Versatile 8 String Lap Steel Tuning

[Mike Neer]

While I think A6 is a great tuning, for me, the bottom strings are useless because it is just too dark of a sound for chords.

I also found I was almost never using the lowest two strings of A6, thus tuning each a flat 9th higher made sense. But of course I’m playing Western Swing and mostly playing Boggs style chordal solos, almost no single note solos. I do that on the electric mandolin.

Really the bottom string F#. The funny thing is my bottom string G, which I use, but the way I use it would have to be demonstrated. The 7th string A in my C6 serves as the root of the vi chord, whereas the F# would fill that role in A6. That is too low for me. Really a very fine distinction there that I am sure looks silly on paper.

[Michael Kiese]

I have found that plain vanilla C6 tuning (E C A G E C A G, treble to bass) is the most versatile tuning granted you are adept at slanting.
The number of chords that I am able to get with little effort is staggering. IMO, not having a dominant 7 in the tuning makes more sense to me now for having a wider palette of chords, with 6 voicings of the major triad and 6 of the minor triad available with the straight bar. This opens up many possibilities. Dominant, diminished and augmented chords have more tension, so it is easier to get away with them being slightly dissonant. And for improvisation and single note playing, the layout of this tuning is perfect for me. The only caveat is that it is NOT a strum chord tuning. If you had a second neck, you could add a strum chord tuning like E13 there.

While I think A6 is a great tuning, for me, the bottom strings are useless because it is just too dark of a sound for chords. I prefer the range of the C6 tuning, but that is a personal preference. I don't need the 5th on top because I can very easily get that major triad (1-3-5) with a slant in C6.

I must concur with Mike Neer. C6 (or any transposed variant) is super versatile. Perhaps the most versatile tuning. Kinda like EADGBE for spanish style guitar.

I'm going to kindly push back on what Mike said about not having a dominant 7 in the tuning. It's in there, and only two frets to the left of home position.

Let's say you want to play a G dominant 7 sound. G6 is at the 7th fret. Play an F6 (straight bar on 5th fret). What are the notes? F, A, C, D, F, A (bottom to top). All those notes are in the G dominant sound. b7, 9, 4, 5, b7, 9 (considering G as root note). C is the 4th note of the G dominant scale/sound. Move that down a 1/2 step as the top of a forward slant on the bottom three strings, and you got yourself a 2nd inversion G major triad (D, G, B).

Conversely, you can also think about playing a D minor triad (or D minor 6) over G bass. That's also the G7 sound.

It's all there in C6.

I do agree that there are better choices for strum chord tunings with the melody on top, like Noel Bogg's E13. That said, those strum tunings are a tradeoff that lock you into certain types of chord progressions and sounds. E13 and its variants are really great for going V7 to I, and the type of music where every chord is a dominant 7 chord like in early jazz and a lot of country. Idiomatically speaking, E13 tuning "locks" you into a certain era of music and genres.

E13 is not so great for making those pretty chords when resolving to the 1. It's like no matter where I go on E13, I end up on some kind of Dominant chord, and then resolve to a major triad. It's a "straight bar strum every string" factory, lol.

Technically, all the notes are available on any tuning, it's up to the player to find them. That said, E13 has less options than C6. With E13, you trade away versatility for gaining easy access strumming dominant chords.

The key to C6 is changing "gears" in your head and the way you think. Explore the realm of playing chords over different bass notes. It's a largely unexplored world of discovery.

My favorite ending chord in the key of C is to play a D major 6 over C bass. That gives you C major 7(#11), which is a lydian sound that I like. All you gotta do is let the upright bass player play the low C.

Like I said above, D minor triad over G is G7. F6 over G is G7, just resolve the C a 1/2 step down to B.

It's all in there. C6 is the way to go.

The fact that Jerry Byrd is credited for inventing C6 tuning as a teenager, and then explored countless rabbit holes and dead ends of different tunings, and ultimately always returned to C6 as his primary says a lot. C6 was Jerry's home base, and he altered it slightly to get what he needed.

Now C Diatonic, not too many people have picked up that torch. That egg has yet to be completely cracked. It may have the potential to be extremely versatile.

It's cool that Jerry settled on a double neck of C6 (altered in any which way) and C Diatonic. It's a sound that he invented and no one else has picked up after his passing. Jerry is STILL ahead of the pack.

[BJ Burbach]

Haven't used A6, but before we this thread fades, any thoughts on A6 for six stringers? Fav tweaks, besides B11?
Love these tuning threads.
BJ

[Paul Seager]

Hi Fabrice

I also started with Cindy's DVDs and in my first band on Steel I used the C6 with a G on top. Then we changed our vocalist who sang a little lower. I realised that tuning down to A6 would work better than transposing each song - otherwise I would probably be on C6 now. Many years later, I now have a triple neck 8 string and A6 remains my main tuning .

My répertoire includes Santo & Johnny, Hawaiian stuff and songs from Leon - they all work on C6 and A6 (and a few other tunings!)

To Mike's comment:

While I think A6 is a great tuning, for me, the bottom strings are useless because it is just too dark of a sound for chords

well "Green Onions" sounds great on those lower strings, "16 Tons" (in my vocal key) also works. Each of us has our own répertoire and needs.

I do remember working on a song that had only dom 7 chords and that inspired me to put B11 on the second neck. B11 has lots of chords and because of the cross-over to A6 (strings 1-4) it's not difficult to adapt. However if I had to stay with one tuning then A6 is my comfort zone!

Exploring tunings is fun but also a necessity of playing a one-finger instrument. I advocate staying with one (and C6 is fine) until you find a barrier, a necessity to investigate a new tuning.

[Stanislav Paskalev]

Just chiming in with some thoughts. My musical background before lap steel is in classical guitar but I have experience with various tunings on the fretted guitar. Coming to the lap steel I tried first open D, then C6 but I could never fully get the hang of either and quickly switched to other ones. However I only recently verbalized why I felt the need to do so.

When playing the lap I want to play a few things
- Melody, the sweet voice that's the major advantage of our instruments
- Two (and optionally three) voice harmony along the melody. Think counterpoint. The lap steel's narrow range at the width of the bar precludes typical bass lines for me but counter melodies are available
- Chords, either block chords or arpeggiations

I also want to keep it easy
- Have as many options to play stuff under the bar without constantly moving it around
- This includes slanting. The straight bar is the easiest slant to keep in tune, forward slants work too. Backward ones are still hard for me.

On the other hand, there a few things I don't need
- Strumming. Coming from classical guitar I am adept at string skipping, picking different strings at various patterns and rarely use strumming.
- Repeating notes. Repeating notes in a straight bar take away from the options of notes one can use for the purposes of counterpoint. If I have a low A I don't want the high A too.

That being said, I went analytical and tried to come up with a tuning that would allow me straight bar playing with as many options for melody and harmony and does not require that much movement of the bar. At this point one is perfectly within their right to ask me why don't I switch to pedal steel. I don't have a good answer to that other than that I don't have a pedal steel but let's move on.

On six string the first tuning structure that made sense to me was CEGBDF. I gave Leavit tuning a try but its harmonies are too different and I find it lacking in the simpler chords department. But its intervals - a couple of minor thirds and two major seconds are useful. They work well for the straight and forward slants, backward slants are not required as they result in small intervals that are less useful for typical harmony.

The eureka moment for me was moving to 8 strings where I changed the CEGBDF to ACEGABDF. This structure provides a ton of options for melody and harmony (as there's the entire minor pentatonic scale under the bar at any given time as well as the notes of a full major scale) without moving the bar around and also provides a lot of simple chords to grab when needed. Due to the close intervals (as with Leavit's tuning) backward slants are not needed while forward ones can be used with good effects.

And as an added bonus it is very close to ACEGACEG so one can give it try with the same string gauges, just detuning the top a bit.

Admittedly, that's a pianistic/pedal steel approach and not typical sound for the lap steel. But I just wanted to share the thought process behind it.