Tenor tuning survey

[Martin Jonas]

Ah, this is way too friendly a place for negative comments!

Although thinking about it, a tenor in EBGD tuning would be great for Renaissance guitar music...

Speaking of renaissance music on tenor guitar, I tried this 16th century keyboard piece (The Short Mesure Off My Lady Wynkfylds Rownde)a while ago -- works just fine on the reso tenor in GDAE:



Martin

[Will Morgan]

Tenor banjo, by Jason Romero, tuned GDAE
Tenor guitar, by Jayson Bowerman, tuned GDAD
I use both for Irish trad, primarily. I hesitate to call the guitar a tenor, as it has a full size
guitar body and a scale length of a little over 24'. It is a marvelous instrument for accompaniment, bouzouki style,
and playing melody lines is not as confusing as one might think.

[Baron Collins-Hill]

I tune (my Blueridge 40t) GDAD. I mostly use it for accompaniment, but do like to play melody on it as well. It took a little while to get used to the high D string for melodies, but its not so bad once you are expecting it.

[Mike Crocker]

GDAE for tenor banjo and my weird guitar shaped mando-cello/bouzouki/octave mandolin.

Peace.

[John Kelly]

Tenor banjo, tenor guitar (plus mando, octave and bouzouki) all in GDAE as I like to keep things as simple as possible and this tuning suits my Scottish and Irish dominated repertoire.

[SGraham]

Tenor guitar: CGDG

It took some getting used to, but I'm not breaking my top string all the time now (I play pretty hard).

Style of music: Old time fiddle tunes, folk, corrupted bluegrass

[Charles E.]

[QUOTE=SGraham;1085976]Tenor guitar: CGDG

It took some getting used to [quote]

That would be a mind bender for me.

[journeybear]

Steel tenor guitar (National Triolian)

CGDA - never had much interest in other tunings; regular fifths intervals are what made playing string instruments possible for me. A mandola was attractive due to the inherent key changes associated with the lower tuning, then the Triolian to add to my arsenal while playing in a jug band. I also played this on a couple tunes while recording with the other jug band, even slide - not my strong suit but worked out well enough, I think.

Blues, ragtime, jug band, American, country, rock

BTW, I am surprised to see so many people tuning GDAE or similarly. I had no idea these could be tuned so far from what I thought was normal. Is that the same as a mandolin or an octave lower? I would think the first option would put too much tension on the strings and neck and the second option would make the strings too slack. Could some of you explain which you are doing? (Should this be a secondary or corollary survey? Maybe a fourth question?)

[John Kelly]

Steel tenor guitar (National Triolian)

BTW, I am surprised to see so many people tuning GDAE or similarly. I had no idea these could be tuned so far from what I thought was normal. Is that the same as a mandolin or an octave lower? I would think the first option would put too much tension on the strings and neck and the second option would make the strings too slack. Could some of you explain which you are doing? (Should this be a secondary or corollary survey? Maybe a fourth question?)

The GDAE tuning is an octave below standard mandolin tuning. My 2 tenors, both self-builds, have scale lengths of 540mm (same as my octave), one with a zero fret and one without. I have single octave strings on the one without the zero fret and slightly heavier strings on the one with the zero fret. Both seem to have no problems regarding buzz or string tension, though one is just a year old and the other a few months.

[Ed Goist]

Journeybear; Using gauges 42W-30W-20-13 to tune GDAE on a 23" tenor guitar gives one string tensions of:

    42-30-20-13	
    G: 18.39 #		
    D: 21.45 #		
    A: 24.02 # 	
    E: 21.63 #	
Total: 85.49 #

In my opinion, these gauges with their fairly low tensions are very comfortable to play, and make for easy and effective bends, slides, hammer-ons, and pull-offs.

The 42 G is still a little "loosie-goosie", but not to the point where it's an issue. At some point I may try a 44 on the G (tension 20.59 #) and a 19 on the A (tension 21.96 #). This would make the tension across all the strings almost equal.

[SGraham]

[QUOTE][QUOTE=SGraham;1085976]Tenor guitar: CGDG

It took some getting used to

That would be a mind bender for me.

The fingerings are the same as the GDAD tuning that a lot of octave players use. I find four advantages with this tuning: 1) it makes possible some interesting open chord possibilities, 2) fiddle tune melody fingering is still pretty intuitive--given that the only change from traditional tuning is a one-step-down difference on the top string, 3) string breakage is rare for me now (I can use a heavier gauge top string), and 4) I'm not playing in the same range as the guitar player with resulting muddiness in the sound.

[journeybear]

Thanks for the info, guys. I love this place! I learn so much about stuff I would never have thought of doing. Not that I'm against experimenting - au contraire - but I had no idea that was possible, and so never thought to try.

Speaking of which - I may just have to go and do that. As much as I like the mandola, I have never been real comfortable about taking leads - always have to keep calculating in my head what the notes are. With the mandolin it's automatic, of course, for the most part. Stringing the Triolian down another fourth might make it more natural. Besides, I already have the mandola for the key changes that tuning provides. I'll have to measure the scale length and see what I've got. It's a lot longer than the mandola's, which is really not much longer than the mandolin's. This will bring it right into the guitar's range, though, so I would lose the wide audio spectrum provided by the bass-guitar-mandolin trio instrumentation. Hmmm ... stuff to think about ...

[Michael Eck]

Thanks to all for weighing in. Please keep the responses coming!

[Rvl]

Tenor banjo CGDA
archtop guitar FCGD
archtop guitar FCGDA
long scale tenor guitar FCGD
long scale tenor guitar GDAE
plectrum banjo FCGD
plectrum banjo GDAE
tenor resonator GDAE

I sing and play folk/old time and sing

Thanks

Robert VanLane

[MirekPatekdotcom]

Tenor banjo, less frequently tenor guitar (modified from child-sized classical guitar by narrowing the neck).

Exclusively DGdg tuning.

Many fingerpicking and frailing styles, see http://www.mirekpatek.com

Mirek

[Bob DeVellis]

Tenor banjo: GDAE. Tenor guitar:DGBE. I don't play much tenor anymore but when I was playing Irish dance music on tenor guitar, I found the Chicago tuning to make the stretches a lot easier. My tenor banjo is short scale, so GDAE works for that.

My journey with tenors sort of echos the instrument's original history. The original progression was the development of tenor banjos to allow mandolinists to be heard in orchestral settings with familiar tuning in 5ths. The tenor guitar was to bring tenor banjoists to the guitar -- first the tenor with tuning like the banjo and then the 6-string. So, tenor banjo and tenor guitar were stepping stones to 6-string. I was trying to learn an Irish tune on mandolin and found a version of it played on tenor guitar. After I learned it on tenor and mandolin, I thought I'd giver it a go on 6-string. I did, and I liked it. And thus I have come to play guitar much more than mandolin at present. But I still love 'em all.

[Jim Gallaher]

- Tenor Guitar
- GDAE
- Swing

[Paul Brett]

-Tenor Guitar
-CGDG
-accompaniment on folk/Irish songs

I play an OM GDAD so it's pretty much the same just think transpose all the time. I play mandolin GDAE.

[bratsche]

Ah, this is way too friendly a place for negative comments!
I've spent many an hour over the last year or so working on the Bach D Minor Partita on mandolin - but I can't imagine being able to manage large sections of it on a tenor scale length. Even on viola the chordal parts are too much for me, although I'm assured more talented (or perhaps just larger handed!) violists can turn in a decent version.

For me, Bach is usually most difficult on mandolin and violin, easier on viola, and easiest on mandola. It's not so much an issue of big hands (which I don't have, as an average-sized female), as much as it is of micro-adjustments of the finger positions necessary to make all those chords (and make them in tune, on the non-fretted instruments). I had a lot of physical tension as a violin player, largely due to this, which all but disappeared when I took up viola. Even so, there's a limit to this, and I'm not sure what the scale of a tenor banjo or guitar is, but if it's too much longer than mandola, all bets are off. As in all things, YMMV, of course.

bratsche

[Clockwork John]

Tenor banjo, tuned GDAE, for ITM, celtic folk, and folk punk. Recently got my hands on a second one, so maybe I'll play around with Chicago tuning some, since I'm also a guitarist.

[Mike Snyder]

17 fret Orpheum tenor banjo in GDAE for ITM, Scottish pipe tunes, old-time, jazz and 70's AM radio rock. The bluegrass banjo guys have a fit when I bring it to b-grass jams.

[SailorUke]

I'm primarily a ukulele player, both tenor and baritone uke; although I'm getting more involved in tenor guitar.

Instruments: Tenor guitars and baritone ukuleles
Tunings: CGDA and DGBE (some in each); also open tunings on baritone ukes (usually open A, G or D)
Music: Pop, country, blues, '60s rock and folk. Generally accompanying myself solo on vocals, or in duets. All amateur.

I may be tempted to try GDAE on one of the re-strung baritones somewhere down the road.

[DannSkinn]

My tenor banjo is CGDA BUT
ALL my tenor guitars are tuned GDAE including my 8 string tenor which is octave G, G, octave D, D, AA, EE

Skip Skinner
StepSons
Austin, Texas

[Dr H]

Hmm...

I've always tuned my tenor guitar and tenor banjo to CGDA, and my ancient Mel Bay method books for tenor guitar & tenor banjo insist that this is "standard" tuning. According to the history I've seen, the tenor guitar was developed primarily to play tenor banjo parts, at a time when the guitar was starting to replace the banjo in popularity.

Of course one can tune pretty much any stringed instrument anyway one wants to, within certain physical limits. But having just started a thread on "guitar-shaped octave mandolins" I I'm wondering if a tenor guitar tuned GDAE isn't really more of a 4-string octave mandolin than a tenor guitar?

[Big Rig]

- Tenor Guitar
- AEAC#
- Slide Blues