The Logic of E9

[Dennis Montgomery]

Hi all,

I've always been absolutely fascinated with the music theory aspect behind tunings and pedal/lever changes. After buying an old Fender 400, I designed my own copedent to maximize the chordal & strumming options and learned a whole lot. As someone who's messed about with E9 on a few 10 string/3 pedal/4 lever PSG's over the years and never got very far, I'm curious if anyone can help me understand the basis of that copedent.

What is the basis of the E9 tuning that it appears most steelers use? Are the pedal and knee changes designed to play the most useful licks? The most chordal options? Inversions? When those of you who are comfortable with E9 sit down to play, what do you see...licks or chords or something else?

Thanks!

[Lane Gray]

I wish you'd asked this in the morning. I'll try to show some specific other approaches, but harmonized scales run both across the neck and up it so easily and so well that Mike Perlowin calls it "the Mozart neck."
I have a couple of videos showing some uses of harmonized scales, here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R8WlDTfLWmk and here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VjMyZ-yahAU

The tuning is amazingly supportive of the major scale we know so well.

[Ricky Davis]

Great stuff by Lane and Mark.

[Mark van Allen]

This is a very good question, Dennis, and one that I would encourage a student of any tuning to pursue.

As far as E9, I think it would be a big help to look back somewhat at the history of the tuning, realizing that the tuning we would recognize as (somewhat) standard today evolved as a series of alterations to the basic tuning, and then more alterations.

Right about when pedals were being experimented with, I think most players used some variant of an 8 string 6th tuning, C6 or (like Don Helms) E13, which had the advantages of containing Major, Major 6th, (the relative) Minor and Minor 7th chords all within the basic tuning. The single note work involved a good deal of bar movement, as it still does today evan on many-pedal 6th tunings.

Adding the first simple changes (3rd to 4th and 5th to 6th scale change together) gave the ability to make the classic I-IV or V-I full chord gliss, and a string of lovely harmonized major scales that had only been available with slants before. Hearing that on records like "Slowly" made the whole steel fraternity want to get on board.

The true genius though, was splitting those changes onto separate pedals, credited to Buddy Emmons and Jimmy Day… allowing the same changes using both pedals, but also providing the relative minor, suspended 4th, and the ground-breaking ability to play much of a major scale with pedals instead of bar movement. The 8 string tuning quickly evolved to include the top two re-entrant strings and the F# in position to be used as the 2nd of the scale, and suddenly we could play the entire major scale in several positions with no bar movement at all.

Not too lengthy of an explanation, I hope, but what I'm saying is that, to me, experimentation and some true genius led to the basic E9 tuning, where with only the A & B pedals, we can play full triads of many of the most fundamental chords in many forms of modern popular music, as well as several forms of major scales all out of one bar position, Modal theory of course allows the use and expression of at least six other modes within each major scale, so in effect we have a raw minimum of 14 different scale forms at any one fret. Break those out into pentatonics and so on and the potential is enormous- with only the A & B pedals.

As experimentation continued, some pedals/ knee levers were added to increase scale or chord extension possibilities (like the 2nd string lowers), and some were added to give whole new triad voicings, which generally fit exactly onto the same set of fingerings or 'grips" as the no-pedal and A & B pedal triads. (Like the "F" lever).

Looking at this history of development, I see a "basic" view of the tuning, which I would and do teach to beginners, as a stack of grips allowing the I, IM7, I7, iim, iiim, IV, V7, vim, various augmented, diminished, and extended chords besides many other chords built from roots on the various strings. These give you the ability to play triads or arpeggios over the chord progressions to thousands of songs, and the easily accessible scales provide the foundation for single note and harmony melodies and improvisations over those same progressions.

Because the tuning and additions to it were developed through real-world needs and experimentation, and because of the (still astounding to me) mechanical/theoretical intersection of the major scale with what we like to hear, the E9 tuning as it is today seems to me the perfect vehicle for most modern music.

While the techniques, right and left hand, volume pedal, vibrato, etc. provide the beauty and personal expression so delightful on this instrument, the physical setup and available mechanical changes are what makes it so perfect for playing songs.

It still amazes me.

[Bill Moore]

Mark, that's a great explanation, nice to see it described in such a clear and concise way.

[Herb Steiner]

Mark
Well done, excellent explanation and in fewer words than I would have used.

Forum
Take heed to what Mark wrote. He's putting it down, y'all should be picking it up.

[Peter Nylund]

When those of you who are comfortable with E9 sit down to play, what do you see...licks or chords or something else?

I see (or hear) the melody and harmonies to that.

[Richard Wilhelm]

Great question and excellant response. Dennis, if that is a long scale 400, 24.5" scale; you might try tuning down to D9 instead of E9, it's just like E9 but tuned down one whole step using the same string gagues. The benefits are no string breakage, less tinny sounding and more sustain because the looser strings will vibrate more. A number of the early pedal steels player did this on their Fenders along with only using just one chromatic string on top, that string being the equivalent of the E9's F#.(this setup makes for great strumming). The E bends can be done with added knee levers (if you can't live without them). Check out Fender Steel Forum and also Fender Pedal Steel Guitar on Facebook, if you haven't already. And if you have a sunburst Fender with a shorter scale (usually) and just about everybody else, just never mind most of this.

[Mike Perlowin RIP]

...experimentation and some true genius led to the basic E9 tuning, where with only the A & B pedals, we can play full triads of many of the most fundamental chords in many forms of modern popular music, as well as several forms of major scales all out of one bar position,

According to legend, Buddy Emmons, Jimmy Day, Pete Drake, Lloyd Green and several other major league Nashville players used to meet once a week at Jimmie Crawford's home to discuss different changes they had been experimenting with, and together, they came up with the E9 tuning. It was a collaborative effort.

Country music and pre-20th century classical music use the same scales and chords. That's why the E9 tuning works so well for playing classical music. It really is "The Mozart Tuning."

[Ian Rae]

This may seem off-track, but there is a question coming. One thing I found tough when I started learning C6 was that while on the logical E9 the available chords generally contain the root, on the C6 it is frequently omitted. So you can end up playing what looks like a Cm while you're being told it's F7 and it's actually F9. This may put some people off.

Mark has described the consensus by which the E9 tuning evolved. My impression from what I've read in the past is that the C6 setup didn't have time to evolve and was simply created (pretty much on the back of an envelope) by Emmons and Jackson, an act of genius equal with the division of the A & B peadals, as no-one has had to do much to it since. Or is my recollection exaggerated?

[Lane Gray]

I'm thinking that pedals 5 and 6 were logical extensions to the two most common "corner slants" of the 6th tunings, and thinking "if I'm using a pedal to drop those strings, what else would I want to do at the same time?"

[John Swain]

Buddy Charlton liked to tell the story that Jimmy Day and Buddy Emmons asked Hank Garland( the go-to theory man) what changes they needed to play jazz on the C6th tuning, and that's how the major ninth,dominant ninth, etc pedals came about! I like it but can't fact check it!

[Rick Schmidt]

Ok while we're thinking out loud..... does anybody else think that the E9/B6 Uni moniker is incorrect since there is no D (dom 7) in that open tuning?


Technically shouldn't it be EMaj9/B6?

[Ian Rae]

Well, yes because in most realizations of the uni tuning there is no D string, and that pitch is got from raising the low B or lowering the E a further ½-step (on my setup I can do either).

Technically E9/B6 is E9/Emaj9 - or E9/E9 for short, which is neat but impossibly obscure. Simplest just to think of it as E9 with a variable 7th, and go on misnaming it because everybody knows what you mean.

[Les Cargill]

Ok while we're thinking out loud..... does anybody else think that the E9/B6 Uni moniker is incorrect since there is no D (dom 7) in that open tuning?


Technically shouldn't it be EMaj9/B6?

Y'mean Eadd9?

Most U12 setups have a way to get the D(9) back. Mine's on LKR. Maurice was sorta right - Ya Aint Gonna Need It ( YAGNI ).

Unless you do.

But I can swoop an LKR into a E lower + 6 pedal for a really neat move under a dom7.

Besides, on a 10-string E9, you have both a D an a D#, which is pretty crazy BTW, LRR knocks that down to a D natural for me too.

Comes down to it, it's just a name. The map is not the territory.

[Dennis Montgomery]

So I want to thank everyone that's posted in this thread so far...it's been great to hear your thoughts and experience with E9. In fact, it's been so inspirational I decided to get a 2nd pedal steel specifically for E9 to go along with my custom copedent Fender 400! Found something perfect for me on ebay yesterday and pulled the trigger. I'll start another thread all about it soon, but in the meantime...

Thanks again everyone, you've just cost me a few hundred bucks

[Dustin Kleingartner]

Man, I just love E9. I'm a recent convert from non-pedal C6 to my first guitar with pedals (a Stage One), and I'm finding E9 to be so intuitive and fascinating. I think about the E9 neck all the time, it's like my sudoku, and once you've figured out part of the puzzle you can go play it. It's really amazing to me.

[Alan Brookes]

The transition from C6 to E9 has been covered, but no-one has gone into why Buddy added the top two re-entrant strings.

(Actually, if you use the "search" function, Buddy himself has explained everything you need to know about E9. You might as well get it from the horse's mouth.)

[Mike Perlowin RIP]

once you've figured out part of the puzzle you can go play it.

True. But the E9 tuning is much deeper, and has a lot more going on then the obvious pedal licks.

It's one of those things where the more you learn, the more you see how much you don't know.

I'm still learning and discovering new things, even though I've been studying it for 36 years.

[Dustin Kleingartner]

Yes, by "puzzles" I mean little building block puzzles. I definitely do not mean cracking the whole code of E9.

I'm just starting out down this path, and believe me I have no delusions about my understanding of the instrument. I love the complexity, and I see E9 more as a life-long puzzle.