Comical Start to CGDA tuning!

[michaeloceanmoon]

Well the country blues boogie woogie featuring Ethan Ballinger inspired me to retune my one tenor, 1920's Regal, from guitar DGBE tuning to CGDA tenor. The Regal has a 21" scale and sounds great in fifths even though my Martin medium strings are pretty stiff with the D and A. But soon things got funny.

I thought that CGDA was mandolin tuning, so I started looking at mandolin chord charts and trying to get my bearings by playing the blues and transposing some old folk songs and melodies with my first time CGBA tuning. No doubt playing in fifths is a different instrument indeed to playing in Chicago tuning. This is going to really require lots of time, fun and focus and eventually a second tenor. Yet I was completely flummoxed that my D mandolin chord sounded like a G and my G mandolin shape sounded like a C? To add to my initial puzzlement, my battery just died on my tuner and I only had my open G tuned banjo at the ready to transpose with. I soon realized that mandolins may not be tuned CGBA, but GBAE!! Well my brain hurts a bit from starting off on my other left foot

I just downloaded a file from Mark Josephs and another from Gary Lee More and hope to pick up a battery for my tuner and print out these intros to the tenor this weekend.
And now that I'm a bit straightened out with having the proper chord charts, hopefully this won't seem quite so mystifying.

My question to the community is if there are any tips to offer for a guitar player, (Chicago tuned tenor player) to most smoothly expand into playing in fifths? I'm hoping at some time the shift to fifths, chords and notes, will make sense and I'll be able to shift between the 2 tunings and take my repertoire with me. Is there any method or approaches that may give me a swifter handle on things? Any exercises that are advised for getting the best grip on the relationships between the necks etc.?

thanks so much!
Michael Aiello
artemisiamichaelart.blogspot.com

PS:
I was going to get a second tenor, 23" scale, and tune that to low G (mandolin tuning) and keep my Regal at DGBE, but the CGDA sounds real nice on the 21" scale length.
Maybe a 23" is better for Chicago tuning? Or maybe I really do need 3 tenors!!?

[k0k0peli]

My question to the community is if there are any tips to offer for a guitar player, (Chicago tuned tenor player) to most smoothly expand into playing in fifths? I'm hoping at some time the shift to fifths, chords and notes, will make sense and I'll be able to shift between the 2 tunings and take my repertoire with me. Is there any method or approaches that may give me a swifter handle on things? Any exercises that are advised for getting the best grip on the relationships between the necks etc.?

Nope, no easy path exists IMHO. The 4ths+3rd DGBE tuning differs greatly from straight-5ths GDAE (mandolin) or CGDA (mandola and tenor). If you are conversant with straight-4ths like EADG bass tuning then 5ths chord the same, but reversed. Ya just gotta bite that bullet and internalize the 5ths fingerings. I'm still working on that after some decades.

For my own style I like to tune 5ths+4th 'Irish' GDAD on mandolin and CGDG on mandola (same for tenor). This allows simpler basic chordings, more open strings, guitar-like tricks on the upper courses, and lets me concentrate on getting the lower courses fingered right. YMMV. Have fun!

[Beanzy]

Your best guide would be to use the benefit that patterns in fifth tuning give. They're completely consistent up and down as well as across the strings.

For example pick any note anywhere as your root. Well the fifth of your chord is over on the next thinner string. The third is one string fatter and back a fret. Straight away you can build a three finger chord anywhere.if you shuffle that third back another fret you've got the minor of whatever chord that was.

If you know chords on the mandolin then you know them on the thinnest three strings in CGDA, and if you know that you know all of them but as you found out your G pattern is now C your C is F your D is G etc around the circle of 5ths.

Having said that initially you are even better off basing TG chords on a barre shape, as they are less of a stretch than many mandolin chords until you get used to the longer stretch on many 5th chord shapes (you go two more frets before you get to move up a string by comparison with a guitar scale). For the barre chords any 5th note you fret on the C string will be matched by a 3rd on the A string.

Frank Geigers free e-book book is one I found useful for getting the shapes in my head without ageing too much in the process;
http://www.calgaryuke.com/ukerichard...nstruments.pdf

[michaeloceanmoon]

EGADs Kokopelli! I might need a day or two before I start throwing in Irish tunings!! The dropped E to D makes sense in guitar open G. I'll put that I my list. Thanks for planting that seed; I'll check it out too. The perspective is greatly appreciated as well.

Beanzy, those are some fine tips and good bucket holds to put some weight on. I had to reread three times the second one ( hey I kinda like that unintentional decsending numerical word play )about bar chords and 5's and 3rds to follow you, but ultimately, capice''. I will certainly take a look at that suggested e-book.

Thank you so much guys!
It's ironic that I started playing 4 strings to be easier on my left hand, yet especially when I move to a 23" scale, I guess fifths can be a considerable stretch. I wasn't considering that.

I really appreciate the encouragement and counsel. I spent a bunch of time trying to hear the voicing and transpose a Tammy Wynette song I love. Finding the melody and the bass line are so not intuitive for me at the moment in fifths. I'm going to keep finding my bass lines and folding in both of your suggestions. After a while I just started ad lib composing. It was just a A minor, G, C, F progression ultimately with added lines but the voicing was so not guitar sounding. But forget about soloing over it!! Still in a dim place ( not quite dark ) with scales etc in fifths.

Well here we go. Thanks so much all!
Michael Aiello
artemisiamichaelart.blogspot.com

[Explorer]

Hopefully you won't see this as a foolish question, but...

Why wouldn't you just tune to GDAE, and then capo at the fifth fret?

I was curious about the tuning in that video, so I grabbed an instrument in octave mandolin GDAE, and capoed at the fifth fret (CGDA) to match the open strings and the chords he used.

In that video, he's capoed at the seventh fret, which means the instrument is actually tuned FCGD, in order to get CGDA with that seventh-fret capo.

I regularly capo at the fifth fret on this particular instrument for mandola tuning when I need a higher range here and there, but use the heck out of the lower tuning most of the time. If I can make do carrying less, I'll take a smaller instrument in mandola CGDA tuning in the first place.

I guess my thinking is, if your instrument has a body which can reproduce that low G, why not work it, instead of having a huge mandola which can't hit the low end of the air the instrument can handle?

[michaeloceanmoon]

Oh my instrument has a short 21" scale which I normally tune DGBE. So I'm super floppy at GDAE.
Also, after I backtracked from the 7th fret the scales and chords I was hearing, my uncapoed tuning was CGDA.
But, once I arrived at that tuning, i detoured and began checking out basic tenor chord charts etc., and beginning to transpose my own repertoire on to my first time CGDA tuned ax. I've been familiarizing myself with the basics , and actually haven't gotten back to the country blues boogie woogie yet. Putting the horse back before the cart so to speak

It may be a bit before I review what Ethan Ballinger is up to in that galloping number. My horse and carriage are still just coming out of the stables in CGDA !

Thanks, Michael

[fox]

I have found string choice makes a massive difference to sound and playability, get some singles and try out GDAE and CGDA.
I can tell you what I use on my 21" but you may find your guitar works better with slightly different gauges.
GDAE = 48 30 22 13 ... CGDA = 34 24 15 10.
I actually prefer the sound of a .50 Bronze wound for the G but I don't like the feel so I compromise with the .48
I found I can stretch a .11 for the A (C tuning) but in fact .10 works really well.
Overall I find G tuning is my preference and works fine with the scale length and body size.

[Beanzy]

I prefer the lighter clarity or brighter sound of chords from CGDA tuning (probably due to the string weight and higher pitch), I find I can play in with other guitars without sounding the same so that's another plus being brighter/lighter. I also like being able to go to the old Jazz banjo info and read that straight onto the instrument. I use the mandoloncello or violoncello for the low full sounding stuff so I don't have that itch to scratch.

Michael, I forgot to mention that at the beginning if you want a quick reminder of how some of the chords change for mandolin shapes on the TG then just look at the string tuning on your tenor or mandolin; C<G<D<A<E each becomes the next one down. Whether that's useful or not depends how familiar you are with mandolin.

[FatBear]

He's coming from guitar as I understand it, not mandolin. But there is a lot out there on the web about mandolin chords. While the values of the chords will be different, the shapes will be the same. So learning mandolin chord shapes would be useful and they are easier to find online.

I like the recommendation for three finger chords. Heck, if he wants to use a lot of fingers he can play his 6 string guitar!

I struggled with mandolin chords until I was frustrated beyond belief. Then I took some lessons from Dan Sankey in San Diego. He taught me some very practical chord theory which has helped me immensely. It is actually pretty simple to figure out the chords once you know what to do and you can also figure out what to do when you need a chord that you can't reach. I have applied what I learned to my "tenor guitar" (a baritone ukulele tuned GDAE, like a tenor guitar with rubbery strings) and it has made the thing playable for me.

I know a teacher in Portland (Rene Berblinger) who has been playing and teaching mandolin, banjo and guitar for many decades. I don't know if he has specifically taught tenor guitar, but we have talked about it and he is quite familiar with the instrument. He can probably help with the basics of 5ths chords if you wish to go that route. It would probably be money well spent. His schedule tends to be tight, though. PM me if you want to contact him.

[FatBear]

I might add that I put a capo on my (low) GDAE tuned instrument and I like the brightness of CGDA a lot better!

[SincereCorgi]

I also like being able to go to the old Jazz banjo info and read that straight onto the instrument. I use the mandoloncello or violoncello for the low full sounding stuff so I don't have that itch to scratch.

I think your cello background probably helps a ton. I went through the first three Suzuki viola books on tenor when I was starting out, but in restrospect I think it would have been smarter to do it with the cello books, where the fingerings would be a lot more applicable. Right now, I basically treat it as a big transposing mandolin (uh... F Mandolin?), which would be fine except that I really sweat it when I read actual jazz banjo music.

[michaeloceanmoon]

Playing in fifths is amazing and humbling! I miss my A minor and intuitive sensibility of how chords and their roots or thirds and fifths can walk up and down. I know I can take the same shape and move it around, but intuitively finding my bass and melody line is still goofy, I don't immediately know which finger to walk or how to (in time) get to what I hear in my head. Forget about knowing what note I'm on or even hearing sometimes. In fact my tuner seems to not know what it's hearing either. Maybe I'm imagining things, but usually if I didn't know what chord I was playing in DGBE tuning, my tuner would recognize the chord. But now it is as bewildered as me with the expanded chromatic range of many CGDA chords. It blinks back and forth sometimes not committing to a dominant chord.

Should I be playing Bach's Cello Suites and finding my scales ? ..

Having fun though!
Michael

[Explorer]

I bought my Flatiron mandola new back in the '80s, and there weren't many learning materials for it back then. I started playing along to classic rock albums and Steeleye Span. Playing along with things with just a basic chart of major, minor and 7th chords will get you a long way.

As it is, I'm thinking of getting one of those huge chord encyclopedias for either mandola or mandocello, to really build some new ideas from the ground up, and started working a tenor banjo course as well.

I did make some charts of note-scale patterns when I was first playing the six-course mandophone in full fifths tuning, and that built some muscle from which i can grab four-course-wide sections, but I want to explore chords with the root or fifth sounding on the bottom course, and also chords which maximize open strings. I have two books which do that for guitar, but I haven't yet run across a chord book for mandocello, bouzouki or cittern in full fifths which really explores that aspect.

I'm coming into one of those periods where I start exploring, and fill up notebooks with ideas and scale/chord diagrams while I internalize the ideas. I'd just rather not have to build from the ground up, and am happy if someone else has already done the grunt work.

[michaeloceanmoon]

All sounds admirable Explorer, you've done a lot of work. I will build off your basics chord approach. It's funny on guitar tuning I can just hear and figure out songs. In fifths I play and then hear something on the instrument and go,.. Hey that's the Byrds... that's REM... that song may have originally been written in fifths?!.. That may be a significant turning point when I start figuring out songs while tuned to fifths. If I come across any methods that haven't been mentioned to share, I will. Aside from the TGF and Mr. Moore's manual someone tipped me off to a third,.. I haven't checked it out yet. If it wasn't mentioned on this particular thread already, I'll find it and add it here.

Today will be day 5!! in fifths!! I've got a long way to go. PS: I wonder how long I can go before even just for a little while tuning back to DGBE. I sure will appreciate when I can finally spring for my second tenor. I would love to go in a musical retreat right now and transpose all I think I know onto CGDA and then take the cool things from CGDA and bring them back to guitar tuning. I'll be grunting I guess until I learn to sing!

Michael

[Explorer]

Not to muddy the waters, but when I first considered taking the plunge into full fifths tuning on guitar, I tuned my regular 6-string to CGDDAE, repeating the D note. I could do this without changing the strings, and could capo at the fifth fret to get mandola CGDA.

[michaeloceanmoon]

Frank Geigers free e-book book is one I found useful for getting the shapes in my head without ageing too much in the process; http://www.calgaryuke.com/ukerichard...nstruments.pdf

Eoin,

I haven't printed this out or played with it yet, but just reading the table of contents (while I should be paying attention to what's on the stove) is really peaking my interest! Thank you, I can't wait to sink my digits and nugget into this!

Michael

[Beanzy]

I'm not the quickest at picking things up so it took me about three reads to assimilate the info, but it's a fairly short book so that helped. The first time through got me the basic idea for the major/minor chords and the second reading made the 7ths, 9ths and shapes near the nut stick. Then after a few weeks going back to it really fixed the diminished /augmented shapes and started me looking at the jazzy stuff.

I'm still not sure if I could have ever remembered hundreds of shapes from my gig bag chord book, but after this I can look at those diagrams and tell you what each dot represents, even without knowing what the chord is, or if you asked for a chord I could build it on the fly for most normal stuff.

I've never met the author but definitely owe him a debt of gratitude for the mind map he gave me.

[michaeloceanmoon]

Ok, I'm impressed. I've played so much by ear and most of the time before fifths I never sweated if it was 7th, diminished, augmented etc.. But learning this new tuning, for me, is opening new synapses. Maybe I'll have cranial space for those other chord types too? I'll let you know. I'm more concerned right now with learning my roots and fifths and thirds ,.. And learning how to walk bass and melody and find a way to grapple with scales. But maybe I'll wake up (after much hard work no doubt) and 'get it' as to '"this totally needs an augmented 9th right here".

Any suggestions for GDAE tuning?

Michael

[Explorer]

Here's my suggestions:

This link has a great tool for making chords and scales for any tuning you like. I've used this and tools like it for full fifths on 6-course instruments, as well as 8-string guitar in EADGFCAD (low to high) tuning.

What i like most about such tools is that it doesn't just show one chord position. By showing all the places each chosen note appears on the fretboard, you can easily choose an inversion which puts a root or fifth at the bottom. You can maximize your open string incorporation should you wish.

And, of course, you can work all kinds of scales, and incorporate your Four Finger Closed Position exercises, work your slides in your scalework if your instrument has a huge scale length, and any other activity which will increase your fretboard agility. Any interval work will pay off in the long run, like playing scales in third intervals (132435465768798-867564534231201).

I can't find the page I first used years ago, which allowed me to specify all the chord tones or scale tones to display. That is the ability I do miss, as it allowed me to chart suspended chords and upper extensions easily. If someone has recently found something similar, with custom tunings, string counts up to 12, and user-definable scales and chords, post a link!

Anyway, that page should prove hugely useful to anyone who wants to really learn chords and scales up and down the fretboard. Yes, it might take some motivation to learn, which I can't provide, but i can encourage you by noting that it took you however many years you've been alive to be able to communicate effectively using your native language, and it won't take very long comparatively to get that good on your instrument.

Good luck!

[michaeloceanmoon]

Much obliged Explorer, yes indeed this will keep me busy. Super excited to spend some years with it!
Thanks! Michael

[michaeloceanmoon]

Explorer, did you print out those diagrams or just practice by your monitor or smartphone? There's so much here!! Yet another reason to get a bigger screened device someday. M

[Explorer]

Since you ask...

On a different site ( the one i couldn't remember or find) i had the option of printing 24 frets of positions.

I made an inner slide and an outer sleeve for each scale and chord, and could slide the chart so as to see all the major chords for the twelve different roots, and another such slide rule for minor, dominant, minor seventh, and all the other chords and scales.

I was thinking of making one master device which would list all the chords within a diatonic scale on one chart, but i use chords like suspensions and flat sevenths (rock and roll!) too often, and found making such a device to be a pain.

It is pretty astounding how many exercises can be derived from that website, isn't it?

[michaeloceanmoon]

I don't understand your slide and sleeve learning tool, do you have your patent yet? Can you explain a bit about how to construct one?

[Explorer]

Here's a similar device, for guitar.



I thnk the site also has a PDF file available to print and assemble it, so you can understand how it works before you make one for mandolin. i think they're referred to as guitar slide rules, and there might even be something similar for mandolin, but i never looked.

My big hint is to print the fretboard for a half step flat of where you want to start, because that way you'll have a nice uninterrupted fretboard on which the open strings won't have a distractingly big dark line, looking different from everything else.

I had two more things to suggest, incidentally.

First, also print a chart with positions on it, so that you methodically work them all and understand them. No sense in only using the first few frets if you can use the whole instrument.

Second, to work those positions, download something like the Kreutzer etudes for violin, available free in many places.