I'm new to formal instruction but have been playing around with the guitar for many years, That said, I really want to learn in standard tuning but have been mightily drawn to two songs featuring slide - Mean Old World and Am I Wrong. I'm off the next two days and am pretty sure a slide is going to follow me home on one of them. From searching and reading the posts here, I see standard tune slide is the most difficult; my question is what affect do alternate tunings have on string life and the guitar itself if any? Without knowing what I was doing back then, my guitars stayed at a lower tuning (D from what I know now) because it was easier to follow along with albums and the musicians playing on them - but what affect does going back and forth have?
"...I don't know - but whasomever I do, its gots ta be FUNKY!"
i've found that i tend to break the thinner strings more often if i tune down and back up frequently. as for the guitar itself, i'm guessing the difference is negligible, but i have no evidence for it.
Yes, if you tune up and down frequently, it will shorten string life a bit but shouldn't have any effect on the guitar at all. Just be sure you're not using alternate tunings on a guitar with a floating bridge.
Well we all shine on--like the moon and the stars and the sun.
-- John Lennon
I guess I don't change tunings frequently enough to notice any difference in string life.
"A cheerful heart is good medicine."
to be honest to me standard tuning has been always the easiest one when it comes to slide. I know where the notes are and just go for the melody in my head. open tunings are obvious choice if you play lots of double stops and chordal licks and you look for availability of various intervals on the neck but for solo single note playing its the same as any tuning (thus simpler because you already have 'the map of the neck' imprinted in your head.
cheers!
Right, standard's great for single note lines if you're familiar with it. It requires excellent picking hand muting skills.
There's lots of stuff that an accomplished standard tuning slider can do solo, as shown by Kirk Lorange, but a lot of traditional stuff isn't going to sound right because it was originally done in an open tuning. You'll need Open G for both of the songs you mentioned. It's silly to limit yourself to one tuning IMO, open tunings are powerful additions to a guitarist's bag of tricks.
"A cheerful heart is good medicine."
There have been plenty of times in my life when I've only had one guitar; in those particular times, I've gone from standard to open G quite often and never noticed any effect whatsoever on string life, and I've always used very light strings - 9's are my preferred gauge. However, those two tunings aren't going to put much extra stress on your strings - to get to open G from standard, you're tuning three strings DOWN two semitones each.....E to D, A to G, and top E to D. I would imagine tuning to open A - EAEAC#E - would put more stress on the strings, as you'd be tuning three string UP two semitones apiece.
Likewise with open D - you'd be tuning four strings down two semitones from standard, and another string down a semitone, whereas with open E you'd be tuning two strings up two semitones each, and another string up one semitone.
Playing slide in standard isn't necessarily harder, or easier, than playing in an open tuning - just different. It made me think about using different voicings for chords - using open strings where possible, so I could wear my slide on my ring finger and play chords with the other three. In an ideal world, I'd wear the slide on my pinky - but I can't, as it's a bit bent out of shape!
Playing slide in standard is a good option to have at your disposal - as you're most familiar with the fretboard in standard tuning, you'll know better where to put the slide, but it does involve rather more string muting than playing in an open tuning - that's the only drawback I've found. That one drawback, however, is far outweighed by the plusses - not having to retune, knowing the fretboard, etc.
:D :D :D
Vic
"Sometimes the beauty of music can help us all find strength to deal with all the curves life can throw us." (D. Hodge.)
I play in altered tunings a lot, and I haven't noticed a change in the life of my strings -- sort of. I do still break the higher strings, but I think that has more to do with the string sticking in the nut as I'm tuning, or improperly stringing the guitar*. If it's done carefully and there's nothing wrong with your guitar (properly strung, no burs on the saddle or in the nut) I don't think it shortens the life noticeably, unless you typically leave them on for more than three months.
*The tuning peg is a cylinder. Cutting a hole out of it for the string to go through flattens a portion of this cylinder. Wrapping the string around the peg over the hole places a sharp bend in the string as it travels over the "flat" part of the peg. If you don't have enough wraps of string around the cylinder, the sharp bend is straightened and bent again every time you change the tuning, fatiguing the metal. The trick is to put enough string around the tuner so that any part that comes off the tuner when you're retuning is from around the smooth parts near the bottom of the tuning peg.
Of course, I could be completely wrong about this, but it explains why my strings break when I'm detuning and why they break near the peg.
The hunger site. Click once a day to give free food.
I think that's exactly right. After I finally learned how to wind strings properly, broken strings became a very rare event.
"A cheerful heart is good medicine."
