Building a String Gauge Library for Altered Tunings

[Volker]

Since I first started playing/attending open mics in the late nineties, I was always struck by the fact that most players are strummers. Invariably, they would take the stage with large body dreadnoughts and quickly burst into a swarm of chords as if their picking hands were shaped like mittens and thus incapable of plucking the strings individually in a polyphonic manner. I have come to realize that this phenomenon owes a great deal to the ubiquity of standard tuning. Standard tuning is quite useful but it tends to emphasize barre chords and makes limited use of the melodic possibilities of open string notes. This was in contrast to my evolving fingerstyle approach. As I discovered altered tunings, it slowly dawned upon me that the typical gauges such as .042 for the 5th string A, or .032 for the 4th string D, were arbitrary - there was nothing sacred about them. Why let them dictate what pitches I tune to? I could tune my guitar in any manner I like if I could just obtain the proper gauges

[garthman]

Wow!

 

I'm afraid I just use standard gauge string sets. I keep one guitar in standard D (DGCFAD) and retune to open G, open D and other tunings round about those notes if I need to. And I just retune a guitar kept in standard for drop D and drop C. Works OK for me.

[silmaneero]

This is a very impressive first post, and makes my brain bleed in all the right ways.

 

Maybe I need to look into this more. As a result of my laziness, my only concession to selecting string gauges appropriate to tuning is that I play .12s with a thicker low E; as heavy as I can get, but this is usually just the low E from a set of .13s. Makes all the difference when it's tuned down to B.

 

I tend to notice small differences in string gauges more when I play electric guitar because I do much bigger string bends on electric guitars, but now I've read your post I shall no doubt be far more concious of the different tensions when I alternate-tune my acoustic guitars - of which I was blissfully ignorant until now

[Volker]

This is a very impressive first post, and makes my brain bleed in all the right ways. Maybe I need to look into this more. As a result of my laziness, my only concession to selecting string gauges appropriate to tuning is that I play .12s with a thicker low E; as heavy as I can get, but this is usually just the low E from a set of .13s. Makes all the difference when it's tuned down to B. I tend to notice small differences in string gauges more when I play electric guitar because I do much bigger string bends on electric guitars, but now I've read your post I shall no doubt be far more concious of the different tensions when I alternate-tune my acoustic guitars - of which I was blissfully ignorant until now

Hello silmaneero:wave:

 

Glad to provoke a little positive bleeding.

 

Tuning down to B seems quite a feat.

I can't really accept the sound quality that a note that low yields from a 25.5" scale length guitar. I like the New Standard Tuning which I recently tried, but I avoid the low C. Someday I'll have to get a Baritone Guitar to give them a proper hearing.

 

Due to the highly floating Floyd Rose bridge on my Stratocaster, I tend to avoid altered tunings on electric. It requires too much adjustment.

 

String bends would certainly tend to highlight tensional imbalances. My guess is that for those who mostly strum, a floppy string here or there just means a bit less tension is needed to fret barre chords.

 

I love to feel the resonance between open strings and fretted strings. I like to let them ring as I pluck from string to string and hear the colors and moods that are evoked as certain interval relations are heard in various states of decay, against each other. If I fret a string thats floppy, its like serving someone a piece of crumbly pie, or walking around with pants three sizes too big. And plucking an open string that's floppy is like crossing the street with an elderly person. There's no zip or pizzaz.

 

Plucking a fretted or open string that is over tensioned is like trying to walk on ice. It doesn't give enough in response to your plucking finger. It tends to cause your fingers to move in sudden and awkward ways. If your guitar has both under and over tensioned strings, playing it is to me, like having a potato sack race up ice covered stairs between people in various states of inebriation. Not a pretty sight.

 

Realizing that wider necks are what I need has also been a huge help.

 

We can all mostly agree that using 10 digits to count is a useful standard. But that's for computational purposes. No one's going to freeze to death or catch fire if we choose to tune our guitars in something other than standard. Music is for creativity. There is no one right way to do it.

[garthman]

 

Hey garthman:cool: The strings are all under a lot tension. I like to play them like a therapist, teasing out their emotions - releasing their stress - allowing them to express themselves to each other and be heard. Strumming chords seems more like ignoring them and telling them to get back to work in service of the G Chord Corporation until its time for them to leave for their job at the D Chord Corporation. On and on the cycle continues until the warmth of the strings has bled away - progressing to a numb intransigence, until their boss fires them for some yuppie Elixir Nanoweb.

 

 

Wonderful - I hope you stay in this forum forever (and welcome BTW).

[Freeman Keller]

I will watch this with interest as I use many altered tuning. In general, however, I tune a single guitar many different ways and since I don't want to change strings every time I change tunings, things are pretty much a compromise.

 

Exceptions are one sixer that pretty much stays in open C, for that I use a set with mediums on the bottom and lights on top, and my resos - one which is set up right now for lap style in "dobro G" and has 0.016 to 0.056, the other which see a lot of open G and D (but also standard down two) - it likes plain old mediums with an unwound third and a 14 on top.

 

But I am also reminded of an early concert where Leo Kottke came out and started in standard (probably two or three down since he was playing the old Bozo), dropped the bottom course (equivalent of open D), then went to open G, then D, then C (all down three probably), retuning by ear as he joked with the audience. All on one 12 string, all with the same strings. I frequently do something like that - standard to dropped D, then drop the A to B and work on Starry Starry Night, then the first to D and pick up the slide. Couldn't do that if I had to change strings or any other setup parameters.

 

This tells me I don't need to be too anal about the gauges as long as they exert sufficient tension as I tune them down, and don't rip the top off when I tune them up.

 

Anyway, this will be fun

[AndrewGG]

With all of that messing around with different guages I'd never get any playing done!

I stick with a standard set of 12's which does just fine for the three or four tunings I use.

[pk1fan]

 

I love to feel the resonance between open strings and fretted strings. I like to let them ring as I pluck from string to string and hear the colors and moods that are evoked as certain interval relations are heard in various states of decay, against each other.

 

 

Yes that is why I love alternate tunings so much:). One of my favs right now is DADEAD mediums work ok but I should go up on the E string . Great Thread:)

[silmaneero]

Plucking a fretted or open string that is over tensioned is like trying to walk on ice. It doesn't give enough in response to your plucking finger. It tends to cause your fingers to move in sudden and awkward ways. If your guitar has both under and over tensioned strings, playing it is to me, like having a potato sack race up ice covered stairs between people in various states of inebriation. Not a pretty sight.

 

Your mind and subconscious must be a fantastically interesting place to live. Someday I would like to take a vacation there.

[Volker]

 

Your mind and subconscious must be a fantastically interesting place to live. Someday I would like to take a vacation there.

 

Oh, I dunno, I spend plenty of time wearing the blinders of the mundane workaday world but I try to transcend it when I get the chance. Songwriting is for me a very subconscious process. I can't will myself to be creative. I have to tune myself into a state in which I am receptive to the infinite creative potential of the subconscious. Break out the mental floss, focus the chi, clean the aura and energize! You know.

 

"Meet you on the astral plane" sil

[pk1fan]

 

What do you mean by "I should go up on the E string"?

 

 

I think I was talking to myself:rolleyes:Go to a bigger gauge of string , I get fret buzz somtimes with a standard med. G string:) .