Tonight we’re going to take a peek at Open C#m6 Tuning. The notes are:
- String 1 – C#
- String 2 – A#
- String 3 – E
- String 4 – C#
- String 5 – G#
- String 6 – C#
The video below is the second take of a jam I was working on while exploring C#m6 tuning. The song is called “Cat Claw” and it’s in the key of B Bebop Dominant.
Below the video is a Free Friday Night Special – the entire B Bebop Dominant Scale in Open C#m6 tuning! How ’bout that? Yeah!
Free Friday Special!
The complete B Bebop Dominant Scale in Open C#m6 Tuning
So go for it! Enjoy your Friday night and hope you come up with a lot of amazing songs and new sounding chord progressions.
May these daily alt tunings continue to inspire you as you explore songwriting beyond the limitations of standard tuning. If you’d like to learn more about making alt tuning a part of your songwriting, give me a call at 888-7-GUITAR or reach out to me here.
Until next time…
~Scott Quillin
Did you know? Scott started playing guitar when he was 14 years old back in 1982. A Pittsburgh native, Scott resides in Rhode Island where he teaches guitar, bass, music and songwriting. He also records and mixes songs for local bands and artists as well as his own music. He writes and records nearly every day and has a real passion to help others hear their “inner voice” and express that in songs.
You can listen to more of Scott’s music at https://soundcloud.com/scottquillin.
4 thoughts on “Open C#m6 Tuning – Key of B Bebop Dominant”
Scott, I have a 96 page PDF book by Bill Sethares called “All Tunings” that I thought covered every possible tuning. I now stand corrected!! In the book he gives the possible chords for each tuning which makes it less scary to try an AT. I thought if you do not know about this book, it is free and I googled & downloaded from the net to my computer.
For me, an AT is a week long experiment of tuning the guitar, keeping it in tune, learning the chords, and then get into composing and then recording a track or two. But I want to dedicate a guitar to AT so I can leave my regular guitar in standard tuning.
Q: Are there any issues to consider for a guitar dedicated to AT? Neck strength, string gauge, etc…
Hi Chuck – Thanks for listening and commenting!
I am familiar with Bill Sethares’ “Alt Tuning” ebook. There are other “comprehensive guides” to alternate tuning but none come close to covering ALL the alt tuning options that are possible – even when restricting the tuning to 2 whole steps down and 1 whole step up which I focus on for my daily posts.
The purpose of this “restriction” is to not have to change strings. It also lowers the risk of breaking strings!
There are literally THOUSANDS of alternate tunings even with this restriction of 2 steps down and 1 up! It’s incredible.
Not all tunings are easy to play and some are just not very good at all. My focus on AltTunings.com is to make it EASY to start with one tuning and expand on it every day with slight modifications. It’s much easier for me to do a daily blog with slight changes each day than a completely different tuning every day.
I have a guitar dedicated to alternate tuning and it’s a great idea to use one if you can. I am not familiar with any neck issues with leaving a guitar in alternate tuning although the further away from standard your tuning is, the more likely you’ll get some fretboard buzz. I suppose if the strings are really tuned low, the neck “could” have some issues long-term but I have not experienced this personally and I’ve been playing in alt tunings for 30 years!
As for string gauge, I use Elixir “medium” for most of the posts here. But it’s best, especially when recording, to experiment with string gauge to get the best results. If your alternate tuning has low notes, then a heavier string gauge will give you better results. You can also buy individual strings which allows you to find the best gauge for each string of every tuning.
I don’t worry about this when I’m writing/blogging but when recording, it’s a good idea to invest in the best string gauges possible for your tunings. This will also help getting the guitar in tune and keeping it there.
This alt tuning blog is just the start. There are so many alt tunings that no one has discovered – YET. I am working with a friend to bring these tunings to life and to share them with the world without making a huge learning curve.
Our hope is that alt tuning can become the standard so that music is more interesting and songs have a unique sound instead of the same progressions playing the same chord voicings over and over again.
All the best!
~Scott Quillin
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