The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #155639   Message #3663171
Posted By: Don Firth
23-Sep-14 - 08:14 PM
Thread Name: Tech: tenor guitars?
Subject: RE: Tech: tenor guitars?
Probably more than you want to know about tenor guitars:

plink-a-plink-a-plink-a....

A friend of mine in years gone by used to play one. He tuned it in the standard tenor guitar/banjo tuning, C-G-D-A. Really limiting. He could only play in about two keys unless he used a capo. Even then....

I would have tuned it like the top four strings of a regular guitar. There is a precedent for that:   the Renaissance guitar, the first instrument way back that actually looked like a guitar. A little bigger than a baritone ukulele, but you could get a heck of a lot of music out of one. Clicky.

The Renaissance guitar actually had seven strings. But they were doubled, like a mandolin or 12-string guitar, called "courses" and sometimes tuned in octaves. The first string (highest in pitch) was single and called the "chanterelle." ( Not the string, but what they called the string sounds like a fungus!).

Don Firth