Different Tunings

[bublnsqueak]

Well here I am; No musical eperience until I hit 48. I've been teaching myself CH for just over a year now. Loving it. Patrick's stuff got me started and my curiosity and enjoyment has kept me going.

I can get tunes from tab and arrange simple melodies from music notation. I have not been very good at playing along using chords. I've tried; I even know where they are up and down the neck. I get the system in Fred Sokolow's book. But I seem to quickly lose interest in chords.

All of this is in Open G tuning. Patrick seems to favour this approach: start with chords in one tuning and work out a tune from there. I'd love to be able to play by ear but I feel a long way from that.

If you haunt BHO you will find that they often chop and change betwen tunings and profess an ignorance of chords. They seem to start from the melody.

So what about alternative tunings? I tried a couple of tunes in Double C and Sawmill. My wife's complaints dried up straight away . Needlecase, Whiskey Before B'fast etc. Interesting, but I felt that learning one tuning was hard enough so I have stuck with Open G tuning. It took me ages to find a tab for Kitchen Girl in Open G, but there are some beautiful tunes I'd like to explore in other tunings; Snowdrop recently caught my attention (open C).

So my question is: What do other British CH players do? Any thoughts on this Chords vs Tunings issue?

Paul

[PeteG]

Hello Paul

I don't really see it as chords vs tunings - I like chords and melody in whatever tuning I'm using. I tend to use three tunings - open G, G modal, and one that I've been loving for about a year now, triple C (gCGCC). I dabbled briefly with double C but much prefer triple.

I started out playing just chords while singing, but started playing more melody when working out breaks. More recently, especially with triple C, I tend to play and sing the melody, but I'm kind of playing a chord melody almost unintentionally as there are some great harmonies to be found in this tuning. If you are playing more than two notes, you are playing a chord...

I've got a few vids on youtube but not too much banjo yet - only one song, Scarborough Fair, in sawmill. This is mainly chords but with a few hammer-ons etc to make it a little more interesting. I'll hopefully get round to posting some triple C songs soon.

I've been playing for more than 20 years now, but banjo for only about 3. I'm just about able to work out tunes by ear, in fact I always found trying to follow tabs really difficult. I'd usually end up simplifying the tabs so I could play at least something that sounded like the song I was after! Perhaps from playing a few different instruments I don't have too much of a problem changing tunings. I think my advice would be to explore other tunings as it sounds like you are enjoying them! And enjoyment should be the primary motivation for playing in my humble opinion...

Take care,

Pete.

[PeteG]

Oops - forgot he youtube link - it's www.youtube.com/user/PeteGostelow

[bublnsqueak]

That was nice!

Thanks for your thoughts.

I decided some time ago to stick with one tuning and I chose Open G for several reasons:
It was reccomended by Patrick
As a beginner learning one tuning is hard enough.
It seems to be the most common.
Retuning for different songs seems clumsy.

However, after about a year I have discovered some disadvantages:
I am denied many of the different 'atmospheres' that can be associated with CH banjo.
Trying to play from music notation in the key of C imposes lots of problems.

I suspect that my inexperience means I can't compensate for the disadvantages, or even that I am magnifying the problem.

Perhaps its time to revisit my decision to stick with Open G?

Cheers
Paul

[scanbran]

Hi Paul,

I have to admit that I follow the learning of tunes approach more than chords and working stuff out for accompaniment.

For that reason, most of the tunes I play are in double C tuning, but I am now going back a little and learning some common tunes in G, and getting some chords and licks down just so that I can play some nice 'join-y in' type music at the local folk club.

I prefer learning tunes, particularly fiddle tunes, and have even dabbled in Gm tuning and learned 4 or 5 tunes in that too, so I would say don't be afraid of retuning your banjo. That's why they (mostly) come with 4:1 planetary tuners - to make retuning swift and painless ;D

Get used to retuning, and even if you only use one other tuning, e.g. double C, it will add a lot of songs/tunes to your repertoire and give you a different sound when playing.

Martin