Cross Tuning - in American Folk Fiddle Music

In American Folk Fiddle Music

Cross tuning is commonly used on the fiddle in folk music of Appalachia, the southern United States and Scandinavia. The fiddle may be re-tuned in any number of ways in these musical idioms, but there are two common re-tunings. While the standard tuning for open strings of the violin is GDAE—with the G being the tuning of the lowest-pitched string and the E being the tuning for the highest-pitched string—fiddlers playing tunes in the key of D major sometimes employ a tuning of ADAE. In this tuning the open G string is raised to the A directly above it. Even more frequently used is a cross tuning of AEAE for music played in the key of A major. Among fiddlers this is referred to as "cross-tuning." Both of these tunings facilitate a drone on an open string next to the string on which the melody is being played. Relatively well-known American folk tunes that are often played in cross-tuning include "Breaking Up Christmas," "Cluck Old Hen," "Hangman's Reel," "Horse and Buggy," and "Ways of the World."

GDAE is known in some North American Old-Timey fiddling circles as "that Eye-Talian (Italian) tuning," the implication being that it is only one of many possibilities. Other tunings include:

• FCGD = Cajun Tuning (one whole step down from GDAE)
• GDGB = Open G Tuning
• GDGD = Sawmill Tuning or "Cross G"
• GDAD = "Gee-Dad"
• DDAD = Dead Man's Tuning, or Open D Tuning, or Bonaparte's Retreat Tuning, or "Dee-Dad"
• ADAE = Old-Timey D Tuning
• AEAE = Cross Tuning, "Cross A", "High Bass, High Counter" (or "High Bass, High Tenor"); similar to Sawmill Tuning
• AEAC♯ = Black Mountain Rag Tuning, Calico Tuning, Open A Tuning, or Drunken Hiccups Tuning
• AEAD for Old Sledge, Silver Lake
• EDAE for Glory in the Meeting House
• EEAE for Get up in the Cool