On the other side are the bluegrass pickers who will only play out of open G tuning and nothing else. The true zealots at this extreme are the pickers who won't even employ a capo, learning to play instead in every conceivable key out of the open G chord. Those in this last group tend to be the bluegrass/jazz fusion progressives, who make use of a lot of closed positions and Reno/Adcock style single string runs.

Scruggs traditionalists, though devoted as they are to open G, will usually follow his example and play a few tunes out of standard C or open D tuning. But that is about it, and those deviations are a relatively small portion of the repertoire. Much of what makes the Scruggs sound comes from a distinctive vocabulary of standard, timeless licks, and most of those are fused with open G tuning.

There is another practical reason for holding to basically one tuning, if one is a professional player. On stage during a performance, under a set of hot lights, and with the ambient noise coming from the audience, its hard enough to stay in tune even when you stick with just one tuning. It would be impossible to significantly retune back and forth every three or four songs, and have any hope of staying in pitch. Some of the old-timers, like Uncle Dave Macon, one of the most beloved and copied of the early Grand Old Opry performers, solved this problem by bringing two or even three instruments on stage during a performance, each one with its own dedicated tuning. For many bluegrass pickers, who may have already stretched their budgets to own just one professional quality Mastertone style instrument, this is not practical.

However, as a devoted shade tree picker who performs only occasionally on stage, this is an acceptable problem. If I'm participating in an old time jam, I will bring two instruments, a Paramount with a short scale neck, tuned to open A (G tuning pitched up one whole tone), and a Tubaphone banjo tuned to open D. Both are semi-fretless. If I am headed to a bluegrass session, I will bring a Gibson Mastertone banjo instead of the Paramount, fully fretted, of course, tuned to open G. The other tunings I use, such as G Variant, D modal, or Sawmill generally deviate only slightly from one or another of the basic tunings, and retuning is usually managable, unless the setting is particularly noisy. If I am performing, I will try to group together tunes which use the same tuning and banjo, thus minimizing the amount of retuning that needs to be done on stage. Still, the amount of extra time spent on tuning is less than ideal.

All of this, of course, begs the question, why not just stick to one tuning, and avoid the retuning problem altogether. This is the best solution for pickers who think mostly in a linear fashion, and have built a style which uses a lot of closed chords and linear melodic or single string runs. It also makes some sense for Scruggs devotees, who want to have Earl's classic licks punch through in every arrangement. But as my playing has evolved over the years, it has become anything but linear. Instead, it has become layered, so that the subtle harmonic nuances represented by drone notes, right hand patterns, and other harmonic devices are as important to the overall sound as the actual notes of the melody that are imbedded along with them. For someone who picks with that more "old-timey" sensibility, each tuning has its own unique character, each provides a musical ambience that contributes significantly to the special sound of a tune setting.

With some hyperbole, I would argue that with the progressive linear approach, the odd configuration of the five string banjo neck is essentially an obstacle to be overcome in search of a pure musical form. In contrast, I think more like a clawhammer picker in this regard, seeing the banjo neck instead as a unique structure which suggests patterns that help define and propel the music. One's musical path then becomes a lifelong search for those patterns, which include all of the right hand rolls and other movements, and the close relationship of those fingerings with hammers, slides, and other left hand techniques. It includes as well the underlying tunings, and eventually even the choice of the banjo itself, with its compatible tonal characteristics. Thus, the tunings employed in this collection are a central component of my personal style and approach to banjo. But I am the first to admit that they do come with a price.

I remember that years ago a Banjo Newsletter reader submitted an arrangement to prove that he could play all of the notes of Bill Keith's break for Little Sadie in open G tuning. Keith played his elegant arrangement, recorded on the Blue Velvet Band album, in D minor tuning. The contributor's main intent was to prove that there was never a need to retune the banjo. He insisted that he could get all of the same notes, or nearly all, so that if both were written out in standard notation, the two arrangements would look identical. Still, inevitably, if you played it, the open G setting didn't have the sound of Keith's stunning arrangement. That is because it didn't have all of the sympathetic tones contributed by the open strings of the D minor tuning. But if you're not looking for that ancient sound, the overall sense of timelessness, the connection with the eternal flow of human history, if that's not why you're playing the banjo, then you won't notice the difference.