It has become an international standard used by steel guitar players and manufacturers to describe the specifications of these instruments.
The tuning evolved from 1950 to 1970 by incremental refinements by many elite steel guitarists playing on tour.
During this period, a consensus developed toward standardization of the 10-string pedal steel guitar to support optimal chord and scale patterns across a single fret.
Hall of fame steel players including Buddy Emmons, Jimmy Day, Ralph Mooney and others made contributions that created permanent changes to the instrument.
[7] The example in the chart below is the one used by Buddy Emmons and, as of 2020, is by far the most popular copedent used by manufacturers to ship new pedal steels guitars to dealers.
(Adapted from GFI Music Company)[8] Here is the meaning of the top row of abbreviations: The originator of the term, Tom Bradshaw, said: "I toyed with several acronyms before coming up with 'copedent'.
Obviously, including 'h' made the word's pronunciation even more difficult, so I quickly dropped that letter from its spelling after first printing it in a four-tune instructional course I published that year.
The tuning makes it easier to play the more complex chord voicings commonly associated with these kinds of music, and the heavier strings on the bottom contribute a "thicker" or "fatter" tone.