Sweetened Newman Tuning for D13 Copedant

[Darren Mortillaro]

Hello. I'm trying apply Jeff Newman's E9 & C6 tuning offsets to Johnny Cox's D13 copedant. Can someone help me with this? I'm not sure this is right. I simply transposed the E9 offsets to D, however I'm not sure how to reconcile the C6 stuff Newman published. Numbers in parenthesis are the offsets in cents.

[Darren Mortillaro]

Here's what I've come up with so far, using Bobby Lee's E9 chart as a reference. I've indicated the cents offset in parenthesis.
Any thoughts or advice? It seems to work as a good first draft. Not sure what to do with the flat 6th interval.

https://b0b.com/wp/copedents/jeff-newman-tuning-charts/

[Andrew Frost]

Darren,
One thing that might be worth considering is that the pedal changes on any tuning generally put a guitar into different key centres, particularly with C6 style changes. So always thinking of things as intervals in relation to your open tuning is rarely the best approach.

For example, tuning pedal 5 on standard C6 is more about getting the pitches working as intervals of the D major key centre that pedal creates.
On your tuning the equivalent of that change seems to be P6. Rather than thinking of those changes as intervals in relation to your open D tuning, understand ( and hear ) them as they relate to E.
So your B strings which are the maj6 of D13 now become 5ths in the E tonality and play a different role.
That's just one example of how the tonal centres shift with each pedal change.

Regarding the B string half step lower, rather than thinking of it as "b6', think of how you would use it as an extension or interval of the other changes you have.

Just my thoughts on the subject, for what its worth.
Hope you're getting it sorted out.

When all's said and done its your ear that will tell you what's working or not.

[Max Lee]

I agree with Andrew's wisdom about tuning strings/changes in the context that you use them. That said, part of Johnny Cox's approach to creating this copedent involved preserving the standard E9 and C6 changes, so I don't see why the associated tuning offsets couldn't be a starting point. Mayhaps the 2 fret offset of both from D tweaks them slightly?

I also wish that a sweetened D13 preset existed for my strobostomp. So I'll be interested in what you land on, Darren. You should try your sweetened tuning out and see if it sounds good!

Johnny Cox has a public D13 facebook group, if you didn't know already called: "D13TH The Ultimate Universal Tuning"
He reposted this video of Paul Franklin explaining how he tunes by ear: Tuning a Pedal Steel Guitar with Paul Franklin & John Bohlinger


And reiterated the approach when asked about sweetened tunings:

[Max Lee]

Perhaps a useful link from Larry Bell's site:http://www.larrybell.org/id32.htm