning on a tenor caught a lot of flack for it too. Lowell Levinger is putting a low F string on his tenors, but he still calls them tenors. (He isn't the first, however; I have photographic evidence of such an instrument built by Houston violinmaker F.A. Thorp back in the '50s.) Of course, if you took one of Lowell's 5-string tenors and tuned it up a whole step, you'd have what Jon Mann or Ron Oates might call a "baritone 5-string mandolin." And it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Manolis Chiotis took a lot of grief from some of his fellow Greeks when he added 2 strings to a bouzouki and started tuning it CFAD.

We may think a mandolin has to have 8 strings and be tuned GDAE, but a survey of the instrument's history will demonstrate that it has existed in many forms.

My point: the definition of what constitutes a particular musical instrument is often mutable. Any instrument that gains a given amount of popularity will inspire variations and undergo evolution.

Oh, and you should see people's faces at jams when I tell them my instrument is in the mandolin family and not the guitar family!

It's in the lute family, that much is certain. I wouldn't say Robert Fripp's instrument is in the mandolin family just because he tunes it (mostly) in fifths.

[Jim Garber]

There are purists and purists and those of us who really don't care. All instruments and tunings were invented with the purpose of playing music. Mandolas are called different things in Europe vs. North America. Tuning and scales are different. just because those people you spoke to are "knowledgeable" does not preclude the fact that they may be opinionated.

[John Flynn]

What Makes a Tenor Guitar a Tenor Guitar?

When people keep asking to you to go tenor eleven blocks away to play it!

[Beanzy]

It's not the tuning. I de-tune mine down a tone for some of the slow reels & jigs.
It makes it sound soft and spooky sounding.

A tenor guitar is normally a small bodied guitar tuned in 5ths which came from the tenor banjo.
Beyond that it's not important. It's how it sounds that matters.

[ambrosepottie]

The first tenor guitars had a 21" scale, banjo tuners, a banjo tailpiece and a banjo-esque headstock. So it really was a tenor banjo with a guitar body.

[ambrosepottie]

I had to customize the banjo tailpiece on my tenor because it had 2 claws that were supposed to grip the metal rim of the banjo, but on the wooden guitar wanted to dig into the spruce top. Also it had a hinged bit to adjust the angle from the bridge to compensate for different banjo head tensionings. I removed that part as it wasn't needed on the wooden topped guitar.

[Jayyj]

Saying your tenor guitar is not a tenor because of the tuning its in is really pretty ludicrous, particularly as it's still well within the classical definition of tenor range To me, if it has four steel strings, is too small to be considered a plectrum guitar or a bass and too big to suffer the indignity of being a steel string ukulele, then tenor is appropriate.

[Bertram Henze]

The tuning issue reflects the story of the Irish tenor banjo - they keep calling it a tenor banjo despite its being not tuned CGDA.

Why is it called a guitar? because it has single strings and a guitar body.
Why tenor? because of 4 strings tuned in 5ths, like a tenor banjo - and to warn other guitar players that they cannot play it like a guitar.

Don't try to please purists - their world fits into a matchbox without taking out the matches first *.

* stolen from a Marvin quote from Mr. D. Adams

[Eddie Sheehy]

What Makes a Tenor Guitar a Tenor Guitar?

When people keep asking to you to go tenor eleven blocks away to play it!

When it's only worth Tenor Eleven dollars...

[Charles E.]

If it has a guitar shaped body, with a tenor banjo scale ( 22-7/8" ) or less, four strings and you can tune it CGDA, I call it a tenor guitar. It is up to the player to tune it as they wish, to suit their own style. I think the guy Ed talked to was being ultra picky.

[mrmando]

The tuning issue reflects the story of the Irish tenor banjo - they keep calling it a tenor banjo despite its being not tuned CGDA.

That's right, those Irish musicians were doing this to tenor banjos long before a Scottish musician thought of doing it to a tenor guitar.

Some Irish musicians also call their instrument a "bouzouki" even though they don't tune it CFAD ... but once again, CFAD and 8-string zouks had been around only 20 or 30 years before the zouks made it to Ireland.

[Eddie Sheehy]

St Patrick banished all the zouks from Ireland...

[jasonharsh]

Is it the four strings? The guitar shaped body? The tuning? The scale? A combination of these things? Something else?

I have recently had two very knowledgeable people independently tell me that my Blueridge BR-40T is not a tenor guitar because I have it tuned GDAE. When I asked one of them what it was, he replied "a single-string guitar-bodied octave mandolin"!

I know this is really a matter of semantics, and there is no absolute answer, but I'm curious what other tenor guitar players think.

Oh, and you should see people's faces at jams when I tell them my instrument is in the mandolin family and not the guitar family!

I don't think there is any type of instrument that doesn't come in a plethora of sizes and often tunings. It's about fitting within a certain range of certain parameters involving a range of scales, sizes, and tunings. When Skip James tunes his guitar to open Dm does it cease to be a guitar? When Keith Richards tunes his guitar to open G is he no longer playing guitar?
Next time you run into those guys just tell them you are tired of them giving their single stringed guitar bodied mandolas pretensions of guitardom

[Steve L]

I have recently had two very knowledgeable people independently tell me that my Blueridge BR-40T is not a tenor guitar because I have it tuned GDAE. When I asked one of them what it was, he replied "a single-string guitar-bodied octave mandolin"!

So what sort of miraculous transmogrification occurs when someone tunes what is clearly a guitar to DADGAD, open G, or new standard tuning? I'm frequently astonished by just how dumb "very knowlegeable people" can be.

[JeffD]

I'd never heard of tenors being tuned GDAE until Dagger Gordon started doing it over in Scotland. It's a relatively new phenomenon.

I'm sure the first guy to use the DGBE Chicago tuning on a tenor caught a lot of flack for it too. Lowell Levinger is putting a low F string on his tenors, but he still calls them tenors. (He isn't the first, however; I have photographic evidence of such an instrument built by Houston violinmaker F.A. Thorp back in the '50s.) Of course, if you took one of Lowell's 5-string tenors and tuned it up a whole step, you'd have what Jon Mann or Ron Oates might call a "baritone 5-string mandolin." And it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Manolis Chiotis took a lot of grief from some of his fellow Greeks when he added 2 strings to a bouzouki and started tuning it CFAD. .

I am pretty sure, however, that if you tune it GDEA, you would have a double bass ukulele.

[mandroid]

Trad Jazz bands had Tenor banjo players, then the band leaders all wanted guitar players.
as the music styles changed,

Tenor guitars sold really well to all the banjo players that wanted to keep their band job ..