The three-string-guitar project caused me to explore several open tunings.
I saw a Rick Beato thing about good songs that never saw the light of day. He mentioned DADGAD tuning in that segment, also known as Celtic tuning.
I started playing around with that, which produced really pleasant results.
What tunings do you use and why?
Billy
“Amazing! I’ll be working with Jaco Pastorius, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, and Buddy Rich, and you’re telling me it’s not that great of a gig? “Well…” Saint Peter, hesitated, “God’s got this girlfriend who thinks she can sing…”
I tune down a half step because it is easier on my partner in crime/ vocalist.
Byron Dickens
BIAB. CbB. Mixbus 32C 8 HP Envy. Intel core i7. 16GB RAM W10. Focusrite Scarlett 18i 20. Various instruments played with varying degrees of proficiency.
I do dig the sound textures of alternate tunings....D - G6 - C, etc.
I've threatened to try an alternate tuning a few times over many years. I never took that plunge because I'm just a rhythm axe player/song writer.
My 'bread & butter' rock/roll song writing doesn't require digging into alternate tunings anyway. I wasn't enamored with learning all new chord positions either. That would just be a distraction from my song writing focus.
DADGAD Celtic, UK folk-type and "moody" fingerstyle type and what I can only call quasi-classical guitar music for lack of any label I'm aware of.
Open G (D-G-D-G-B-D) My most often used open tuning by a long shot... basic go-to tuning for all slide styles... covers most all genres This is also known as Hawaiian slack key and is the most commonly used tuning for that genre
Open D (D-A-D-F#-A-D) Very little slide, mostly fingerstyle Celtic, UK-folk style
Others, rarely used:
Drop D (D-A-D-G-B-E) Just sets up a low D drone string. Use sometimes in Celtic and UK folk-type.
C6 (C-G-C-G-A-E) slide only - use this to imitate a pedal steel (without pedals) or lap guitar limited genre for me... western swing. I don't play country music, but one could use it for that genre too I suspect.
I play the open tunings only on acoustic guitar, with two exceptions... an electric in Open G for slide blues and an electric in C6 for western swing.
LOL...I did not want to take the plunge either. I just fell off in the deep end of the pool as a result of building the three-string guitars.
It has opened my eyes to new ways of playing and sounds.
I assume some people have learned to play in Drop D because it is so popular and necessary to play certain songs.
Everything is a compromise including standard tuning.
Billy
“Amazing! I’ll be working with Jaco Pastorius, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, and Buddy Rich, and you’re telling me it’s not that great of a gig? “Well…” Saint Peter, hesitated, “God’s got this girlfriend who thinks she can sing…”
I played a mandocello for awhile. My stroke came before I recorded it, however. Too bad. It was an 18" jumbo flat top and could blow down walls. It was the only stringed instrument that I could hear clearly while singing.
BIAB 2025 Audiophile Mac 24Core/60CoreGPU M2 MacStudioUltra/8TB/192GB Sequoia/Tahoe, M1 MBAir, 2012 MBP Digital Performer11, Logic, Finale27/Dorico/Encore/SmartScorePro/Notion6/Overture5
I have never tried to play in drop D. It does make the D chord sound very good, but that is about as far as I got.
I assume part of the reason is being unfamiliar with huge hits like Radioactive by Imagine Dragons, which I guess I did not like that much.
I like What I've Done by Linkin Park but I never tried to play it.
So...drop D may be very popular with metal and other styles but there are just not enough hours in my life left to learn everything...lol
Altered tunings are something I will incorporate as time goes by. They are just more colors to paint with and make certain finger positions much less trouble to play.
Cool stuff.
Billy
“Amazing! I’ll be working with Jaco Pastorius, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, and Buddy Rich, and you’re telling me it’s not that great of a gig? “Well…” Saint Peter, hesitated, “God’s got this girlfriend who thinks she can sing…”
David, did you not understand that you have to put the capo on the neck so that it presses down on the strings? Placing the capo on the strap only changes the vocals.
Billy
“Amazing! I’ll be working with Jaco Pastorius, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, and Buddy Rich, and you’re telling me it’s not that great of a gig? “Well…” Saint Peter, hesitated, “God’s got this girlfriend who thinks she can sing…”
I've written in DADGAD, open Am and open Em. The open tunings are OK for easy barre chords, but what I like to do is cowboy-chord shapes and then take them further up the neck. Haven't a clue what chords I'm playing, but they can really be interesting.
The issue is remembering what tuning for what song, being so disorganized. I'm my own guitar-tech and only have one guitar.
I use Drop D and DadGad and open D major tuning a lot.
I really recommend open major and open minor chord tunings, and creating your own versions of these.
The thing to do with open tunings, in my view is to find patterns that are moveable that sound interesting to you and are different than the usual cowboy chords and cowboy licks. For example, the use of open strings which are allowed to resonate while you form a three fret chord on three of the six strings, leaving up to three of the other strings to be played open, in any order you like, is incredibly fun and can yield some really interesting textures.
There are many stringed instruments in the world that have drone strings, so why shouldn't some guitar styles involve drone strings. For any piece where the home 1 chord is your six open strings, you can spice up the 1 chord with any number of voicings of chords that are not available to any human guitarist in ordinary tunings.
This guy is doing some pretty basic stuff and I like this type of lick, but I feel like something is off in the audio recording of his guitar. Maybe it's just that it's a tiny parlour guitar and I'm playing a dreadnought sigma .... But these are the same licks I'm playing and they are positively thunderous here with my big dread.
Start with Droup D which is only one string out of standard tuning and enjoy that big fat 1 chord in your blues in D. Then go all the way to drop D and try some fingerstyle and maybe some day, some slide guitar in open D.
Last edited by Warren P; 10/16/2310:03 AM.
BIAB Mac 2025 Mac Studio 2022, M1 Max, MacOS 26.3 (Tahoe)
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