I picked up my little Universal 12 string last weekend.<\/p>\n
A long time in coming and a lot of work done in preparation (moving from three picks to four, watching an *awful* lot of Jeff Newman instructional videos about C6 and the Universal tuning, getting into pick blocking, etc.)<\/p>\n
I sit down at it for the first time and think is this really a good idea?<\/p>\n
I’m basically an E9 player do I need these extra strings and changes?<\/p>\n
Do I need the extra octave?<\/p>\n
Am I really gonna use the C6 sounds?<\/p>\n
After a week I love it \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
I am still very early on in my understanding of C6 but with the few pedals I’ve got (pedals 5,6,7,8) and the lower B (or lower C on a C6) lever, there’s so much useful stuff that you cant do on E9.<\/p>\n
Also it seems like a lot of the single note playing on C6 is in the open position, which is basically the dropped Es position.<\/p>\n
What’s the big deal here? Well it means that it applies very directly to what I can do on E9. My concern was that the Universal wans’t *really* that universal, it was just a way of getting two tunings on one neck.<\/p>\n
This may be true of the C6 foot pedals, they only really make sense with the Es lowered (although pedal 7 is useful on E9, and pedal 6 is nice for dropping the middle E to a D in E9), but all the soloing that goes on on the C6 side of Universal drops straight on to the lowered E position on E9.<\/p>\n
Also, the lower B knee lever, this seems to unite both tunings. Some uses on E9, like dropping two frets and lowering B for a 9th chord, or getting Lydian sounds on the open position, or getting a #9 sound in combination with the B pedal.<\/p>\n
But then when you go into C6 land and drop the Es, you get a minor chord (G#m at fret 0) dropping the B then gives you another minor chord down a 4th at D#m. <\/p>\n
This is where these two tunings really come together as one. This D#m chord is a natural and logical extension of E9 and also sits in the heart of the C6 movement.<\/p>\n
On my setup I have the lever that lowers Es also lower the 2nd string from D# to C#, raising this takes the D#m chord<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I picked up my little Universal 12 string last weekend. A long time in coming and a lot of work done in preparation (moving from three picks to four, watching an *awful* lot of Jeff Newman instructional videos about C6 …<\/p>\n