Ovation. I'd planned to change this one's tuning to work on an Antoine Dufour tune, but then I started working on Aerial Boundaries again, and nope, this sucker's staying in that tuning for a little while longer! And, since Dufour has several pieces that will work with standard tuning and a detuned sixth string (std, drop D, drop C), I'll use a single, other instrument to work on those. (And now, I've found it, sitting right in front of me.)
Classical. Steve Bambakidis donated me the beaten-up classical guitar that he had no use for, and I've been trying to figure out what to do with it. It's rough, but then am I not experimenting? Anyway, I'd thought I'd tune that up to work on Antoine Dufour's piece "Scratch" (via which I would learn how he approaches fingerstyle, and also learn about not only capoing, but partial capoing), but in stringing things up with a set of nylons, the limitations became obvious. Neck is far from perfect, action is not at all ideal, the body fret is of course at 12, and there's a lot going on in "Scratch" that definitively takes advantage of steel strings. And trying to bring a nylon sixth string out of a standard-tension set down to C2 is just...uh...optimistic. But! Now with the burrs on the frets cleaned up a little bit, the neck (really) rough-leveled and a new set of strings, and a decent action in first and second positions, what if I just make this instrument a standard-tuning knockabout? It can serve for guests who want/need standard tuning, and I can use it with all the standard-tuning resources I have for learning standard approaches to fingerstyle/Celtic. I'll just treat EADGBE as another alternate tuning to learn. (I might even some day get jiggy with it and try all fourths, EADGCF, because I'm just that way, and you can get all fourths without bending much. :-) Anyway, the tuning is now standard and the strings are standard-tension ("High Tension") at 43w-35w-30w-40p-32p-28p.
SoloEtte. I've not been perfectly happy with the Bb5 tuning on this axe (it's really cool in a few contexts, but it just feels like too much of a one-trick pony), and so this will become the "learn Dufour" instrument, starting with the "Scratch" tuning (C2-A2-D3-G3-B3-E4) and then migrate to the other pieces; it will be nice to have an instrument that I can work with late at night without upsetting people. I'm happy with this idea. Gauges are 59w-46w-30w-22w-12p-10p.
Fretless. Likewise, I've not been perfectly happy with either the NST tuning on this instrument, nor with the various half-assed options I've worked with so far. So, until I get the chance to fashion another nut/saddle combination (and as a teaser, there is a whole lot of head noise going on about that concept), I'm going to try out DADGAD, but with a twist. I'm going to do "CGCGFC", instead, both going down a whole step and swapping out the whole-step interval but keeping the pitches the same. This little tweak will give me the chance to try out the sus4 tuning concept while still retaining:
- Three adjacent pairs of general-purpose intervals, for scale work in different registers. (Three of those, strings 6-5, 4-3, and 2-1, are a fifth apart, allowing one-octave-over-two-strings, and one of those, strings 5-4, is a fourth, both leading out of a fifth interval and into another one.
- Top three strings defining the essential sus4 chord for the tuning.
- Root on top.
- Bottom strings defining a power chord.
Anyway, now I can say that there are two instruments in the house that are in their natural tunings. That's okay, I haven't lost my mind--yet. :-)
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