On 2024-01-30 7:17 am, Kevin Cole wrote:
I don't play bass guitar and my music theory-fu leaves a lot to be desired, but I am attempting to transcribe from an existing score that shows a tablature staff explicitly saying that it uses EAGD tuning. After poking around a bit, I found that the mandolin uses the same tuning (? I don't play any stringed instruments. So maybe that's not right.)
Speaking as a bass player, EAGD just looks like someone fat-fingered the standard EADG tuning. You would almost certainly have to re-string with lighter gauge to achieve it (especially if that D is a high D). That, or the tuning results from swapping the D and G strings of the standard form, producing more interesting fingerings that the original bassist preferred. (Some lefties who learned on right-handed basses are used to the upside-down fingerings, so it is not impossible to imagine a lefty getting a true left-handed bass but still wanting an upside-down or nearly upside-down layout.)
Are you able to provide a link to the source score? If it shows both the tablature as well as standard notation, it should be pretty easy to verify the intended tuning.
-- Aaron Hill
