Sunday, September 25, 2011

Ovation's now in CGDAEB

That is, C2 G2 D3 A3 E4 B3.  In playing a bit with it tonight (brain dead) I found myself making more use of the B3 than the C4, outside of harmonics in Am (and those do sound lovely).  I've tasked Steve Cornish with acquiring a couple of partial capos, including the single- and double-outside string models and the Third Hand, so the Great Partial Capo Experiment can get underway.  A lot of possibles there, including a D-centric capo on 2 2 0 0 0 0 (or, for an open Dm7, 2 2 0 0 1 1).  Interestingly, I found that barring the F and C notes on the first and second strings and then slapping the harmonics gave me a lot of what I was looking for in the first place, although there are definite timbre differences between slapped and popped harmonics and I'd probably want to have access to them both.

I've got a funny feeling about this tuning, with partial capos.  It will be this that I use to go through Scott Tennant's book Pumping Nylon, to build up a little competence with fingerstyle playing, and it will be interesting to see how things develop.  I do know where those notes are in fifths, and having that first string lower than the second is interesting in the "upper" voicings.

Strings are phosphor bronze, 59w - 46w - 30w - 22w - 12p - 16p.  I'm once again tempted to try electric flatwounds and see how they play as well.  If I'm adopting a lighter style and amplifying it, this may be of minor concern.

Onward.  Let's see what happens!