In the format for the C21MP Research Challenge the Rationale / Hypothesis section consists of the proposals by the practice research participants that outlines their initial ideas and approach.

Jo Collinson Scott’s initial proposal

My plan is to experiment with a version of ukelele tuning where the bottom four strings are tuned as E A C# F# and the top two left as B and E. I can then use some ukulele fingerings on the bottom four strings and leave the higher strings open. Usually I use open tunings on the guitar to lose myself so that I don’t know what I’m doing. I find that a productive method as I’m not really a guitarist, so I specifically aim to not know what I’m doing. I just want to come to the guitar with my ear and not think about what chord I’m playing or what should come next.  I’m a songwriter and I primarily play the guitar in order to write song material so I’ll be thinking of what I’m doing on the guitar, not as an instrumental part, but as a potential accompaniment to a vocal line. Therefore I might experiment with a vocal line as well as we go along. I would like to disrupt my lyric writing process in the same way the tuning will disrupt my guitar playing and I’ve been researching rhetorical devices to aid with that process.

Matthew Bannister’s initial proposal

Less is more – guitar tunings with minimal changes as a compositional tool

The 1980s Dunedin Sound in New Zealand was marked by guitar chord voicings that used the open strings of the instrument to create sonority and continuity, filling out sound via pedal notes, drawing on 60s folk-rock jangle and the drone of early art-rock (the Velvet Underground). Many Dunedin composers (recording for Flying Nun Records) used open tunings, for example the Verlaines (“Pyromaniac” EADGAE) or Sneaky Feelings (“Backroom” DADDAD). As the writer of the latter, I have continued to use open tunings as a compositional tool, to defamiliarise the fret board and arrive at novel chord voicings.

I propose that “less is more” and that detuning only one string can achieve novel sounds (also a more practical strategy for live settings). For example, I used a “dropped G” tuning (EGDGBE) on “Favourite Clown” and “It All Comes Right In The End” (The Changing Same 2018). In the present project I propose to use a similar tuning (EADF#BE) to write a new song. (All tracks available on Spotify.)