Open tunings have been making a “comeback” of sorts lately, but they have always been a staple of serious musicians. Many fledgling guitarists are unaware that artists such as Keith Richards, Dave Mason, Richie Havens, Leo Kottke and Mark Knopfler have been using various forms of open tuning for years. Slide guitar players often tend to utilize open tuning; it suits their particular playing styles quite well.
Here are some basic open tunings:
- STANDARD E A D G B E
- OPEN C C G C G C E
- OPEN C Minor C G C G C Eb
- OPEN D D A D F# A D
- OPEN D Minor D A D F A D
- OPEN F (used by Jimmy Page in Bron Y Aur) C F C F A F
- OPEN G D G D G B D
- OPEN G Minor D G D G Bb D
- OPEN G Seventh D G D G B F
Open D tuning
When you strum the guitar without fretting any notes it will give you a D major chord. Let's do the open D tuning:
First we take our standard tuning (low to high):
E A D G B E
and then we look at where we want to go:
D A D F# A D
You can see that the 5th and 4th strings (A & D) are going to stay the same. If you have an electronic tuner, this is going to be a breeze. Simply tune both the E strings (1st and 6th) to the D setting, just like you would your D string. If you don't have an electronic tuner, then you tune both strings to the open D string, only an octave higher on the first string (this is the same as the 3rd fret on the B string)and an octave lower on the sixth string (when tuned correctly, your A string will now match the 7th fret of the sixth string instead of the 5th fret like it normally does).
To get the A on the second string, you can again go by the A setting on an electronic tuner, or use the octave of the open A string. This should now match the 2nd fret of the G string (instead of the 4th fret).
The F# is the only tricky one, and even that's not too hard. You want to tune this string to the 4th fret of the D (fourth) string (instead of the 5th fret).
You should now be in open D tuning. When you strum the guitar without fretting any notes it will give you a D major chord.