Twelve-string guitar ...........................................................................
A twelve-string guitar is much like a six-string guitar with one obvious
exception — it has twelve strings instead of six. When you’re tuning a
twelve-stringed guitar, the best way to do so is to think of it as having six
pairs of strings, instead of twelve individual strings.The first (highest) two strings are unisons, tuned to an E; the second set are
also unisons, tuned to the same B. The third pair of strings, G, are either
unisons or an octave apart, depending on preference. For the three bass
courses, D, A, and E, each pair is tuned an octave apart.The effect of this tuning gives the twelve-string guitar a nice, full, bright-
sounding ring, while the doubled treble strings sound fuller and richer than
on a six-string. This is because the unisons are not exactly unisons, and the
octaves not precisely octaves, which gives the instrument a natural chorus
effect — the fuller sound coming from the slight interference between similar
but not exactly identical tones.Steel guitar ..........................................................................................
Plenty of guitars have lots of shiny metal on them, either for structural rein-
forcement, amplification, or decoration, but the real qualifier of what makes a
steel guitar a steel guitaris that steel guitars are played by sliding a metal bar
along the neck while picking. The effect of this is that the notes sound like
they’re being bent from one pitch to the next, very smoothly and twangy, like
the stuff Hawaiian crooner Don Ho was famous for.There are many types of steel guitars, but the most popular ones are the lap
steel(or Hawaiian) guitar, the Dobro, and the pedal steel.The lap steel is held on your lap — just like the name implies — with one
hand moving the steel, a kind of sliding mechanism, up and down the neck,
and the other hand plucking out the tune, either with a pick or with fingers.A Dobro looks a lot like a regular guitar, except that the neck is much thicker
and stronger, and a much thicker gauge of string is used on the guitar to fur-
ther amplify this already fairly loud instrument.A pedal steel guitar is set on a stand and looks like one or two guitar necks,
minus the body, mounted on a box. Pedal steels also can have as many as ten
strings per neck.192 Part IV: Orchestration and Arrangement