Recently, we received this review from a customer:

“I went ahead and ordered the Warren Ellis. All of my working guitars are now 23” scale or shorter. Age and arthritis have taken their toll. The switch to your tenors has kept me in the game. I did the Tenor Guitar Workshop at A Joyful Noise Music Studio in Fenton [Michigan]… it was a success and brought a couple of youngsters into the tenor guitar family.”

This got us thinking, who plays tenor guitar? There’s no one answer, of course. Our customers come from all over the world and have many different musical backgrounds. Some play tenors on huge stages with megastars like Hozier, and some play on their couch. There’s no wrong way to use a tenor, and we’re always excited when our customers show us something new. But who are they? Let’s dive in and find out!

Dedicated Tenor Players

It turns out, tenor playing is a whole world unto itself, with a rich history and culture of players who consider “tenor guitar” their primary instrument. You can find a lot of these folks on the subreddit r/TenorGuitar or on websites like mandolincafe.net, posting photos of beautiful vintage instruments from brands like Framus, Kalamazoo, National, Martin, and Gibson.

Popularized in the 1920s, the original tenor guitars were offered as replacement instruments for tenor banjo players searching for a softer tone. As a result, today’s traditional tenor players tend to explore a musical repertoire consistent with this time period. There’s boatloads of beautiful jazz, swing, and ragtime sheet music to dive into online, and a great deal of it is in the public domain.

Players looking for a traditional look to match their traditional sound might enjoy the Eastwood TG-150, which fuses midcentury style with modern quality.

Players with a Traditional Background Looking to Branch Out

Like the tenor banjos that inspired them, tenor guitars are typically tuned in fifths. While the majority of our tenor guitars ship tuned G-D-A-E low to high; another common tuning is C-G-D-A. Other instruments that are tuned in fifths include violin, cello, and mandolin. As a result, tenor guitars have a friendly fingerboard landscape for these players and represent a whole world of musical opportunity.

A violinist who has played primarily classical music may not know how awesome it feels to plug your instrument in and crank an amp up with distortion. An electric tenor guitar allows them to do just that, all while maintaining familiar geography on the fingerboard. Similarly, a mandolin player who comes from a bluegrass or country background probably hasn’t had a chance to experiment with effects like wah-wah or delay. Tenor guitars give players like this access to a bunch of new sounds and textures.

Cellist Ken Kubota shows how his tenor guitar allows him to apply his classical training to a decidedly modern instrument

One such player is our friend Cremain Booker, better known as ThatCelloGuy over on social media. Booker is a cellist from Dallas, Texas, who posts fun cover videos and offers little peeks into his life as a professional musician. While on tour with Irish songwriter Hozier, Booker will occasionally set his cello down to pick up a Warren Ellis Tenor Baritone 2P, and rock up at the front of the stage with the rest of the band. Way cool!

Booker plays his Warren Ellis Tenor 2P on some of the biggest stages in the world

Guitar Players Looking to Try Something New

The majority of our customers come to the tenor guitar from standard six-string guitar. If you’re a guitar player, perhaps you’ve found yourself in this position: You’ve been playing the same stuff for a while and you find yourself going to the same chord progressions, the same licks in your solos, the same strumming patterns. Sound familiar? If so, tenor guitars are definitely worth a look.

Tenor guitars, with their fifths tuning, offer a new musical challenge to regular guitar players. Your muscle memory won’t save you here! Guitar players have all new chord shapes and scale patterns to explore on tenor guitars. The fifths tuning also offers a fresh new sound to guitar players, allowing for wide intervallic jumps and open-voiced chords that would never be possible in standard guitar tuning.

Guitar players looking for a tenor often appreciate the familiar look and electronics setup of the Model S Tenor

Folks Who Would Benefit from a More Comfortable Instrument

The customer review at the beginning of this blog mentioned how arthritis had changed their relationship to playing music, and they’re not the only one. Another customer of ours reported, “I started out playing regular six-string guitar but a youth spent playing sports and breaking and dislocating fingers left me with really compromised manual dexterity, so I switched to four strings.”

All of our tenor guitars have smaller necks than regular six-string guitars. They have slimmer nut widths—our tenors range from 1 1/8” to 1 11/32”, while guitars are typically a 1/4” wider or more—and they often have lighter, smaller bodies. Children, musicians with disabilities, and people with small hands have all found tenor guitars inviting and rewarding. No one should miss out on the joy of music-making because of a mobility issue, and we cherish hearing about the times a tenor guitar has given the gift of music back to one of our customers.

The Rivolta Duocata Tenor, on the right in Ambra Burst, features smaller dimensions than its guitar inspiration, the Rivolta Duocata Classico pictured left

Total Beginners

Speaking of giving folks the gift of music, a not-insignificant portion of our customers are total beginners! It may seem counterintuitive given how uncommon tenor guitars are compared to standard guitars, but many of the technical barriers to entry are lower on tenor guitars. Tenor guitars have shorter scale lengths than standard guitars—around 23” compared to an average guitar’s 25”—which means less tension across the strings and a gentler playing experience.

Since tenor guitars have four strings instead of six, most first-position chords can be formed with just two fingers. Additionally, many of our tenor guitars have wider string spacing than standard guitars—string spacing on the Warren Ellis Signature Tenor is 16mm, compared to 10mm on an average guitar—giving beginner players a bigger “target” to hit on the fingerboard. Plus, that lower tension means that the ever-intimidating barre chord is a snap compared to standard guitar. Folks who have never picked up an instrument can easily learn a couple chords after just one lesson, and will be playing along to their favorite songs in no time.

Adrian of Anyone Can Play Guitar demonstrates the MRG Tenor Guitar and discusses his approach to tenor playing

So, who plays tenors?

Tenor players are a wonderfully diverse bunch, from jazz traditionalists to classically trained violinists to people picking up an instrument for the very first time. What unites them is curiosity, and a willingness to explore something a little outside of the mainstream. Whether you’re chasing new sounds or looking for a more comfortable playing experience, we feel confident there’s a place for you in the tenor guitar world. So, who plays tenor guitar? Maybe the better question is: why aren’t you?