pperkins - Posted - 07/16/2020:  12:22:33

I look at sawmill as if Major and Minor had a child. Its not completely either, but uses elements of both. These elements can be played out of open G tuning. Anyway...

gDGBbD...is G minor tuning and capoed on 2nd fret it would be A minor. I used to play Jerusalem Ridge in this tuning and had for 12 years. It worked for the time. Use it if it works.

About 3 years ago I started learning capoed/re-tuned stuff out of gDGBD. It was tough at first, but I now prefer it. When you capo an instrument, you change the way it sounds and rings, and you have to learn new chords. (Strangely enough in G minor tuning all the major chord positions can be found and used in G major....but the have a different name).

My banjo rings Jerusalem Ridge better out of open G than with a capo and retuned...and the same with a lot of other "Non-G major" tunes.

Am is not a hard key to play out of open G. It the same notes as C.

I have been playing Jerusalem Ridge, Garfield's Blackberry Blossom out of open tuning.


Try Garfield's Blackberry Blossom out of open G. To do this, and a lot of other tunes played in this tuning, it would help tremendously to learn the pentatonic modes. The pentatonic modes (specifically the flattened 3rd pentatonic) lead to blues scales. Pretty much every fiddle tune I have played in the past 20 years+ can be played with knowing major scales and pentatonic scales.

If I can support you, please let me know. I teach banjo and have a lot of resources.

bart_brush - Posted - 08/24/2020:  14:49:22

In G minor tuning, try "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky," and "Coal Tattoo." Most any song in Sawmill tuning can also be played in G minor tuning, and vice versa. It may or may not sound better and lie under the fingers better, depending on your tastes and playing style. The open string notes in both tunings are notes in the G minor scale, but the open 2nd string in Sawmill is C (the 4th note in the G minor scale) and the 2nd string in G minor tuning is Bb (the 3rd note in the scale).

Tuning that 2nd string differently changes where those two main notes of a song are played, which results in different possibilities for pulls, hammers, and slides. And in those moments in a given song when the 2nd string is not being played as part of the melody, it is still resonating, and will sound different resonating as a Bb versus a C.

Another way to experiment with the resonances and tone colors (in any tuning) is to try tuning the 5th string up or down a half step or a full step. For example, "Ruben," "The Brave Engineer," and "The Wreck of Old 97" are usually played in D tuning, with the 5th string tuned to F#. But try tuning the 5th string up to A instead. It gives a different ring, which I happen to like for one of those songs, but not the other two. (F# is the 3rd note in the D scale; A is the 5th note of the scale.)

BelfastFiveString - Posted - 09/01/2020:  02:28:59

youtube.com/watch?v=FOv8Rf4H08E

A lot of Dave Eugene Edwards/ 16 Horsepower's music is played through in Gm. Some fun to be had in fretting the fifth string in this tuning (probably partly echoes previous posters advocating tuning that string up), as shown in that video.

There's a number of tabs of his music in our archive.

jbrady - Posted - 09/01/2020:  12:40:13

There's a tab of Don Mclean's rendition of Waters of Babylon (bing.com/videos/search?q=don+m...PC%3dDCTS) in this tuning, in the tab archive. Lovely song.