[dorio]

Those 12 strings...they are so beautiff. And i've never played with one!

Here are 5 questions:

is the action easier than a 6 strings...
Is it designed for strumming or finger style...
What's the standard tuning for it...
when you have to change the strings; anything special...
what about soloing...

[stuartmerenbloom]

12 strings can be tuned as a regular guitar "eadgbe"...I guess you can tune them to other tunings..but since you usually tune them a step below (to reduce tension to the neck)..that could be a bit tricky. The times I played one, I usually strummed it or picked single notes...I guess you could finger pick it but you'd have to have finger nails like Estaban...the guy on tv selling those $99 guitars he call "the gift of music" !2 strings are awesome sounding I am old enough to remember when they were the rage in the folk music era. Playing one is a bit harder than a regular 6 string..you gotta be strong and have big hands as the action is a bit higher and the neck wider than a 6 string

[dadfad]

Stu is right. The 12-string is both a joy and a curse. Great beauty in the sound, but they are difficult to tune well. This is because the strings, being of different thicknesses, respond differently to the same touch. For example, if you push a .052 the same as you push the .009 next to it, each one has a slightly different amount of tension change. Sometimes this will cause a course (a course is a pair of strings) to sound out of tune. Tuning-struggles are the inside joke (and pain) of all 12-string players. But when it's finally right, it's fantastic. They can be strummed or played fingerstyle, even open-tuned and played with a slide (an art in itself, 12-string slide is extremely beautiful when done well). Playing requires a little more difficulty than the 6-string (the up-side being when you pick up your 6-string it seems quite easy, like going from 6-string acoustic to an electric. Like Stu said, they are usually tuned down at least half a step or more (I have a several of them and go from a half-step to one-and-a-half steps below standard). In my opinion, the finest traditional acoustic 12-string player alive is a guy named Paul Geremia. Fantastic fingerstyle and slide work (I have a short blurb about him on my profile web-page). Leo Kotke is also very good, but with a more contemporary approach. Twelve-string blues can be really nice. If you can, listen to Hendrix's 12-string version of "I Hear My Train A'comin' " and SRV's "Life By the Drop" (and of course Geremia's work on a twelve).

[robert2000]

i love playing 12 strings. i only played one a few times though a couple years ago. i didnt find fingerpicking much harder, it was just wierd pressing down 2 strings at once.

my question for you expierienced 12 string fingerstylists is, do people ever tune the ovtave higher string different then the lower string? what i mean is instead of having both be E, just one an octave higher, tune one to say a B. you could come up with some crazy tunings and some good songs.

[stuartmerenbloom]

This has got to be the idea of the year ...do you realize how many different tunings you can do with a 12 string ? would it be 12 factorial (12x11x10x9x8x7x6x5x4x3x2) You could come up with new sounds every day..
you could revolutionize the world of music...you could make a fortune

[dadfad]

Yes, I've heard of it. A guy named Richard Leo Johnson, who plays a 12 and a double-necked 6/12 acoustic, often tunes in different harmonic pairs. I saw him open for The California Guitar Trio (totally unimpressive bunch of crap, any THREE decent guitarists playing in unison could do what they did). After the show, I met Richard and we spent several hours discussing his work. He gave me a list of a number of paired tunings he used (so far I've been too busy/lazy to mess with them yet). But anyway, it is something that can be done.





Which I just now found without a lot of trouble. Here are a few........


(from thick to thin.....)

eD aA eD gG cA eD

fD aA fD gG cA fD

eC gG dD gG dA eC

This post has been edited by dadfad: 13 November 2003 - 10:14 AM

[fallenseraph]

This has got to be the idea of the year ...do you realize how many different tunings you can do with a 12 string ? would it be 12 factorial (12x11x10x9x8x7x6x5x4x3x2) You could come up with new sounds every day..
:

Hmm, I don't think that it would be 12! because you can use each note more than once... perhaps 12 to the power of 12?

[lespauladdict]

i'm too intelligent to be a math major. meaning, i'm intelligent enough to realize that i hate math and not very good at it, so i decided not to go that way. anyway, i'll find the answer for ya. i think i know it myself, but i'm gonna ask my roomie for questions. he IS a math major. besides, tell me a guitar player who needs math. wait a tick........CRAP! i'm just gonna go cry....

give me a couple hours

[rasav]

Aw... c'mon DADFAD,
I JUST got my twelve set up for C tuning, and now you go and get me started on alternative tunings for the twelve! (Thank god for KORG!!!) (Chromatic tuners)

[rockinace]

I love twelve strings. I just bought a new acoustic and while I was at the store I sat down and played one of the twelve strings for a while. There is absolutly nothing that can beat that rich musical tone and the versitility that comes with it. I only regret that I am broke to my last penny or I would go out and buy me a twelve string right now. I woulkd have bought it then but it was 3 times as much as the acoustic that I ended up buying.

[stuartmerenbloom]

remember, this is from the guy who thought that if 10 of us each put in a dime, we could get a $100 Estaban guitar but I think that 12 factorial is 12 to the 12th power...you see 12 to the 12th is the same as 12X11X10X9X8X7X6X5X4X3X2..you see there are 12 strings on a 12 string and the combinational factor involved would have to include the number 12 MY G-D, I'VE GOT TOO MUCH TIME ON MY HANDS AT LUNCH

This post has been edited by stuartmerenbloom: 14 November 2003 - 11:08 AM

[lespauladdict]

yea, i got to askin' my roomie who likes numbers and he said it'd be 12 to the 12th power. for those of you doing the math, that's 8,916,100,448,256. now, i don't know about you, but, that's a bit too many tunings for me to sit down and figure them all out.

[fallenseraph]

remember, this is from the guy who thought that if 10 of us each put in a dime, we could get a $100 Estaban guitar             but I think that 12 factorial is 12 to the 12th power...you see 12 to the 12th is the same as 12X11X10X9X8X7X6X5X4X3X2..you see there are 12 strings on a 12 string and the combinational factor involved would have to include the number 12 MY G-D, I'VE GOT TOO MUCH TIME ON MY HANDS AT LUNCH                  

I don't study maths, but I'm pretty sure that it's the other way around...

[dadfad]

yea, i got to askin' my roomie who likes numbers and he said it'd be 12 to the 12th power.  for those of you doing the math, that's 8,916,100,448,256.  now, i don't know about you, but, that's a bit too many tunings for me to sit down and figure them all out.

Yeah, but only 2,581,956 of them are any good!

[wavewalker]

Don't listen to DADFAD, he only knows blues tunings. The other 8,916,107,866,291 tunings are excellent for other styles.

[dorio]

Well that sure discouraged me to buy one of those. Here is what i've found into an
old book: the C tuning for 12 strings;

1st pair C (Unison)
2nd pair G (Unison)
3rd pair Eb (0ctave apart)
4th pair Bb (0ctave apart)
5th pair F (0ctave apart)
6th pair C (0ctave apart)


...And i'm still confused on this. Would there be only one standard C tuning for the
12 strings?!

[_brad_]

ok while we are doing math it should be 12 factorial so that 12 x11x10x9 blah blah and if i could be bothered getting my calulator from the other side of the room i would tell you exactly how many tunings but who cares, hehe, ive played a 12 string once at my singing lesson but it is a beautiful sound, i need one

[fallenseraph]

I don't mean to repeat myself, and I know that this is really of no consequence, but it is moste definetly not 12!. Because if it was 12! then you would use all of the notes, just in a different order each time. but in most tunings, some notes will be repeated and others left out, so it can't be 12!

[dadfad]

Off hand I would say 12 to the 11th power. (Twelve strings with potentially eleven notes on each) (not considering string breakage of course!)

[fallenseraph]

Ah-ha! it just clicked, it would be 11 to the 12.