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Tunings


Agamemnon

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So, during the 1977 US tour, Black Country Woman was played with Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp. What tuning did Page use? Since the studio tunings for both songs I've seen are completely different, I've been quite confused.

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I always thought both were played in DGDGBD

That's right. I am lookin at the PG tab book and BCW is DGDGBD. Maybe BronYAur Stomp is the same intervals, just transposed up or down, for live.

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Hm. But the Zeppelin III book says Bron-Y-Aur Stomp is DADF#AD, so I'm not sure how the chords could be transposed.

Page was always "relearning" songs for shows. Playing the tunes in the same tuning was easier, so he relearned it, in G.

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Be wary of tab books. Some say BYS should be played with a capo. Please. :rolleyes:

I have these somewhere on my computer, but for quick access, I grabbed them from RO:

WS/BMS - DADGAD

Moby Dick - DADGBE

Friends - CACGCE

That's The Way - DGDGBD

Bron-Y-Aur Stomp - DGDGBD

Hat's Off - CGCGCE (CGCEGC ?)

Going to California - DADGBD

When the Levee Breaks - XXCFAC (CFCFAC ?)

Rain Song (studio) - DGCGCD

Rain Song (live) - EADADE

Dancing Days (live) - DGDGBD

In My Time Of Dying (studio)- EAEAC#E

In My Time Of Dying (live) - DGDGBD

Kashmir - DADGAD

Bron-Yr-Aur - CACGCE

Ten Years Gone - DADGBE

Black Country Woman - DGDGBD

Poor Tom - CACGCE

Midnight Moonlight - DADGAD

Jennings Farm Blues - EFCFAE ?

Travelling Riverside Blues - DGDGBD

Wonderful One (Double neck) -

- 6 string - F#F#C#F#C#F# (GGDGDG)

- 12 string - Standard tuning capo 1

City Don't Cry - EAEAC#E

Wah Wah - AEAEEA

No Quarter (on the "Unledded" Album) - DADGAD

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks, Evster, for that list. I've been messing around a little bit with tunings in recent years and thought the following might be of interest ... have to say it was quite enlightening when I grasped it.

In a nutshell a lot of the commonly used alternate tunings are interrelated anyway. Let's take 'open G' or DGDGBD for starters - if you look at the open strings and assign them a number according to scale tone in the open strummed chord then it would be (assigning '1' as the root, '3' as major third etc.) then open-G, low-to-high, would be ... 5, 1, 5, 1, 3, 5.

Then do the same for 'open D' or DADF#AD and you'd get ... 1, 5, 1, 3, 5, 1. --- the low root in open G is on the fifth string (which is why Keith Richards often used to discard the sixth string for open G) and the low root in open D is on the sixth string. No big deal there, I suppose. But if you look closely you'll see that all the other strings have shifted over one towards the low end ... in open G the major third is the second string, in open D it's the third string.

So if you play something in open G ... let's say the first three chords of That's The Way ... then in theory you could play that in open D by moving the shapes over by one string towards you (away from the floor). Of course you'd be in a different key but when you think about it the two tunings are interrelated and there's quite a bit of overlap there.

It gets even more interesting if you look at 'open C' or CGCGCE and break that down - 1, 5, 1, 5, 1, 3. The third is now on the first string which means that you can take your open G stuff and shift it over by one string away from you (towards the floor) although it'll sound a fourth higher. Seeing as how Jimmy used a variant on open C, namely CACGCE you could make a slight adjustment but anything playable on the fifth, fourth, third and second strings in open G could be played on the fourth, third, second and first strings in CACGCE.

Same principle applies with 'open G minor'/DGDGBbD (5, 1, 5, 1, b3, 5) if you were to compare that with 'open D minor'/DADFAD (1, 5, 1, b3, 5, 1) and 'open C minor'/CGCGCEb (1, 5, 1, 5, 1, b3).

I just though it was interesting that you could get a kind of three-for-the-price-of-one deal but might not necessarily be aware of it - I know I wasn't. Of course there are loads of differences between different tunings like open G and open D (not least when to comes to slide) but it's fascinating that there's so much in common between them, and that's just the tip of the iceberg when you consider all the possibilities.

I really like CACGCE and when messing about with it it occurred to me that the intervals between the first and second and the second and third strings in that tuning are exactly the same as the intervals between the second and third and the third and fourth in standard/EADGBE tuning. It was that discovery that prompted me to investigate further. I mentioned all this to a friend and he said something like "Shit, didn't you know that?" like it was obvious.

Anyhoo, sorry for the long first post but just thought it was worth passing along. I started figuring all this out during the last World Cup (football, or what you lads and lasses across the pond quaintly call 'soccer') ... 64 potential matches to sit through, well, that's why it's handy to have a guitar nearby. Stick it in a different tuning and just let your hands wander ... if it's a boring game then no worries, you've probably figured out something new on the geet and the afternoon wasn't a total loss.

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