Cranking up the second string half a tone and then fretting it at the second fret to match the first string is my usual retuning procedure. This is still my favorite tuning for major and minor songs. The notes just seem to fall in convenient places.

One of my favorite tunes is Gerry Hallom's arrangement of "Outside Track" (© 1982) by Australian poet and rabble-rouser Henry Lawson, 1896. I hear several tunes embedded in this one including "Rodie MacAuley" and "The Foggy Dew" and it really works well out of the C-chord position. For a MP3 sample:Click here!

In this sample I'm capoed up to the 5th fret in the key of F. I use a 3-fingered vrsion of double-thumbing with an occasional brush stroke thrown in.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble