The Challlenge 10/5/2010

Renesongs

I am posting this weeks Challenge early because I am going to be out most of Monday, so if you are reading this and it is not Monday yet please stop and forget everything ... oh to hell with it here is the next challenge from Squonk

Compose a piece that is not in standard tuning.
DADGAD, Open E, etc.

Try and be a bit more ambitious than dropped D This should interest all those acoustic geeks who have all been dying to enter the Weekly Comp.
Not restricted to acoustic, the sky is your limit

PS Entries are to be in by next Monday evening around about sevenish

AlanRatcliffe

Nice! I'm gonna make time for this one.

Bob-Dubery

I'm keen on this.

I don't promise, but I think I'll use what Stephen Stills calls "Palmer tuning" EEEEBE.

guitarboy2828

X-rated Bob wrote: I'm keen on this.

I don't promise, but I think I'll use what Stephen Stills calls "Palmer tuning" EEEEBE.

Wow.. VERY keen to hear this Bob! ? How would you tune the A to an E? Down? That would be a very lose string, would it? A little to scared to try it! ?

Warren

I'm not very experienced with alternate tunings, but I've tried DADGAD before a bit and liked the way it sounded.

Times like these I wish I could play some slide. Would be a great way to make use of an open chord tuning. ?

andrewjbryson

"Coldplay Tuning"

D# -
B -
G -
D -
A -
E -

Bob-Dubery

guitarboy2828 wrote:
X-rated Bob wrote: I'm keen on this.

I don't promise, but I think I'll use what Stephen Stills calls "Palmer tuning" EEEEBE.

Wow.. VERY keen to hear this Bob! ? How would you tune the A to an E? Down? That would be a very lose string, would it? A little to scared to try it! ?

The 5th goes down to A. Yes. The scarier part is the 4th going UP to E.

The 5th is loose, but only if you play it ?

guitarboy2828

X-rated Bob wrote:
The scarier part is the 4th going UP to E.

:O Good luck bob, you're a brave man.. Wear a mask when you do that, never know where strings end up when they snap! ?

Bob-Dubery

I found this quite an interesting and inspiring challenge. I think Squonk's idea was a good one because using an altered tuning forces one to think outside of the box.

So my entry is done and dusted and mailed to Rene. And yes, I did use "Palmer" tuning. I had a lot of fun with it too.

Come on y'all! This is fun.

DonovanB

I dunno Bob, I can only do so much with altered tuning and it almost has to be finger-style otherwise you won't notice the change in tuning.

I've already recorded two compositions and neither make me happy. I tuned to DADGAF# I guess I'll keep trying or enter one of those.

Bob-Dubery

Donovan Banks wrote: I dunno Bob, I can only do so much with altered tuning and it almost has to be finger-style otherwise you won't notice the change in tuning.

I've already recorded two compositions and neither make me happy. I tuned to DADGAF# I guess I'll keep trying or enter one of those.

Hahaha! I made myself get the plectrum out so I steer away from finger picked playing. You can most certainly do things with a plectrum and an open tuning - or at least the tuning I went with. You get some great drone effects. I guess it's sort of modal because you can have certain notes ringing through all the time. Playing with 5 E strings you generally get an E in there somewhere.

I generally use drop D and, occasionally, CGDGBE, so the 5 Es was quite an experiment for me. I just started noodling and then stitched pieces of noodle together.

DonovanB

Well, now I was playing with CGEGCE and it all sounds the same to me. I even went as low as BF#DF#BD to have open Bm but then all I do is play a bunch of chords... not very interesting.

well, back to the grind.

CDee

Really had fun with this one. Good topic Squonk! My entry is in.... Can't wait to hear the other entries.

?

AlanRatcliffe

I had some fun working out how best to mic my new speakers. The two speakers are different so I miked up both with 57s. Dead on the centre of each seemed to work out best, but was a little brighter than the amp sounds in the room, so I added an ambient mic (a Rode NT1a - LD condenser) 1.5m back for some air, room ambience and extra lows:

I also DI'd the piezos with a Boss DI-1 (my old faithful) and into the PC via a valve mic preamp.

So I ended up with four tracks just for the guitar. Must just make the time to EQ, mix and master.

PeteM

Alan Ratcliffe wrote: I had some fun working out how best to mic my new speakers. The two speakers are different so I miked up both with 57s. Dead on the centre of each seemed to work out best, but was a little brighter than the amp sounds in the room, so I added an ambient mic (a Rode NT1a - LD condenser) 1.5m back for some air, room ambience and extra lows:

I also DI'd the piezos with a Boss DI-1 (my old faithful) and into the PC via a valve mic preamp.

So I ended up with four tracks just for the guitar. Must just make the time to EQ, mix and master.

As a matter of interest, have you had any phasing problems?

AlanRatcliffe

PeteM wrote: As a matter of interest, have you had any phasing problems?

I flipped the phase on the piezo, which gave the most pleasing tone when mixed with the 57s. As you would expect, the ambient mic was a little bit out of phase, but it's the simplest thing in the world to drag a track into time alignment with others in a DAW, so no real problem.

dee

I tried a few things, but could not come up with anything significant. I need to spend more time with altered tunings...

Bob-Dubery

dee wrote: I tried a few things, but could not come up with anything significant. I need to spend more time with altered tunings...

I found this quite an interesting challenge by Squonk - it opened up some new things for me. I tried DADGAD but couldn't make head or tail of it (me and Martin Carthy....). The "palmer" tuning that I used for my entry turned out to be a lot of fun. With all those Es I could get some interesting octave effects.

It made some things difficult too. With 6&5 and 4&3 tuned to the same note, and the "pairs" being an octave apart, runs across multiple strings proved difficult, but you can get some great drone effects. After I put my entry together I thought "huh! that doesn't sound that different". Then I tried to play it in regular tuning - it don't work.

I also frootled around for a while with CGDGBE which lead me up some interesting paths (mostly in the key of G) for finger-picked stuff. I got a couple of interesting rag-timey/blues things going. But I finger pick a lot so I stuck with my original entry which required me to use the plectrum.

Cool challenge. Made me think outside of the box a bit. I have been surprised recently by the moments of creativity that I am able to reach when having a shot at one of these challenges. Also with the way that there seem to be tunes lying around waiting to be discovered in my Smoothtalker.

Warren

Sent my entry in to the beginner's category. ?

I used DADGAD, and just messed around with different fingerings without paying too much attention to what I was doing...sat and worked out the notes I was hitting afterward, as an exercise. ? I was hoping to get a nice sort of drone, but I really struggled to get a tone I was happy with via my limited recording interfaces...in the end I got something that I thought sounded OK, but not perfect.

Biggest challenge for me was getting the lead bits sounding the way I wanted. This is by far the weakest area of my playing, and one I will continue to spend time on.

I also only realised after I'd done the mixdown and listened to the result: my song is 2 minutes long! I clearly missed the 1 in front of :55 ? Sorry for that, I've sent it in anyway and hope you guys give it a listen. I was still thinking, geez, that's a lot of stuff in just one minute! ?

ezietsman

Warren wrote: , but I really struggled to get a tone I was happy with via my limited recording interfaces...

Don't worry, you're not the only one. I plugged my amp's output into the mic jack on my pc. Not ideal I think. Maybe there is some trick to it I don't know... Suppose good recording quality is not the main(only) goal of these challenges.