E-B-E-G-B-E

• OVERVIEW •

Takes the same interval pattern as Open Dm, raised two semitones higher: thus mirroring the exact note sequence of our familiar ‘0-2-2-0-0-0’ Emin chord from Standard (…as if you’d tuned to its notes rather than fretting them). Best suited to the lighter strings of electric guitars, due to the high wind required on 4+3str. Offers easy ‘cross-note’ possibilities (i.e. you can easily ‘cross over’ to playing in Emaj: e.g. ‘0-0-0-1-0-0’) – but nevertheless, remains rarer than its major counterpart (Open E).

 

Like Open Dm, it represents a logical place from which to access more abstruse zones of altered tuning – lying just one quick twist from (+2 transpositions of) layouts including DADGAD (3str +2), Only Shallow (3str -1), and Ghost Reveries (1str +2). Like the major ‘Vestapol‘ family, it offers broad vertical possibilities (parallel octaves on 6+4+1str and 5+2str), and fluid harmonic facilities (plentiful voicings and inversions available on 4-3-2-1str).

 

Also allows you to import a large chunk of EADGBE’s melodic familiarity, by keeping 3-2-1str separated by the same intervals (maj 3rd > perf. 4th). Ideal for odd-set chord sequences supported by droning open strings – as well as for giving a fresh twist on any of your existing E-rooted vocabulary.

Pattern: 7>5>3>4>5

Harmony: Emin | 1-5-1-b3-5-1

• TUNING TONES •

• SOUNDS •

Appears to be relatively uncommon compared to its Dm transposition (although some of this sparsity may be down to how hard it is to distinguish by sound from the similarly E-minor’d resonance of EADGBE). Employed by several pioneering Delta bluesmen, particularly those of the Skip James-inclined ‘Bentonia’ school (see my writeup for Open Dm).

 

Also Robert Johnson, who drew direct inspiration from James’ Devil Got My Woman and Yola My Blues Away for his haunting, high-wailing slide classic Hell Hound on My Trail (n.b. Check out more of these old blues tunes in Weenie Campbell’s Adventures in Cross-Note listings).

 

(n.b. As with Open E/A, I suspect it enjoyed wider use in the pre-microphone era, when guitarists had more incentive to wind as tight as possible to maximise volume and clarity. Hmm, maybe the advent of recording disproportionately opened things up looser-strung, lower-ranged singers?)

 

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• Hell Hound on My Trail – Robert Johnson (1937):

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“I got to keep movin’, I got to keep movin’,

Blues fallin’ down like hail…

I can tell the wind is risin’,

The leaves tremblin’ on the tree…”

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Since explored by others across a range of styles – e.g. Joey Eppard (Bramfatura), ZZ Top/Billy Gibbons (Just Got Paid Today), Emerson, Lake, & Palmer (Watching Over You), and Pink Floyd (David Gilmour’s pedal steel parts on One Of These Days) – while Joni Mitchell capoed Open Dm at 2fr to give the same open tones.

 

(…Still, note-listed uses of the tuning remain rare enough that my search queries were soon returning UK Companies House listings for a business called ‘EBEGBE Limited’: which, to my disappointment, appears to have closed up shop in 2013.)

 

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• Bramfatura – Joey Eppard (2018):

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“I don’t remember making a conscious choice, performing music is just as natural as breathing to me. I’m a big fan of a lot of different music…the more I take in, my output becomes that much more…” (Joey Eppard)

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• NUMBERS •

	6str	5str	4str	3str	2str	1str
Note	E	B	E	G	B	E
Alteration	0	+2	+2	0	0	0
Tension (%)	0	+26	+26	0	0	0
Freq. (Hz)	82	123	165	196	247	330
Pattern (>)	7	5	3	4	5	–
Semitones	0	7	12	15	19	24
Intervals	1	5	1	b3	5	1

• See my Tunings Megatable for further such nerdery: more numbers, intervallic relations, comparative methods, etc. And to any genuine vibratory scientists reading: please critique my DIY analysis!

• RELATED •

—Associated tunings: proximities of shape, concept, context, etc…

• Open Dm (this -2): down a tone usually fits acoustics better
• Albert Collins (this +1): sizzling bluesman’s higher shift
• Only Shallow (this with 3str-1): pleasing Esus2, one twist away

• MORE INFO •

—Further learnings: sources, readings, lessons, other onward links…

• Robert Johnson’s Hellhounds: the Delta innovator, who set his music to record only twice, would not live to witness his fame – dying in 1938 from unclear causes, after several days of violent convulsions (Sonny Boy Williamson claims he was poisoned by a jealous husband, with strychnine or naphthalene – while others point to the possible complicating effects of undiagnosed congenital syphilis and Marfan’s syndrome: the musicologist Robert ‘Mack’ McCormick even claimed to have met the man who killed Johnson, but declined to reveal his name…taking whatever secrets he knew to his own grave in 2015). Thankfully, Johnson’s legacy is in little danger of being forgotten by guitarists of today and beyond: learn more about his life in my Open G writeup, and a Mother Jones ‘fact-check’ feature (“there is at least one man who can still tell us a thing or two…[guitarist] David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards, a friend of Johnson’s, and one of the last living connections to the man…”) – and fill out the dark context of his Hellhoundish track via Ian Tasker in HCTS, Ted Giola’s Mississippi Masters book entry, and Karlos K. Hill’s Hellhound on My Trail as a Lynching Ballad (“the impetus and context…may be partially biographical. Specifically…that Robert Johnson’s stepfather Charles Dodds’ near lynching and flight from the Mississippi Delta in 1909…A family legend developed [that] Dodds was able to escape the lynch mob because he disguised himself in women’s clothing…”)
• Why ‘minor’?: The Western convention of titling intervals and chords ‘major’ and ‘minor’ is not an indication of their relative importance (n.b. I do feel we lose a lot by automatically framing our musical systems in terms of the major scale: like the late, great Pat Martino and many more, I often prefer to see things in comparison to the more ‘balanced’ Dorian mode, which has the same ‘2-1-2-2-2-1-2’ semitone structure up or down from the root). Instead, these terms reference the ‘larger/smaller’ meanings – learn more via Etymology Online (minor: from “early 13th century frere menour: ‘Franciscan friar’, literally ‘minor friar’, from Latin minor: ‘lesser, smaller, junior…The musical sense is from [the] 1690s…so called because the interval is ‘lesser’ or ‘shorter’ than the corresponding major interval” – major: “c.1300, majour: ‘greater, more important or effective, leading, principal’, from Latin maior…Related: majoring…a verb in Scottish, ‘to prance about, or walk backwards and forwards with a military air”)

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Header image: ZZ Top’s Dusty Hill & Billy Gibbons