Song suggestions for Nashville tuning

Keith Richards used a guitar with Nashville Tuning (Among several other guitars ) on many Stones Classics such as Wild Horses, Can't Always get what you want, Dead Flowers and others. Some Flying Burrito Bros. songs use it and just about any Eagles song will sound great with a Nashville tuned guitar

If you like the style of music, check out the Cocteau Twins for lots of beautiful, chimey work that lends itself well to the Nashville tuning. The Stones "Wild Horses" is one of my all time faves in that tuning.

I am not sure I understood your 'flavor of Nashville tuning' so I assume it is an altered Nashville tuning. I've never tried it or given it consideration until reading your post. Nashville tuning reminds me of the BYRDS (one of my favorite groups of that era) and some of their [great] songs might work very well with this tuning.

One of the guitars in Tom Petty's 'Free Falling' was nashville tuned.

Here is a good description of the tuning, explaining it's use and some of it's advantages with a very nice audio sample of two guitars (one in Nashville tuning) You can pan from left to right speaker (balance) to hear the difference between the standard tuned guitar and the Nashville tuned guitar. It sounds really nice! BTW, in Windows Media Player, press the 'Now Playing' button upper left to access the balance adjustment which is to the right of the graphics equalizer.

http://www.bothner.co.za/articles/nashville.shtml

phangeaux

Hello....

Right, so picked up a transcription book and have started working on some songs from Pat Metheny's album "One Quiet Night". All of the songs on this album are played using "Nashville tuning" which in this case means that the 3rd and 4th strings on the guitar are restrung with light gague strings and tuned an octive high. Also, he's actually playing a baratone guitar so everything's tuned a 5th lower than standard.

I have an old junk guitar that I've restrung to make it work for this tuning (albiet about a 3rd above the baratone range). But this guitar is real junk - an old Harmony brand classical guitar that I usually use as my "middle of the summer take it outside while the kids are in the kiddie pool and who cares if it gets sweat all over it" guitar, on which the 12th fret is over the body of the guitar, making reaching 14 & 15 a bit of a chore. This isn't a guitar I really want to spend a whole lot of time with. And so I'm considering buying a low end but decent acoustic that I can keep in this tuning for the purpose of playing the songs in this one book.

It's not like you can't play these songs on a standard tuning guitar - you just have to fix the melody every once in a while when a key note lands on the 3rd or 4th string. But, you know, it just doesn't sound right....

Which brings me to the question:

Anybody have any suggestions for songs in this particular flavor of Nashville tuning that I might look at learning down the road? If I'm going to buy a guitar for this tuning I need to be able to tell my wife that there are other songs that I "need" it for. With a straight face.

I'm probably wrong, but I thought Nashville tuning was basically replacing all the strings on a sixstring with the high tuned strings of a 12, not just the 3rd & 4th actually it wouldn't effect the 1st & 2nd anyway. I tried this once with an old guitar and couldn't get it to sound enjoyable, I think the trick is to play a duet with a regular strung guitar. Folk/rock music would probably sound best.
Eric

I'm probably wrong, but I thought Nashville tuning was basically replacing all the strings on a sixstring with the high tuned strings of a 12, not just the 3rd & 4th actually it wouldn't effect the 1st & 2nd anyway. I tried this once with an old guitar and couldn't get it to sound enjoyable, I think the trick is to play a duet with a regular strung guitar.

As far as I know you're absolutely right, Eric. The correct term might be Nashville stringing, since the trick naturally not is limited to one specific tuning. You can mimic a 12-string by recording a Nashville stringed guitar along with an ordinary stringed. Or you'll just make your guitar sound different, I to believe it's most useful in a band or recording setting making the guitar sound in a narrower part of the total sound.

Erik

Using Nashville tuning and the tuning described in the post are quite different. The baritone guitar lends itself to that, though I am a little annoyed that I hadn't thought of it before. A Danelectro reissue would make a great nashville guitar, for sure.

You may all have figured this out already, but for those of us finding this thread, I found an article that explains Methany's "half Nashville" tuning...

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=733

I love playing Duncan, by Paul Simon, on my old Nashville'd Takamine.