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Cross Tunings for Guitar, Banjo and Mandolin
Editor' Note:For several years, Chris Erswell, a UK folk musician, was active in Internet folk circles, including the "Banjo Hangout." He often shared information, including the content on this page, under the name "Tom Joad," named for the fictitious hero of The Grapes of Wrath. Unfortunately, circumstances caused him to stop updating these pages several years ago, and the site subsequently went down.
We used to link to Chris' pages from this web site, and we have heard the dismay of readers who could no longer access Chris' files. So we sought permission to restore what we could, and this is the result.
This page addresses some of the tuning variations that were (and in some cases are) common on fretted instruments such as banjo. Chris's original page had several links to other sites that have also gone down. We have kept a record of those links and will try to find the content he was referring to if possible. In fact one of the broken links originally pointed to another "down" site that we have archived for possible reconstruction, when we have appropriate permissions.
But for now, I have taken the broken links off the page to avoid confusion.
If you have any of the other content that Chris generated that we are missing, please let me know.
- Paul Race
Cross Tunings for Guitar, Banjo and Mandolin
Banjo Cross Tunings
The frailing banjo uses many different string tunings sometimes known as cross tunings. The ones I use most often are:
Open G tuning: gDGBD
Double C tuning: gCGCD
G Modal tuning: gDGCD
The lower case "g" refers to the 5th string (the one furthest from
the floor when playing). Double C tuning is sometimes known as Drop C
tuning. There are others which I use less frequently such as G minor
tuning: gDGBflatD.
There are many more cross tunings.
With this number of different tunings, it is easy to see why
tablature is more practical for banjo than music notation. Using the
latter would entail relearning the musical notes at every fret every
time the banjo was re-tuned.
Guitar Cross Tunings
Cross tunings are also commonly used by guitarists when playing folk
music. For example, when playing Celtic music, I often use D modal
tuning: DADGAD (pronounced "dadgad") which makes the playing of Celtic
modal harmonies much easier than the standard guitar tuning of EADGBE.
Mandolin and Musical Notation
If you already play a fretted stringed instrument like the guitar or
banjo, it is relatively easy to learn the mandolin as well. And the
mandolin has the same tuning as a fiddle. There are cross tunings for
mandolin which make learning mandolin tablature useful. However, it is
also useful to learn musical notation for the mandolin because this
means you can then read and play literally thousands of fiddle folk
tunes from around the world in the many anthologies that exist. Once you
know the melody of a tune from the fiddle notation, it is easy to knock
out the tune, or an accompaniment, on the guitar or banjo as well. And
once you are reasonably confident on the mandolin--this makes it
easier to learn the fiddle because you already know the left hand
technique and notation.
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African Origins of Clawhammer | Cross Tunings |
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