jsinjin - Posted - 10/14/2025:  10:15:02

I am very familiar with the tunings G, Double C, Double D, A and sawmill. I know one or more songs in each from memory.

Strangely, my friend who plays mandolin doesn’t have to change tuning to play any of them which is nice for him.

I have a very good electronic tuner clipped to my banjo and learned how to tune the banjo to itself for most of the tunings above.

But wholesale switching from one tuning to another say G to double C can take me quite a bit of fiddling and at 6 am when my friends are playing mandolin and guitar and their loud playing overwhelms the tuner it can be very hard to make the switch as we change songs.

Is there a set of cheats to shift from G to double C or from Double C to A with the capo where I can rely a bit on strings that don’t change and then tune the banjo strings to themselves quickly?

I’m very familiar with listening to the overtones zeroing out when two strings are the same frequency and I can hear and feel that hum. I just am not yet sure what some patterns are to rapidly change tuning in between songs without wholesale going string to string with my electronic tuner. The guitar player just seems to know how to switch and listen to a couple of strings fretted against other strings and nail down a different tuning. I tend to have to stop everythjng, go string by string and zero in the new frequency.

Thanks for any tips or points to a cheat sheet on this.

Bill Rogers - Posted - 10/14/2025:  10:57:24

Walt Koken, who is as good a player as there is, uses G tuning and standard C tuning for almost everything he plays. Of course he capos, but keeps the base tunings the same. So that’s a route you can try.

jsinjin - Posted - 10/14/2025:  11:09:49

I don’t know if I am quite at a level I could transpose a song I’ve memorized more for note into a different tuning on the spot. It would probably take me several months.

An example is that the small group I work out with in the mornings now brings a mandolin and a guitar. I’ve memorized about 8 songs. Cluck old hen is an example. My teacher has taught it in A. They guys are pretty good at hearing a a song once and just playing it. Not a skill I have. But I’m getting to where if I have a metronome and they’re playing to that beat I can sort of keep up.

Then we switch to Ducks on the millpond. It was taught to me in D and I have it memorized note for note and can play it with my friends. But I have to stop after cluck old hen then spend 10 min of our 30 min of time retuning.

I know that my teacher says things like “just take second string and tune it to the third string fifth fret to change from X tuning to Y” and it is always us so simple. Are there some cheats to go from tuning to tuning? I can learn a different tuning but it will involve memorizing every note in the song again to make it work for me.

banjoboyd - Posted - 10/14/2025:  11:23:04

There isn't any set procedure, but after a while, you figure out what works. For example, if going from G to double C, I would--

1. Tune the 2nd string up a semitone (B->C)
2. Fret the 2nd string at the 2nd fret. Match it against the 1st string (D)
3. Tune the 4th string down a whole tone (D->C).
4. Match the open 4th string against the open 2nd string. They should sound beatless.

Someone else may do it a bit differently. The end result is the same, provided that the banjo is intonated properly.

If you're retuning between every or every other song, that's atypical. You should coordinate amongst yourselves so that songs using the same banjo tuning are grouped together.

(And yes, tuning your instrument while other people are being noisy is difficult. That's another bit of musical etiquette people may need to be reminded of)

KCJones - Posted - 10/14/2025:  11:39:41

I try to push a 'sequence' of tuning changes, when my input is accepted. Start with tunes in G (A with capo). Then play tunes in sawmill, because it only requires one string change. Then after those are done, play songs in double C (D with capo), since it only requires one string change. Sequencing songs from G to Sawmill to doubleC means you only have to retune one string with each key change. Saves some time.



If it's a smaller friend group that regularly plays together, just ask them to pause for a moment while you tune. If not, step away from the noise while you tune. If that's not an option, you can get clip-on tuners that use vibration rather than sound, so they don't pick up ambient noise while tuning.



You mention knowing a song note-for-note. Curious, are you learning songs from tabs exclusively, or is your teacher using tabs as their main teaching tool? That can be an issue when moving into ensemble playing especially with unfamiliar jam circles. I use tabs extensively, but only as a tool to get me started or through a tough sequence, never as a method of learning an entire song. I know it's not the point of this thread, but I will say, if you learned a song 'note for note' in a specific key, but can't play even the melody in different keys, you didn't actually learn the song, you just memorized a tablature sheet. Learning a song and memorizing a tab are two very different things. You'll probably keep having this problem until you start truly learning the songs.

Edited by - KCJones on 10/14/2025 11:40:35

jsinjin - Posted - 10/14/2025:  11:52:27

I don’t really use tabs at all. I just tend to memorize stuff and internalize it easier note from note

But the suggestion from BanjoBoyd above:

“1. Tune the 2nd string up a semitone (B->C)
2. Fret the 2nd string at the 2nd fret. Match it against the 1st string (D)
3. Tune the 4th string down a whole tone (D->C).
4. Match the open 4th string against the open 2nd string. They should sound beatless.”

Is exactly the kind of “cheat” I was looking for. I suppose I can just figure it out directly on the instrument. I was just hoping that the banjo community had an easy mnemonic (King Phillip Came Over For Good Soup for example) that flipped from one tuning to the next or easy shifts that people make from “Double C to sawmill”.

The suggestion above I can keep in my notebook and I’ll probably slowly remember it without even needing to reference it but that’s the sort of quick shift I was looking for minus a tuner.

I went into a music shop while in Laramie WY last weekend where the owner was doing inventory of hundreds of guitars and amps and bass guitars. There was one banjo, an OME, which I picked up and wanted to tune in order to just play something I know and they didn’t have any shop tuners out due to the inventory mess and I didn’t know the tricks to shift it out of its haphazard “hanging on a hook” tuning to anything but standard G tuned to itself and probably not completely on pitch to the reference.

That and playing with my friends prompted the question. Someone suggests “Angeline the Baker” and I have to look up the tuning in my notebook and then determine how to change to that tuning. And yes, the Mandolin is so annoying to tune over; “pling pling plingety pling pling” all while my tuner is leaping around like a LED health bar in some video game.

banjered - Posted - 10/14/2025:  14:25:57

Angelina is usually played in D but it is actually easier and simpler in G. Ethan beat me to the tuning suggestion. Going from G to D or vice versa is the worst for quick retuning. Now you know why old time jams usually stay in one key for a long while. Last summer locals decided to go to "open keys." I brought two banjo, two capos, two tuners and tried to adapt but failed. I was spending more time tuning than playing so in frustration I no longer attend. They have a tenor GDAE banjo that sort of fills the banjo sound. Shift indeed happens. Good Luck! banjered

dbrooks - Posted - 10/14/2025:  15:00:31

I know my reply may not seem helpful, but retuning is something you will get better at. At our weekly contra dances, we play two tunes for most dances. The fiddler often likes to change keys when going to the second tune, say from D to A.  He will nod my way when he is about to switch tunes to give a head start to retune. That will give me the Part B of the first tune to retune for the second tune. Even with 6 or 7 other instruments playing, my Snark tuner gives me enough feedback that I can retune quickly. 

 

David

dfstd - Posted - 10/15/2025:  06:11:57

You also can play matching harmonics on different strings to check that the banjo is in tune with itself. Sometimes it's easier to hear the beats with harmonics than with fretted notes. Examples in standard tuning: 4th string harmonic at the 5th fret with 3rd string harmonic at the 7th fret, 3rd string harmonic at the 12th fret with open 5th string, 4th string harmonic at the 12th fret with the open first string. There would be different harmonics available for matching in alternate tunings depending on the string intervals, but you get the idea.

jsinjin - Posted - 10/15/2025:  06:23:35

quote:

---

Originally posted by dfstd

You also can play matching harmonics on different strings to check that the banjo is in tune with itself. Sometimes it's easier to hear the beats with harmonics than with fretted notes. Examples in standard tuning: 4th string harmonic at the 5th fret with 3rd string harmonic at the 7th fret, 3rd string harmonic at the 12th fret with open 5th string, 4th string harmonic at the 12th fret with the open first string. There would be different harmonics available for matching in alternate tunings depending on the string intervals, but you get the idea.

---

Yes!  That's exactly how I can quickly tune it to itself.  What I was looking for and it may not exist is a mnemonic or way to switch from one common tuning (G open) to another:  example-made up completely with no relationship to the real world "for Z tuning to X, tune second stringto fourth Fred of third string and fifth string to first string at 23rd fret"

my teacher has all of these mnemonics for different tunings. All Dogs Get Biscuits Daily for aGDBD and more.

those help me remember the tunings but since I know 6 or more songs now and they are all over the place, when I play and switch it is a tuning labor to change to modal or double C or double D or A.   Few of my songs are in the same tuning so I was curious if there are some really quick retune the banjo to itself tricks that don't involve going string by string with the tuner and just knowing a trick like "tune the fourth string up to the second fret of the second string... etc"

if there aren't it's no worry.

ALCO - Posted - 10/15/2025:  08:35:11

If you memorise the available notes in the scales of C, G and D, in 1st position, you would then be able to find and retune those notes required to play in a different key.

Owen - Posted - 10/15/2025:  13:29:17

.. 

lawnboss - Posted - 10/16/2025:  09:59:15

I know it's not a financially viable option for everyone, but I evolved to having an "A scale" banjo for A, Am, and D and a standard-length banjo for G (and C, although that's a once-a-year proposition for my jam group). I bring them both to a jam and switch back and forth. I hate using capos (does any banjo sound as good with a capo on?) and the A-scale is easy enough to retune for Am and D (literally just the 2nd and 4th strings).

banjoboyd - Posted - 10/17/2025:  14:15:53

It's 2025, can't we all just agree to split the difference and tune to C#/G#?

Eric A - Posted - 10/17/2025:  14:43:27

It's no mystery why Ralph, and therefore everybody else, plays Clinch Mountain Backstep out of open G, when if you really listen it's clearly a mountain modal tune. No retuning! Plant your finger on that 2nd string 1st fret and just do it. Up the neck, adapt.

Anytime you can get to the next one on the set list without futzing with the tuning is a win.

R.D. Lunceford - Posted - 10/18/2025:  00:04:44

OT banjo is eminently suited to OT music.  The practice at OT sessions is to pick a key and stay in it for an extended length of time to accomodate the banjo, and to a lesser degree the fiddle (which also employs alternate tunings, aka "cross-tunings").

The simple solution is to look for an OT session, or OT musicians to play with.

Other than that, pairing down the number of tunings you employ may help.  Limiting yourself to gDGBD and gCGBD and a capo at the 2nd fret when needed is a workable solution.

Bill mentions Walt Koken's tuning scheme, and 100 years ago in my Dad's north central Missouri, those two tunings were the only ones used by and large.  A perusal of mid-nineteenth banjo manuals (e.g. Briggs, 1855, and Rice, 1859, etc.) will show that those two tuning intervals were the only ones in use, at least in the pedagogy of the period.

Edited by - R.D. Lunceford on 10/18/2025 00:13:28

jsinjin - Posted - 10/18/2025:  09:11:16

Thanks all!



For now I’m not at a point to experiment with alternate tunings outside of what my teacher has for the songs. I have watched her shift and play songs in different tunings just on the fly but I’m not yet thinking that way.



For now I’ll probably group my songs and strive to learn future ones in specific keys that are similar to the previous songs. My teacher’s Patreon has over a hundred recordings and song lessons so there are obvious groups. In the meantime I’ll also work on some logical quick changes myself from common tuning 1 to 2. I do have a very good tuner clipped to my instrument but it does pick up the harmonics from every other instrument around it so I’ll either move off to the side or ask for a moment of silence while I shift.

Edited by - jsinjin on 10/18/2025 09:11:53