john martyn - small hours

a quick (and much abbreviated)rendition of "Small Hours" from John's stunning album "one world" from 1977. The tuning is CFCCGD. Excuse the tinny sound from my mobile cameraphone - and I couldn't quite get a suitable drumbeat but you'll get the idea if its just the fingerings and the tuning you're after. Enjoy.

p.s John uses this same tuning for Couldn't Love You More, Certain Surprise and Big muff amongst others.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• john
• martyn
• CFCCGD
• small
• hours
• folk

[AndPlus]

What gauge strings would you recommend for playing John Martyn tunes on electric guitar? I've been having a go on the CFCCGD stuff on standard strings but as you can imagine it's incredibly difficult to keep the tuning stable!

[tomscotland]

farming wire! heh, 13's, wound third.

[AndPlus]

Haha! Would that gauge be ok to go into standard tuning to? I'm thinking about getting a setup where I can alternate between various tunings easily.

Or would a gauge somewhere in between be better in your experience?

[tomscotland]

I wouldnt want to use 13's on an electric unless I was considerably lower than concert pitch. I use 10's on my SG (and any other gibson scale length instrument) and keep the heavy guage on a spare guitar, like that old SG copy in this video.

Having said that, its horses for courses, Malcolm Young uses 12's or 13's with a wound third at approx concert pitch on his ancient gretsch jet firebird.

Maybe 11's would be a nice compromise for you.

[tomscotland]

RIP John, my tribute.

[Rikk303]

@AndPlus Elixir strings are amazing, starting at 12 thou. Expensive, yeah but they seem to last forever. Try the DADF#AD tuning...the "Normal" D-Open one. Loads of octaves there before you even start the echoes. Use the swell pedal to squeeze out the sounds. Hard to describe really, but it'll come to you. You'll be echo-slapping along with a drumbeat before you know it. Have a good time. When you get it, it's like catching the best surfing wave ever. Believe me....

[warwicksimon]

Top effort - enjoyed it!

[AndPlus]

Thanks for the info, I'll experiment with those and give it a try!

[Rikk303]

Close but still far away........

[quakawoot]

good job tom ,by the way have you any idea how john used to overlap the guitar sounds with is echoplex when playing live ,i've tried differant setups with no success