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Some Lap Steel and Non
Pedal Steel Guitar Tunings
Today I received an
email from Skip who plays lap steel. He just found an old Gibson lap steel
and wrote to ask me about how to tune it and what strings to use on his new
pawnshop find.
I often receive
questions about playing the lap steel so I suppose I better get working on a
Lap Steel course!
In the meantime, I put
on one of my favorite Jerry Byrd records and thought I would jot down some
tunings for those who are interested.
It seems to me that
most lap steel players fall into one of 2 basic groups:
Blues Players and
Country/Hawaiian players. The reason I combine the country and Hawaiian
together is because they use similar lap steel guitar tunings, at least as a
starting point.
Let’s start with the
Blues style since that is the most straight forward.
Most blues players who
play lap steel use similar tunings to the bottle neck players (electric
guitar, think Duane Allman).
The tunings are
generally open E, A and occasionally D.
E: 1 E .015
A: 1 E .015 E7 1 E .015
2 B
.020 2 C# .017 2 B .020
3 G#
.024 3 A .022 3 G# .024
4 E .030w
4 E .030w 4 E .030w
5 B
.038w 5 C# .034w 5 D .036w
6 E
.056w 6 A .042w 6 E .056w
These are the basic
starting points for open tunings to play blues on the lap steel guitar and
suggested string gauges. Feel free to experiment with the tunings and string
gauges. Think of these tunings as jumping off points for your own musical
explorations.
Some Hawaiian/country
tunings: (Note, some of these tunings are for 8 string lap steel guitars.
If you have 6 strings, simply omit the bottom 2 strings of the list.)
C6 (very
popular) A6 ( also very popular) D9
1 E
.014 1 E .015
1 E .014
2 C
.018 2 C# .017
2 C .018
3 A
.022 3 A .022
3 A .022
4 G
.024w 4 F# .026w 4
F# .026w
5 E
.030w 5 E .030w 5
D .034w
6 C
.036w 6 C# .034w 6
C .036w
7 A
.042w 7 A .042w 7
A .042w
8 G
.046w 8 E .056w 8
F# .050w
E13th (used by Don
Helms on the great Hank Williams recordings)
1 G#
2 E
3 C#
4 B
5 G#
6 E
7 D
8 B
Keep in mind these are
just a sampling of the many tunings used by the great lap and non pedal
steel players such as Jerry Byrd, Joaquin Murphey, Herb Remington, Don Helms
and many other pioneering non pedal steel players.
Like the blues tunings
previous, use these as starting points and experiment on your own and also
listen to some of the non pedal steel players I listed above and notice that
many times they use different tunings on different songs to achieve a
desired sound and feel.
Now grab your steel,
tune it up and do some playing!
Be sure to stop by
http://www.steelguitarzone.com
for all your steel guitar and Dobro instruction and accessories
Copyright 2010 Joe Stoebenau Music
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