The Friendly 12bar Blues Guitar Forum

In a moment of "I've got to build something" tempered by looking at the pieces/parts I've accumulated over the years, I decided to build an 8-string Lap Steel guitar. Right now, the expectation is 85% dirty, raunchy blues, 10% Gilmour-esque and 5% Steve Howe-esque. The question is how to maximize the use of the two extra strings? Looking at the notes, I'm leaning towards a standard C6 tuning, but adding two lower strings. I'd have major, minor and one inverted (5th-root-3rd) on the lower strings, but not having played slide, I'm not sure what would be most useful.

Ray

Wow, that's a question that is far beyond my poor expertise. The only slide I play is bottleneck style on a six string, and I favor open G for bluesy stuff, and open D for more melodic things.

Like BB, I'm no help, 6 strings are more than enough to me.
But the scale generator http://12bar.de/php/scale_generator.php can handle up to 8 strings so you can print scale/chord sheets if you need.

12bar wrote:Like BB, I'm no help, 6 strings are more than enough to me.
But the scale generator http://12bar.de/php/scale_generator.php can handle up to 8 strings so you can print scale/chord sheets if you need.

Yup. I've started playing with that. That's how I caught the major/minor/inversion. I may have to just make a "best guess" and see what works.

Ray

You might find a bunch of usefull tips and tricks giving a listen to Warren Haynes educational DVD Blues and Slide Guitar lessons...
Hope this helps!

Welcome here by the way ;-)

Just a quick update. Reality got in the way of my plans. We'll have to play the rest of the summer by ear.

After doing some digging, I'm leaning towards a variation of C6 tuning. One I liked had a b7th as the lowest bass string (an Open C6/7). I'll have to see what I can add to reduce another slant.

Ray