Hi all,
Has anybody had any experiences with stringing a guitar 'out of order' as it were?
A friend of mine owns the local music shop and has plenty of time to fiddle about with the stock. He also gets piles of used strings to dispose of, and a few wrecks and second hand beaters to muck around with.
I went in one day and he'd strung an old acoustic with the strings in random order. That's to say the tuning was the same EADGBE, but the strings were not arranged in descending order of thickness.
So all the strings were tuned to higher or lower pitches than they'd been designed for, and were in unusual places across the neck. :shock:
He handed it over and told me to have ago. I was expecting a really bad experience, and a pretty dismal sound..... To my amazement it sounded just fine! And it was a heck of a lot of fun to play as the results had such an element of surprise about them. I had a great time playing with it - and was intrigued at how good it sounded.
He said he thought that it was a variation on the "Nashville tuning" idea. Apparently that involves also fitting strings that don't follow the same format as the standard six string set, but in a less crazy manner. I think with Nashville you basically use thinner ones in place of some of the thicker strings, and so reduce the octave span??
Anybody had any experience of using strings in a different way to get different effects?
Cheers,
Chris
never messed with strings he way your friend has. there could be truoble with the nut slot widths down the raod.
the only thing I have altered (besides playign on open tunings) was to wrap wax papper around my guitar's neck. it fit under the strings; I wanted a sitar buzz sound.
I was fourteen. it worked. but now i have a real jerry jones sitar /guitar.
nashville tuning is using thin strings for the bottom thick strings, so all the strings are unwound and the bass strings are an octave up, if i'm not mistaken.
the only thing i do is i used to wrap the strings around the backstop on my old les paul, but now on my prs, that's the way it's supposed to be done.
I tried "double Nashville" once on my 12-string - like regular Nashville, but with the strings doubled.
It wound up sounding like a big mandolin so I changed it back. Fun to experiment though.
David Gilmour used strange mixtures of different strings and different pitches.
Most famously used in Time I think?
And that was an amazing solo...
"Today is what it means to be young..."
(Radiohead, RHCP, Jimi Hendrix - the big 3)
I actually never thought about changing string order like that but I don't know, I might try it with my older guitar sometime...could be cool. :D
i used to have a beater acoustic that i strung left handed in order to learn how to play lefty, but i ended up playing it right handed upside-down about as much as i played it left handed.
I use Nashville tuneing about every 4 months or so. I've only got one acoustic :oops: Fer shame I know , seems if you don't have 7 or 10 lying around your a freak! 8)
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Fer shame I know , seems if you don't have 7 or 10 lying around your a freak! 8)
Really? I always heard you WAS a freak if you had 7 or 10 lying around. LOL :)
I use Nashville tuneing about every 4 months or so. I've only got one acoustic Fer shame I know , seems if you don't have 7 or 10 lying around your a freak!
Maybe you could qualify for some sort of aid package there?
Good to hear that somebody here does use Nashville tuning. I'll have to give it a try. As Dogbite says, forcing wide strings into narrow slots might not be a nice thing to do to the nut slots, so I'm probably not going to be trying that out on anything but an old guitar (as my friend did). I've not had any trouble changing nuts if needed, but I'd sure rather not give myself unnecessary jobs.
But fitting smaller ones in a wider slot doesn't sound like it would be a problem. So next time I change strings I'll definitely try Nashville out and see what it sounds like.
Cheers,
Chris
But fitting smaller ones in a wider slot doesn't sound like it would be a problem. Works a lot better than a fat string in a narrow slot. I've done that a lot, and it causes headaches.
"A cheerful heart is good medicine."
The version of Nashville Tuning I'm familiar with is this one: You restring the middle two strings (#3 & #4) with lighter gague strings, then tune them an octive high. So you're in standard tuning but you have a G and a D that are up an octive. You need a pair of strings that are slightly lighter than the two highest strings in your standard set - so for example, if you're stringing your guitar with 12's you'd take the top two strings from a set of 11's for your middle two strings.
If you can, give a listen to the album "One Quiet Night" by Pat Metheny. The entire album is solo guitar work played on a baratone guitar strung this way. A transcription book of this album is available.
I restrung my guitar this way, then put it back to normal. Didn't like the way my guitar sounded in this tuning, and besides I only have one acoustic that I want to spend any quality time with. However, I am working on some of the songs from "One Quite Night" while staying in standard tuning - as it happens, it does change the coloring a little, and you do occasionally need to adjust a fingering to accomodate a melody line but for the most part it translates pretty seamlessly to standard tuning.
I do have a junk acoustic that I keep in this tuning so that once in a while I can try playing it as written. But again, to my ear, those high strings make the guitar sound really tinny. I think Metheny's take on this tuning, doing it on a Baratone guitar is great because by pulling everything down, what is it, about a 5th, it uses the tuning but puts the pitch in a warmer range. Maybe I'll get some really heavy strings and tune my junker acousic down like a baratone....
Or I could succomb to gas and buy a baratone acoustic....
Interesting post quarterfront. Raises a bunch of things I hadn't thought about before. Like baritone guitar. Sound quite intriguing. :)
When I googled Nashville Tuning I found various sites that said it involved buying a set for a 12 string and replacing the EAD and G on the 6 with the lighter strings from the 12 set.
One of the best explanations came at the bottom of an article by a bloke called David Hodge at some place called GuitarNoise (Who he?? where dat...?? :wink: )
I should have known that he would have explained it here somewhere! 8)
David's article about the 12 string - Nashville Tuning a 6 string explained at the end
Cheers,
Chris
It works really well if your playing with other guitarists. Gives a much fuller sound without getting muddy.
Chuck Norris invented Kentucky Fried Chicken's famous secret recipe, with eleven herbs and spices. But nobody ever mentions the twelfth ingredient: Fear!
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