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Tuning 2 cigar box guitars played at the same time

Posted by Regan Wieler on September 20, 2013 at 11:21am in Performances, How to Play, Lessons, Concerts

I do not know much about the tuning or playing of guitars, however I have noticed the chords when a guitar is tuned to GBE sound very incomplete.  I am wondering if it is possible to have two people each playing a guitar simultaneously -- having one guitar with EAD strings and the other with GBE strings?    Would this work to round out the chords or is this too simplistic of a solution?

I have already built a 3 stringer so it would probably be another 3 stringer I'd build again.

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Replies

  • Bad Finger (Eric) September 21, 2013 at 9:37am

    I think the original post considers each player strumming their respective standard tuning chord fragments.  So the one player with GBE fingers the e string on g and strums while the EAD player fingers G and B and open D.  Both guitars strummed at the same time would sort of simulate a single six string. Not accounting for acoustic differences between the two guitars. 

  • Uncle John September 20, 2013 at 7:49pm

    The previous responders are more informed than I am.   But let me give you some opinions.  GBE sounds too high or incomplete, as you said.   I use DGB and get  a better tone, I think.  

    Also, I have played a DGB guitar in the key of G while someone else plays a lower toned GDg guitar.  That combination works well together.

  • The Phrygian Kid September 20, 2013 at 7:12pm
    Well I'll say that given your first covers only half the range of a guitar building the second to cover the other half is pretty smart. The chances of em sounding good together are just like the chances of any other two instruments sounding good together, it's in the playing. Enjoy :)
  • Ron "Oily" Sprague September 20, 2013 at 3:57pm
    A more difficult answer is a qualified, but absolutely provable, yes. But if, and only if, 1) you have two incredible players who know every single note on the fretboard really really well, 2) they have an amazing, almost telepathic, ability to strum or pick individual notes at precisely the right time - notice I did not say at the same time, and 3) they literally have enough time on their hands to work this out. Why do I say provable? Because Roy Clark and Glen Campbell used to do this on live television in the late 60's, on The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, or maybe The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (probably the former) on using a single guitar in standard tuning. They would split the strings into EAD and GBE, four hands fingerstyle picking and half-chording, essentially the same thing as you are suggesting with two CBGs with the same tuning.
  • Busyhands Slim September 20, 2013 at 12:57pm

    The short answer is no.

    The longer answer is to look at what chords you would end up with with those notes. Your first guitar is tuned to an open E minor chord. That's the most common blues key, by the way, so it's a good starting place for any blues playing.

     The second guitar is not tuned to an open chord, so it's going to sound dissonant when the strings are played open. The A and D are not part of the basic E minor, though the D is the 7th tone, so it works fine. The A is the 4th tone, so it's dissonant and wants to be resolved to the third (the G, in this case). When you add those tones to the minor chord, you get E minor 7 sus 4. This is a chord this is going to sound edgy and tense when it's played.

    But there's more to playing a guitar than strumming an open chord. I

    'd say you should stick with the E minor tuning and work on finding the other notes on that guitar that sound best together. Get a book or find a website that has standard guitar chords, and look at the high three strings in the chord diagrams. Those the ones you can play on your guitar. Learn as many chords as you can and you can play pretty much everything. If you're using a slide, learn how to pick a string with one finger of your right hand while muting the other strings with your other fingers. This is a basic technique that everyone needs to learn when they're playing slide guitar. It will let you play those notes that would sound dissonant against the other strings, and those are the notes that make a melody work.

    You could also tune the G string to G#, which will give you an open major chord. That will allow you to play songs in a different mood and is a common tuning for slide guitar players.

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