Bill Leff wrote: 8 Dec 2025 2:01 pm
I beg to disagree. There’s particular phrases and voicings that lay out easier/better on a particular tuning, . You might be able to get close on most things but some are impossible. Most of the greats played in multiple tunings for that reason (Jerry Byrd for example).
No one tuning is better than the other. They each do certain things well. The reason I posted is to discuss this particular recording with the community and to get their feedback on what they thought about my observations.
Aloha Bill,
I am responding to your observations, and offering a point of view. I hope that I'm welcome to do that.
If you wanted to sound EXACTLY like the Charles Kaipo recording, it's likely that the steel player is going between 2 necks, E13 and C6 (or some form of C6, maybe with a low Bb). If it IS Jules, that's likely what he is doing. But it's anyone's guess. I just think that'd be the most obvious option if you had a D8.
Regarding Jerry Byrd, I studied a lot of his transcriptions. I have almost all of them at this point.
The most helpful thing I noticed about Jerry is that he always returned to C6. That was his base. If you look at the list of Jerry's transcriptions (Over 200 songs), you can empirically see the tunings he abandoned because he did the least amount of songs in them. No one went further down the tuning rabbit hole than Jerry, and BY FAR, most of his tunes are in C6. That's saying something.
Jerry's most used tunings always had an element of C6 (transposed in some cases) in them, and that's where he did most of his playing. The altered strings allowed him to do a special change or cadence at one or two small portions of the song, and that's the only place he used it. That's the tradeoff.
There are some rarer tunings with which Jerry only played 1 or 2 songs. He clearly abandoned them. Whatever they offered wasn't worth completely retuning.
I'm glad Jerry already went down the tuning rabbit hole, that way I don't have to. There are a lot of dead ends. That's one of Jerry's greatest contributions. He chased a lot of dead ends so that we don't have to.
E13 and B11 give you nice lush dominant 7 sounds on a straight bar. You can get a lot of that stuff with slants on C6, and knowing how to substitute chords. You can't get ALL of the E13 or B11 stuff on C6, but you can get enough to justify not having to retune or lugging a double/triple neck guitar to a live performance.
I've always found E13 and B11 limiting because they rely heavily on chord progressions that use Dominant 7 chords everywhere, so the II's, III's, and VI's are usually dominant7s. That limits your repertoire to a specific era of songwriting. As soon as a Major 7 or a minor ii chord pops up in a song, you're up the creek without a paddle.
At the end of the day, a Dominant 7 chord is a Dominant 7 chord. It's up to you to turn it into music. You can make playing music as easy or as hard on yourself as you prefer. The harder I make playing music, the less I enjoy because it becomes humbug.
Aloha,
Mike K
1932 A22 Rickenbacher Frypan, 1937 7string Prewar Rickenbacher Bakelite (C Diatonic), 1937 7string Epiphone Electar (Jerry Byrd's E9), 1937 Epiphone Electar (C#m9), 1940's Post War Rickenbacher Bakelite (Feet's D), 1950 Supro (Open F), 1950's Rickenbacher ACE (C6), 1950's Rickenbacher A25 Frypan (A6), 1957 National New Yorker (Jerry's E13), 1955 Q8 Fender Stringmaster (A6, C6, Noel's E13, C Diatonic), 1961 Supro (Open A), 8string VanderDonck Frypan (Buddy Emmons's C6).
