What we guitarists consider “standard tuning” has been around pretty much since the fifth and sixth strings were added to the instrument in the late 1700’s.
Alternate and open tunings are a great way to explore more of the potential of your guitar. Artists being artists, “non-standard” or “alternate” tunings have existed for as long as the guitar itself. For the sake of our discussions, we will divide guitar tunings into three categories – standard, open, and alternate. On this page you’ll find some great articles and lessons on alternate and open tunings, including some wonderful song lessons and arrangements.
Vic Lewis looks at the basics of playing slide guitar in standard tuning, which is a great thing to know if you’d prefer to not keep changing your tuning every other song!
Alternate tuning involves changing any or all of a guitar’s strings to a different note than in standard tuning. “Drop D” and DADGAD tunings are frequent choices of alternate tuning but there are many to choose from.
In open tuning, the guitar’s six strings are tuned to the notes of a single, easily identified chord. Open tuning is used a lot by slide guitar players. It’s also a favorite of Keith Richards.
Standard tuning is tuning each string of your guitar to a specific note. It makes learning the guitar easier by allowing you to play the various chords in the same way that other people do.
A lot of the signature sound of the twelve-string comes from the paired strings being struck together. You can do any alternate tuning that you’d use on a six-string guitar on a twelve string as well as some pretty interesting alternate tunings.
This is a terrific piece for those of you interested in the subject of partial capos, which will educate and inspire you. And if you’re not familiar with the subject, I suspect it will whet your appetite to learn more about it.
In response to the many people who’ve written with questions on how to tune the guitar, Graham’s written this wonderful step-by-step process for those of you who are unfamiliar with how to tune with a tuner.
Evan may be young but he does get his point across. Here’s a lesson that introduces Drop C tuning and even includes a riff from Toxicity by System of a Down.
This is essentially the same as tuning by what we’ll call the “normal” method (tuning the A string to the 5th fret of the E string, etc.). The difference is that you use the harmonic notes to tune between the strings. I’m assuming you know how to do harmonics. The easiest places to produce them [...]
I know a lot of people like to number the strings of a twelve-string guitar from one (high E) to twelve, but I find it much easier to number them as a six-string guitar, that is one through six, adding the designation “a” or “b” to each string as well. “A” means closer to the [...]
The third and final part in our look at alternate tunings. Let’s see how they can be used to write songs and we’ll throw a little bit of theory into the mix.
Part two in our look at alternate tunings. We’re going to see how alternate tunings can be used as a tool for arranging and interpreting old familiar tunes.
This is the first of three lessons on alternate tunings. We’ll go over the basics of alternate tunings such as why and how to use them with some great examples.
This is the second of two parts on open tuning. We’re going to learn how to put together a fretboard map and use it to figure out chords in open tuning.
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Alternate and open tunings are a great way to explore more of the potential of your guitar. Artists being artists, “non-standard” or “alternate” tunings have existed for as long as the guitar itself. For the sake of our discussions, we will divide guitar tunings into three categories – standard, open, and alternate. On this page you’ll find some great articles and lessons on alternate and open tunings, including some wonderful song lessons and arrangements.
