Alternate Tunings

C

CalebMcC

New member
As a guitarist who uses folk and soft acoustic balads as one of my major styles of playing, ive found alternate tunings to be a must. when its just your voice and your guitar, you gotta get a tuning to give you a fuller sound, and sometimes to even cover up chord progressions that are easily identifiable with bare instrumentation.
im partial to DADADD, DADGAD, CGCGBE, EAC#EBE and DADGBD. i like these becuase you can easily obtain a beautiful rich sound out of them.
Im looking for many more, since there is only so much you can do with a few alternate tunings, and if anyone has any suggestions, i would love to hear them.
 
though it wasnt on my list, i do use it. i dont much tho because its a little restrictive as far as having all 3 nots of only one chord. for rythym, its a little more difficult to use. im very partial to ones like DADADD that only have 2 nots and arent at all restrictive, or ones like EAC#EBE that sontain notes to numerous different chords and for that reason arent very restrictive for rythym.
 
CalebMcC said:
As a guitarist who uses folk and soft acoustic balads as one of my major styles of playing, ive found alternate tunings to be a must.
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I couldn't disagree more. Not that there is anything WRONG with open tunings, but they certainly are not a "must." You can achieve the same thing by simply learning your way around the instrument better. This is not to say that alternate tunings are a "lazy" musician's tool - I know guys who think that way, and they tend to be assholes; and many a great guitarist uses alternate tunings all the time - simply that they are not the only way. I never use alternate tunings, and the main reason is that I hate having to retune all the time. I think I know three songs that are in something other than standard tuning, all of them are other peoples songs that I would never play live, and two of them are just in drop D (the other one is in open D). Myself, I'd rather spend my time finding new chords in standard tuning - they are useful in more situations. Add in a capo so you can have open strings in more keys, and I just don't have much interest in open tunings.

Which is not at all to say you shouldn't use them - just imagine where Joni Michell would be without them! And then their is Sonic Youth, who have something like 40 different tunings they use (and some of them are REALLY weird!)


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
CalebMcC said:
As a guitarist who uses folk and soft acoustic balads as one of my major styles of playing, ive found alternate tunings to be a must. when its just your voice and your guitar, you gotta get a tuning to give you a fuller sound, and sometimes to even cover up chord progressions that are easily identifiable with bare instrumentation.
im partial to DADADD, DADGAD, CGCGBE, EAC#EBE and DADGBD. i like these becuase you can easily obtain a beautiful rich sound out of them.
Im looking for many more, since there is only so much you can do with a few alternate tunings, and if anyone has any suggestions, i would love to hear them.
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I love the full lush sound of open tunings. Yes you are limited to what you can do with a guitar that is tuned that way, but especially for recording it is a usefull method. I like to tune to open E with no third, E,B,E,E,B,E. With a 12 string this sounds like a symphony. I also like to use drop E tuning. This is how I do it, The strings are tuned to standard tuning, then I use a Kyser capo on the 2nd fret backwards so only the 1st 5 strings are capoed and the low E stays unaffected. You can get some interesting modal chords and you can return to standard tuning by just removing the capo. Experimenting is the key.
VP:cool:
 
Light said:
and the main reason is that I hate having to retune all the time. Light
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Light! You BUILD guitars.... don't tell me you only have one?! ;)


I use open tunings all the time and a lot of my recorded stuff is in open tunings.. and a lot of it isn't.

I find them useful when I'm having a creative block. Change the tuning, put your fingers in the standard positions and you'll almost always hear something interesting..

Another thing you might like to get is a partial capo.... I think it's called a "third hand" or something like that... which capos which ever strings you want... and leaves the others open - again, another useful tool for the armoury...

If for no other reason, it give you a great excuse to have multiple guitars and stops yer basic "can I have a play of yer geetar" noodlers in their tracks...
 
Armistice said:
Light! You BUILD guitars.... don't tell me you only have one?! ;)
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Sure, but I'd rather not have to bring 20 guitars to a show!


When I want to break through a wall, I try rewriting the chords for a song, or try to find new voicings for everything. Add tensions or something.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
I use to play a Led Zepplin tune called "Thats The Way". Its on the III album. I have forgot the actual tuning but it was really cool.

It seems like open tunings are like a one trick pony if you will. Used for the main guitar piece you can't really do more than a few songs in an album or a set without it getting old. Having said that I think the Goo Goo Dolls wear an open tuning out.
 
Just gonna chime in to support the "use alternate voicings" suggestion.

Much of the time, open tunings sound different because of the root-fifth-octave or inverted fifth-octave found in the bass. You can re-voice your chords in standard tuning and get similar results.

Try D Major: 2 0 0 2 x x (F# A D A) for a big low 1st inversion sound. The "D"-ness is delicate, so this works best in when a D chord is "expected".

Try C Major: 3 3 2 0 x x (G C E G) or move the "3 3 2" pattern for low 2nd inversion deep sounds. This is a common foundation in some people's normal C chords (if you usually reach around and hit the low G with the pinky).

In both cases, these are "high" chords (compared to E major as a "low" chord) that normally don't involve the low E string at all, but if you invert the chord, you can play it much lower (and bigger sounding).

In open tunings, you're probably playing chords like this already.
 
I've used C (C-G-C-G-C-E) and C6 (been too long, but probably with a the third string tuned to A).

Due to arthritis in my hands, I play guitar exclusively with the slide, so I use open tunings (mostly open E, but also D and G on my Dobros). Harking back to the days when I played conventional guitar, there were many musical chords available in standard tunings that are impossible in open tunings. There is a vocabulary of sounds that work in standard that can't be duplicated otherwise.

Dave Van Ronk famously said, "playing in open tuning is like playing tennis without a net." Listen to his recordings and you'll hear someone who wasn't afraid of the fretboard alphabet.
 
If one chooses open tunings out of laziness, then yes, it's likely that the open tunings will sound even more formulaic than standard tuning. I agree with different voicings, put yourself up in fifth or seventh position and mix in open strings. I'm also not a huge capo fan, but a capo at the first fret opens up the same technique with flat keys.

Transcribe some impressionist piano music and you will discover lots of chord voicings you didn't know existed.
 
Keith Richards has made a career out of open G. Been reasonably successfull at it too from what I can tell.:D
 
Pretty much what Light said. Open tunings are fun, but if you "need" more than one tuning to get new sounds out of a guitar, than you're probably being lazy in your standard tuning (which may or may not be "standard," as pohaku pointed out).

My thoughts are that while occasionally I'll screw around in an altered tuning (and a little more often in some variation of Drop-D or Drop-A on a seven), there are just such a staggering number of voicings you can play in standard if you're willing to take the time to explore it that I could (and probably will) dedicate my entire life to trying to find new ways to use it, and still won't have covered all the potential ground.

The real risk is falling into a comfort zone, be that with Standard, be that with open G, be that with some weird-assed altered b9 dominant tuning, etc. It doesn't matter what tuning you're using, if you're just playing the stuff that comes easily out of it and not really digging deeper, then you're not doing it justice.


That said, I'm a sucker for suspensions, and I've always thought it'd be a lot of fun to start a Tool-like band playing exclusively in DADGAD...
 
mshilarious said:
A big part of that is contrast against (insert guitarist name here)'s standard tuning.
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No question, but the rhythm track hook is usually open G with 5 strings.

I've always found the number (lots) of available tabs for Stones songs that are in standard tuning to be interesting, given that it is widely known that the original rhythm guitar track is actually in open tuning and the voicing, as a result, isn't really the same in standard tuning.

Then of course we have Hawaiian slack key guitar with a multiplicity of "family" tunings, and which is decidedly not lazy.
 
to reply to Light, i agree 100% that it is a pain to retune all the time and taking 20 guitars to a show is porblematic. however, i assure you i dont do it out of laziness, but rather when i get bored with standard or am having writers block. i feel like their very unexplored and thats theres alot to do with them that hasnt been done. i often feel like the kind of guitarist who ceases to create at times out of utter fear of imitation, and different tunings help this. Also, i love the rich sounds you can get and will admit i am highly influenced by the goo goo dolls. i do still explore the standard tuning, as i understand that a person can spend an entire lifetime mastering everything that can be done with EADGBE. if anyone has any suggestions for using standard tuning for ballad writing without sounding cliche and still giving things a nice rich rythym, i am all ears. i didnt figure there were too many ways to do this, or i obviously wouldnt throw my guitar in and out of tune to achieve these sounds.
 
I like that DADADD that's essentially what I am right now. My kids are sleeping, there's a pile of dishes and I'm on here learning about Dad ADD on the guitar! :confused:


My main tuning is DADGBD for acoustic guitar. I was under the impression that I was the only guitar slapping, harmonic shredder out there and since candyrat bursted my little bubble I've been moving back to a standard approach and focusing more on song writing. There is nothing like a good alternate tuning to inspire new ideas. If you can't afford a new instrument to muster up some inspiration, change the tuning and start over!
 
pohaku said:
Then of course we have Hawaiian slack key guitar with a multiplicity of "family" tunings, and which is decidedly not lazy.
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Ahhh, I've always loved hawaiian slack key. Peter Moon's Cheri was an influence as well as the Beamer Bros. I've tried picking up that style, but just can't seem to get the feel.

Alternate and Open tunings are just another tool in the belt. They are especially useful for breaking a writer's block.
 
Chili said:
Ahhh, I've always loved hawaiian slack key. Peter Moon's Cheri was an influence as well as the Beamer Bros. I've tried picking up that style, but just can't seem to get the feel.

Alternate and Open tunings are just another tool in the belt. They are especially useful for breaking a writer's block.
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If you haven't done so already, you might check out slack key music on the Dancing Cat label. A variety of artists and they typically provide the tuning for each song.
 
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