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Topic: 'Here's That Rainy Day' for C6/A7 non pedal |
Guy Cundell
From:
More idle ramblings from South Australia
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Chris Sattler
From:
Hunter Valley, Australia
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Posted 18 Sep 2015 6:15 pm |
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Thanks Guy. I always like your arrangements.
It is a bit different with that bottom string being strung like that. I would find it difficult to play at first but I guess to put that B in the middle between the A and C would destroy the strumming capabilities to some extent. Is that something you just did or was that was commonplace? |
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Guy Cundell
From:
More idle ramblings from South Australia
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Posted 18 Sep 2015 6:51 pm
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Thanks for the compliment, Chris.
Murphey's tuning (as detailed in the article below) has always appealed to me, although as a relative newbie to lap steel I should probably spend more time exploring the possibilities of regular C6. The split tuning idea (C6/A7 with raised bottom C to C#) is attributed to Jerry Byrd but Murphey's extentions make it even more versatile. Yes, you lose the strumming capability to some extent but it expands the harmonic properties of C6 quite a bit.
http://tangleweed.org/blog/uploads/earlJoaquinMurphey_jcm.pdf |
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Earnest Bovine
From:
Los Angeles CA USA
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Posted 18 Sep 2015 7:17 pm
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| Very nice & very musical, Guy. The B string is very useful for chords in this tuning, but I don't think there is a good reason to put it there where you would expect to find a low string. There is a bad reason: too lazy or too rushed to move all the other strings and put the B as string 1, or maybe string 2 if you have a high D. |
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Quentin Hickey
From:
Nova Scotia, Canada
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Posted 20 Sep 2015 2:50 pm
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| Im trying to figure out diferent ways to play this on pedal steel thanks this is will help me very much. |
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Guy Cundell
From:
More idle ramblings from South Australia
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Posted 20 Sep 2015 5:39 pm
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Cheers, E.B. and Quentin.
Doug, that is an interesting point that you make about placing the B string on strings 1 or 2. Personally I have always had much difficulty coming to terms with reentrant strings on the top. I found this when toying with E9 PSG years ago and am amazed at how you experts make it work. Alternatively the reentrant string at the bottom doesn’t throw me, maybe because I don’t utilize it for melody much. My theory about why Murphey placed it on the bottom is that it didn’t disrupt the schema of pitch sequence of the top strings that he was versed in and used for melody improv.
Coming at this historically, the precedent for high bottom strings was right there in the ukulele tuning for all the Hawaiian influenced players like Murphey. Also Alvino Ray had published reentrant tunings for 6, 7 and 8 string E7 and A7 chords in 1937 using a high bottom string.
I think a good reason for using the high B on bottom is about voicing on adjacent strings. You get an excellent voicing of half diminished, minor sixth or dom 9th, depending on how you use them. And having a half diminished chord (m7b5) on hand was a real innovation.
There is another reward for stringing a guitar this way. With the bottom two strings lowered a semitone to C natural and Bb, it is a really good strummer. The high Bb gives you a really well voiced 7th chord as opposed to having the 7th note too low in the voicing. You also get a choice of Maj 6th or Dom 7th or 13th to strum depending on whether you strum the top or bottom set of strings. |
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