by James Jensen
The path to solo acoustic guitar stardom has been a long and winding road for former Wings guitarist Laurence Juber. Inspired to play guitar by the fab four , Juber followed the more conservative route of formal study at London University and a secure position as a studio player at famed Abbey Road. When Paul McCartney offered him a spot as lead guitarist in Wings he thought about it for a nanosecond before embarking on what he calls his "Masters of Music at McCartney University". After the demise of Wings , Juber continued his career as a top studio player with one exception, he relocated to America. In the early nineties Juber began creating songs for solo acoustic guitar and started playing out because as he has said, "You don’t get a lot of emotional feedback from a music stand". With his third recording , "LJ" , Juber began dabbling in altered tunings and when his enormous musical vocabulary was released on these new frontiers he quickly began to develop a unique approach. Juber has released a string of highly regarded solo recordings for Solid Air Records as well as instructional and performance videos for Homespun Tapes, and is working on several books for Hal Leonard.
You never seemed to fall into the trap of using the obvious keys that alternate tunings present.
LJ: I think that what was happening for me is that I kind of outgrew that as a teenager in England when I would tune to D and play ragas. The appealing part for me in discovering the unknown territory of a tuning like DADGAD is that I can thrash around and find new things. The first tune I wrote was "Bobs Your Uncle" which basically I treated like standard tuning. When I got more familiar with the tuning I started to play around with the fact that there are all these lovely open D’s so you could play octaves. You can also play an E up on the third string at the ninth fret and then follow that with an open D string and have them ringing together , and that was when I began to discover the sonority of the tuning. I also began to get into the intervallic relationships in the DADGAD tuning, like the fact that you’ve got an A and a G next to each other , so if you play an F# on the fourth fret of the fourth string , the next two notes up the scale are an open G and an open A, so if you stick a D on top what you end up with is a very melodic and resonant sound. I couldn’t get these kind of resonances and sonorities in standard tuning except for a limited way in the keys of E and A.
Would you recommend altered tunings to a beginning player?
LJ: It can be a bit of a crutch. I think it is essential for the way I am approaching this that I have a formal musical education because you are changing the geometry of the instrument and everything from the feel to the tension of the strings changes. Coming from having a formal training, being a studio musician and playing in Jazz bands has forced me to have a pretty encyclopedic knowledge of standard tuning. What I derive from that is a very open palette of harmony, counterpoint and texture. It becomes a challenge for me to make music which is stylistically satisfying , and emotionally satisfying , but in unfamiliar terrain. The thing that excites me about DADGAD tuning is that I keep finding new things in it and it is as satisfying as standard tuning , but different.
You may be inspired by fooling around in a tuning but soon you have to bring your knowledge to ..
LJ: Figure it out. Sometimes I look at a piece of music written on a page and imagine it in an altered tuning. Dan Foliart , who composes for "Home Improvement" and "Seventh Heaven" television shows, writes for me in altered tunings. Danny Elfman wrote a pattern for me to play in the movie score for "Good Will Hunting" which I played in an E tuning. Tunings will establish a different range of moods very quickly if you get the right angle on them. I am not interested in guitar gymnastic but storytelling , so I play the Beatles song "Rain" in CGDGAD and it allows me to do a thumb tapping groove so that when I go the the IV chord during the verse I get the low C which is a God-like bass note which creates a wonderful texture to play with.
Are you comfortable enough in any of the altered tunings to be able to jam as well as standard?
LJ: A little bit, only really in DADGAD, it is really like speaking different languages. Blues in A is very cool in DADGAD but I have to remind myself when I am in standard tuning because I accidentally have played some DADGAD licks, it gets crazy!
FAVORITE TUNINGS AND TIPS
DADGAD: (Dmodal or Dsus) You’ve got room to play octaves that cover the whole range of the fingerboard. Blues in A works great as do the obvious Celtic tunes.
DGDGBbD: (Gminor tuning) I love a voicing you can get by putting your first finger on the first string at the first fret , second finger at the second string second fret, third finger on the third fret of the third string, and fourth finger on the fourth fret of the fourth string, and just move it up and down the fingerboard to get a parallel sax styled voicings. This tuning also works well with Latin flavored pieces.
DGDGBD: (Open G) play in the Key of D, you still have the three D strings and two Gs and your IV chord is the open strings, which is very cool. I also used this tuning to arrange Bach’s "Jesu Joy of Man’s Desire" on my CD "Winter Guitar". I always felt it sounded kind of choked in standard tuning and being originally composed in G it worked well.
CGCGCE (Open C) and CGDGAD: Your voicings are spread out very wide in open C tuning which gives so much space between your top and bottom. You also get straight bar across chords which can be kind of cool for songwriting.