WHY C6th

Bo Borland · Post by **Bo Borland** » 10 May 2006 11:21 am

I am not sure if this question has ever been asked and I am just curious.
Why, out of all the possible tunings, was it decided that C6 would be the standard.
I guess anyone who was around way back then ( Bobbe

) might have an answer.

Billy Wilson · Post by **Billy Wilson** » 10 May 2006 11:24 am

Jerry Byrd.

Larry Bell · Post by **Larry Bell** » 10 May 2006 1:17 pm

If you're asking WHY C, I have no idea -- cause JB made it that way. A lot of songs are in C; guitar players and piano players like to play in C -- but if you're asking why that collection of notes, it's very logical.

It's a chameleon chord, so, as a nonpedal tuning, it is very useful. You have CMaj and Am triads as well as four note chords (C6 and Am7). When you add the F on the 9th string of the usual 10-string version, it just multiplies. It adds the FMaj triad, extendable to FMaj7 or FMaj9.

Add a few slants to that and there are bunches of chord types available.

In addition, when you map out scales up and down the neck there are all kinds of cool pockets of notes that dance from one end of the neck to the other.

You don't even have to have a C6 neck or a D-10 to use it either. At least 6 or 7 strings of it are right there on the first fret of E9 with the E's lowered to D#.

We owe Mr. Byrd an enormous debt of gratitude. It is a wonderful tuning.

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Larry Bell - email: larry@larrybell.org - gigs - Home Page
My CD's: 'I've Got Friends in COLD Places' - 'Pedal Steel Guitar'
2003 Fessenden S/D-12 8x8, 1969 Emmons S/D-12 6x6, 1984 Sho-Bud S/D-12 7x6, 1971 Dobro, Standel and Peavey Amps
[This message was edited by Larry Bell on 10 May 2006 at 02:36 PM.]

Doug Seymour · Post by **Doug Seymour** » 10 May 2006 1:35 pm

When I met Herby Remington @ Carl Dixon's 1st Georgia show in 1997 (courtesy of Greg Cutshaw)
I asked him if he'd always played A6th & he said yes. He thought if it hadn't been for Jerry Byrd we'd all still be playing A6th! I know Oahu music in Cleveland OH had tons of Hawaiian tab for the "a minor 7th" tuning years ago. I believe perhaps to the Hawaiians C6th was always known as "a min 7th" ?

Wayne D. Clark · Post by **Wayne D. Clark** » 10 May 2006 2:14 pm

Larry

Interesting lesson! I'll post a new question.

Wayne
MSA D/10 8/2

David Mason · Post by **David Mason** » 10 May 2006 2:20 pm

I think hand size and string gauges are involved - a few rare folks play 14 string steels, but you never hear of 33 string steels, because you wouldn't have enough hand left to mute that many strings properly. Likewise, anything below about a .070" string is going to sound really thumpy, and anything above about a .010 is going to break. So, you've got a maximum neck width of (possibly) about 4", and strings that could only be gauged from 0.70" to .010". You could rack your brain for a long time trying to come up with a tuning that works better than the C6th, given those limits.

Bo Borland · Post by **Bo Borland** » 10 May 2006 3:50 pm

Thanks Larry, I am talking about C in general, not the actual notes but your explaination is excellent.
As a 6 string player I could better understand playing from an A or B tuning.

Al Marcus · Post by **Al Marcus** » 10 May 2006 8:11 pm

Bo-I can understand that. As a six string player too, when I used fullBar positions on the guitar, BAR 5th fret, that's A. BAR 3rd fret That's G. as you can see that is the same BAR positions as E9 or E6th. E6th is what I use mostly now..Interesting Post...al

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My Website..... www.cmedic.net/~almarcus/

David Mason · Post by **David Mason** » 11 May 2006 2:58 am

From the standpoint of a non-singing six-string player, it seems to me that the easiest central chord upon which to base 1-4-5 changes is actually A: A, D, and E chords. G is probably the next easiest center for 1-4-5 changes. However, there are so many songs sung in C that I would guess it must be especially comfortable for a wide variety of human voices to sing. After all, most popular music does not require a three-octave range to sing it, and it become popular not because it is the best, the cleverest, or the most sophisticated, but because you can sing it in the shower, driving in your car, drunk at parties and so forth. If the white keys on a piano were an A major scale and music was written in an A base, everything would be different.

David Doggett · Post by **David Doggett** » 11 May 2006 6:48 am

I'm not sure any particular key fits vocals better. Songs have different ranges, and voices range from bass to soprano. Keyboards were originally designed to play an Am scale on the white keys - you just march straight up the alphabet, with no sharps or flats in the key signature. The relative major of Am is C, so the C major scale also gets played on the white notes with no sharps or flats in the key signature. Because of this, Am and C major are favorite keys for keyboards.

Many songs are composed on piano, and so start out in Am or C. If you are going to make up a tuning from scratch, it might as well be in Am/C. Because of the lack of sharps or flats in the scale and key signature, it makes it easier to think of the theory as far as which scale notes to include. If you will notice, the typical C tuning, even with the 6th, is just the white-note letter names, with no sharps or flats required. Only if chromatic notes out of the scale are added will any sharps or flats be required in specifying the tuning. So C is simply a very convenient key for theorizing and creating a tuning. And at least on the open strings a C tuning works well with keyboards and music composed on keyboards.

On the other hand, for historical reasons (which I don't know), guitars are tuned to a sort of E tuning. It may not be completely coincidental that the standard tuning is EADGBE, which is all white-note letter names with no sharps or flats required in specifying the tuning (the same is true for the orchestral strings). I think E is the only key that will give the desired pattern on guitar in all white notes. A consequence of this is that most of the easiest chords on guitar take one of the open strings as a root, and so the chords and keys that are easiest to play on guitar without barre chords are the white-note letter-name chords with no sharps or flats in the names (A, D, E; D, G, A; G, C, D; E, A, B. The keys of Am and C also work out this way (the F can be played with or without a barre fingering). Those keys will take care of almost any song with almost any voice. Although vocalists with a poor understanding of music theory will sometimes demand a flat or sharp key, there are very few songs with a range so demanding they can't be shifted a half-step one way or the other to end up in one of the keys above.

In country, rock and blues, songs are commonly composed on guitar rather than piano. Therefore, the keys of G, D, A and E are popular. There is nothing special about the key of C on guitar.

Therefore, it makes perfect sense that the two necks that became standard for steel guitar are C and E. The C neck works well for theorizing and working with keyboards, jazz bands and orchestras. The E neck has fret positions familiar to guitar players, and most steelers started on guitar.

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Student of the Steel: Zum uni, Fender tube amps, squareneck and roundneck resos, tenor sax, keyboards

[This message was edited by David Doggett on 11 May 2006 at 07:54 AM.]