Originally Posted by
Escaped Cellist
First, this is a lovely performance and transcription....thank you for sharing! And doubly thank you for the whole folder full of transcriptions!
To my ear it sounds like CGDA tuning...in particular, you can hear when he hits the low C that it's an open string, and the open A appears repeatedly in the melody.
Meanwhile, I went a little down the rabbit hole of Hiroyuki-san's YouTube and found out that for some of his videos/recordings he tunes down an octave, still in CGDA. That's the first I've heard of someone doing that on a standard scale-length tenor. (There's the Eastwood electric baritone tenor, for example, but that adds three inches for a 26" scale)
This performance of Debussy's La fille aux cheveux de lin is where I found the details:
He's using a Gold Tone TG-10, and the tuning is enabled by the same Hannabach bass strings for classical guitar that låtmandola/Nordic mandola/cittern players like Ale Carr have been using to get lower tunings without lengthening the scale.
Here are his string gauges:
"1st〜3rd DADDARIO Phosphor 020,030,044
4th HANNABACH H9(9th string for classical 10strings guitar. I don't know the gauge)"
Amazingly, even though I've tuned my cittern Ale Carr style, it had not yet occurred to me to try this Hannabach magic on one of my tenors. It really is a gorgeous tuning, especially for performing cello repertoire (as he does on several of his videos). It would definitely be a commitment (new nut and saddle, etc.) but the results are so sonorous I might have to try it.
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