Angus Campbell asked 2 weeks ago
Hi Steve! Been playing around with tunings, watched the Tiny Desk to see if I could figure it out, and through trying to research, I’ve been brought here. What a beautiful piece. Any tips would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!
SK Staff answered 2 weeks ago
It’s DADGAD up a whole step.
E B E A B E
The first detail on that bit is it’s a fretless resonator tri-cone guitar with a Seymour Duncan Firebird PU at the end of the fingerboard.
Needs fairly radical EQ to get any clarity.
I use a plain fourth string on that guitar, the middle E, which would probably be unplayable in terms of intonation on fretted guitar.
Anyway, the whole set-up is pretty distinctive/weird, and that might be what’s catching your ear, musical content aside for the moment.
You might want to listen to the Satellite City album version too. I doubled the part on a fretted Martin to give it a little more point and ease the suffering of the Firebird pickup EQ although I did also mic both.
If you like the Tiny Desk sound better than the mix with fretted and fretless, acoustic/electric, then a lot of the attraction to the sound is likely the fretless timbre and intonation. If you like the record better, you’ll do fine on any regular guitar.
I’m on the road right now, don’t have a fretless with me, but when I get a break I’ll post a video so you can see the fingering better. It’s an odd mix of fretted and open strings to deal with the plain 4th string, but if you’re more or less familiar with DADGAD you’ll puzzle it out soon enough. Anyway, good question! Thanks for listening and reaching out. Hope that helps! We’ll get back to this when I’m home : )