E9 tuning is a common tuning for

steel guitar A steel guitar ( haw, kīkākila) is any guitar played while moving a steel bar or similar hard object against plucked strings. The bar itself is called a "steel" and is the source of the name "steel guitar". The instrument differs from a conve ...

necks The neck is the part of the body on many vertebrates that connects the head with the torso. The neck supports the weight of the head and protects the nerves that carry sensory and motor information from the brain down to the rest of the body. In ...

of more than six strings. It is the most common tuning for the neck located furthest from the player on a two-neck

console steel guitar The console steel guitar is any type of electric steel guitar that is built in a frame supported by legs. It may be a lap steel or a pedal steel. Console steel guitars are typically heavier instruments that have multiple necks and/or more than six ...

pedal steel guitar The pedal steel guitar is a Console steel guitar, console-type of steel guitar with pedals and knee levers that change the pitch of certain strings to enable playing more varied and complex music than any previous steel guitar design. Like all s ...

while a C6 neck is the one closer to the player. The E9 is a popular tuning for single neck instruments of eight or more strings. This tuning has evolved in the last half of the twentieth century with input from prominent performers including

Jimmy Day Jimmy Day (born James Clayton Day; 1934–1999) was an American steel guitarist active in the 1950s and 1960s whose career in country music blossomed about the time the pedal steel guitar was invented after pedals were added to the lap steel gui ...

Ralph Mooney Ralph Mooney (September 16, 1928 – March 20, 2011) was an American steel guitar player and was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame in 1983. He was the original steel guitarist in Haggard's band, the Strangers. A native of Duncan, Ok ...

and

Buddy Emmons Buddy Gene Emmons (January 27, 1937 – July 21, 2015) was an American musician who is widely regarded as the world's foremost pedal steel guitarist of his day. He was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame in 1981. Affectionately known by ...

to support optimal chord and scale patterns across a single fret on the 10-string pedal steel guitar. Corresponding tunings for a six string

lap steel guitar The lap steel guitar, also known as a Hawaiian guitar, is a type of steel guitar without pedals that is typically played with the instrument in a horizontal position across the performer's lap. Unlike the usual manner of playing a traditional ...

are the E6 tuning E–G–B–C–E–G, or E7 tuning B–D–E–G–B–E. A popular E9 tuning for eight string

is the

Western swing Western swing music is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the Western United States, West and Southern United States, South among the region's Western music (North America), Western string bands. It is dan ...

tuning E–G–B–D–F–G–B–E, low to high and near to far. The standard ''Nashville E9 tuning'' also called the E9 Chromatic Tuning for ten string

is B–D–E–F–G–B–E–G–D–F.

History and evolution

The Nashville standard E9 tuning was developed primarily from 1950 to 1970 during real-world experimentation by elite steel guitarists. Educator Mark Van Allen called the modern E9 tuning "logical" and the "perfect vehicle for most modern music". In 1958,

added an E string (duplicate of the root note) to the middle of the 1940s-style eight-string E9 tuning (E-G-B-D-F-G-B-E) to make nine strings. The change was adopted by other players to become a permanent fixture in the E9 tuning. In 1959,

added a G (a third interval) at the top end, making ten strings, also an enduring advancement.

, in 1962 created a

reentrant tuning On a stringed instrument, a break in an otherwise ascending (or descending) order of string pitches is known as a re-entry. A re-entrant tuning, therefore, is a tuning where the strings (or more properly the courses) are not all ordered from th ...

by adding a D (a major seventh) and F (a ninth) at the top. He also eliminated the lowest two strings, still making ten. Emmons said, "The thought behind the F and D notes was to fill the gap between the G and C pedal note of the E9 tuning" The Nashville standard E9 for decades has remained B–D–E–F–G–B–E–G–D–F. It allows the performer to play a major scale without moving the bar.

References

External links

Steel guitar tunings
indexes many tunings. Steel-guitar tunings {{guitar-stub

History and evolution

See also

References

External links