Alternative and Open Tunings on Mandolin

[RBMB]

I'm curious whether anyone uses alternative or open tunings for mandolin. They are very common in the guitar world (DADGAD, open D, open G, drop D, Wearwolf (sp?), Csus, etc.). If you use one, please let me know what type of songs you use it for and why. Thanks!

[Fred Keller]

There have been a few threads on this in the past, but yes. I have a mandolin I keep in GDGD tuning. I use it frequently in my solo efforts as it gives me a different voice to play with, especially on old time songs and tunes. In addition, I can slap a capo on the 2nd fret and in very short order I can play in AEAE. Works great for making a tune sound BIG. Here's just one sample of how I use it:

[RBMB]

Very nice rendition! Thanks!

[Rick Lindstrom]

I'm curious whether anyone uses alternative or open tunings for mandolin. They are very common in the guitar world (DADGAD, open D, open G, drop D, Wearwolf (sp?), Csus, etc.). If you use one, please let me know what type of songs you use it for and why. Thanks!

Check out "scordatura" on Wikipedia for a good start:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scordatura

Rick

[Mandoviol]

Okay here's a newbie question from a guy who's been on the forum for nearly a year:

When in an alternate tuning, do you have to transpose fingerings for chords/notes for playing specific songs, or do you proceed as you normally would when in standard (GDAE) tuning? For example, when playing Saint-Saens' Danse Macabre, the violin is put in a GDAEb tuning, but note values appear to remain the same for the E string (so even though it's in Eb, you still have to make F, F#, G, B, etc. sound normal, thus having to stretch as opposed to keeping the same fingering).

I guess what I'm really trying to say is, should I say "Damn the torpedoes! I'm going to play this tune with the normal fingering while in a different tuning!" or should I transpose everything so that the notes I read are played properly (not just their fingerings) on the retuned strings?

[Paul Kotapish]

Here's a little piece I wrote on this topic for Acoustic Guitar magazine (quite) a while back.

A cross-tuned fiddle or mandolin is one whose tuning varies from the standard G D A E. Like open tunings on the guitar, cross tunings create alternate voicings for specific tunes, offer extended harmonic possibilities, and provide additional drone strings. On the mandolin, cross tunings can be used to remarkable effect by taking advantage of the string pairings. The separate strings of a pair can be retuned to a specific interval so that when melodies are played on that pair an automatic parallel harmony is sounded.

Bill Monroe used cross tuning on several bluegrass classics, including "Get Up John" (F#A DD AA DE) and "My Last Days on Earth" (G#G# C#C# G#B C#E). The tuning Ronnie McCoury used on "Black Mountain Rag" was GG DD GG BD, a step down from the old-time fiddle tuning A E A C# commonly known as Black Mountain tuning. Mandolin pioneer Radim Zenkl built an entire CD (Galactic Mandolin) around a series of complex cross tunings, such as GbG DbD AbA EbE, and Jesse McReynolds and Jethro Burns both perfected an innovative approach to cross tuning on the fly by learning to fret single notes within a pair without retuning the strings. Using this "split-string" technique allows you to vary the intervals of the string-pair harmony to suit the chordal structure of each tune. Frank Wakefield's idiosyncratic mandolin compositions also feature a wide variety of cross tunings and split-string techniques.