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| High B |
I've been playing 4-string tenor banjo tuned GDAE long enough to know that tunes with that high B note are always going to be an issue (for me). Maid Behind the Bar, Ships Are Sailing, Star of Munster, Mug of Brown Ale, Connaughtman's Rambles...sometimes it seems like every other tune has that 7th-fret high B note in it. Well, now I have a solution: an open B string. I surrender.
One of my tenor banjos is a Gold Tone AC-4 tenor banjo, which is a surprisingly good banjo for the money. Being my 3rd of 3 banjos, I don't play it much so I decided to tune it up DAEB. I used the DAE strings from a regular Deering Irish tenor banjo string set and then used a .008 gauge string for the high B string. The scale length of this banjo is 22.5" so that was really pushing it but it didn't break!
In DAEB tuning I can play an open note B on the highest string instead of having to reach or jump up to 7th fret of the E-string. The fingerings required to play tunes in the same keys that I already know them in can remain the same in DAEB tuning when compared to GDAE tuning. I simply have to move everything down a string since the DAE strings have shifted. The only thing you give up is not having a low G string. The lowest note on a tin whistle is D so it's not that big of a deal.
Nonetheless, I've been working with banjo maker Zach Hoyt to create 5 string tenor banjo that can be tuned GDAEB, low to high. The scale length will be shorter, around 19.75 inches to accommodate the two extremes: a very light gauge like an .009 for the high B string and a quite heavy gauge string like a .046w for the low G string. This will offer the best of both worlds. I think the musician Michael Kang of the band String Cheese Incident uses this tuning for his 5-string electric baritone mandolin.
Even though I've only been playing in DAEB for a week, it has already helped with my ear. On a GDAE tuned tenor banjo, I never quite got the fingers and the ear to sync up on sections involving the high B note. With DAEB tuning I can now effortlessly play through sections that had always tripped me up and can now finally play those sections more by ear since I don't have fingering difficulties to get in the way.
I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner.