I don't have a great musical mind, so I like to stick to standard tuning. However I do on occasion tune to open d or drop d. I've been doing a lot of drop d lately. Takes just a second to tune to drop d so it's nice to just mess around with it.

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Last edited: Sep 23, 2009 20:21:33

I've spent years playing in open tunings (G, D, DADGAD) and my experience may not translate universally but it might make sense to some. We all play around patterns. It's entertaining to poke fun at "blues noodlers" but folks here are "surf noodlers" There are notes that sound "surfy" in unison, or in a certain order. It's why you can pick up your guitar and string together Miserlou, Baja, and just about any other surf song in "E" without even trying to make a Medley. Just start another and it fits great. If you write a song and think "that sounds great! But it isn't surf" You stepped outside the surf conventions.

So alternate tunings give you different patterns and chord shapes and can certainly lead to spurts of creativity (mostly when you first learn the tunings) but to make it sound like a "surf song" or a "country blues", or a "Celtic song", or a "ragtime" song you still have follow certain conventions, scales, chords, etc.

So for "discovering" melodies, riffs, etc. toying with alternate tunings for something like surf can be helpful, but for performing it? If it sounds like a "surf song" it sounds like a surf song, and sure you can switch back and forth between open E minor and open E (if you're lazy, E minor alone would cover it) and play surf the way Keith Richards plays his music. In fact it would be fun and could help keep you "fresh", but I personally don't have that much time. Would Keith Richards have come up with "Can't you hear me knockin'" without open G? Who knows. But I do know when I had to play it in Bars I played it in standard tuning and I don't think there was more than a 3 fret stretch at any point where Keith just barred with his index or made a 1 fret stretch...

Now please don't throw bricks. I'm not trying to rain on the open tuning parade, in fact it can really open up the neck for you and increase your overall knowledge of the guitar and the way standard tuning works! I'm just saying I went down that road and it can be a fun habit, but for me at least it wasn't a lifestyle... Oh, and when I say things like "sound like a surf song" or "stepping outside surf conventions" I'm obviously speaking in general terms. There are tons of exceptions any of us can name.

If I'm not playing surf, I'm usually playing some slide blues in open G. It's simple to play, and I just love the sound.

"Hope is a waking dream." - Aristotle

I messed around with drop D briefly, but didn't find what I was looking for (namely, more beef at the bottom end) until I tried dropped C#, with the low E string tuned to D#. After the last time I took the guitar apart, I switched back to standard, just to get a better sense of the difference. Since getting the Yamaha, I'm thinking of repeating the C# experiment as an alternative to heavier strings.

Those steel guitars look amazing, by the way. I got to hear (but not play) a National Tricone a few years back. Do these sound similar? I'm assuming the names denote triple and dual resonators respectively.

but interesting pics, thanks! I've always wanted to see inside a Tricone.

mad_dog
Interesting discussion, especially Badash' comments. I too have spent lots of time on alternate tunings, but for me the lessons learned are a bit different.

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I figured my experience wasn't universal I found myself most often writing in standard, and we're talking intricate fingerpicked stuff, and then seeing which tuning made the thing easiest to play. Eventually I just bit the bullet and forced myself to develop techniques that let me play "impossible" things in standard. Then again I did develop sever nerve and tendon damage and am on year 3 of retraining my hands to work Hmmm... Never thought of that before...

I definitely agree that tunings can lead to creativity, but as I said as I "mastered" them I found myself falling into patterns. But then again I'm a hack at heart. You seem to have avoided that trap. Some do, most don't. The transference of learning from one to the other is another area I agree. It really helps your "spatial" thinking about the neck in general. Great post. Thanks.

planish
For some of my half-assed finger-picking I like to use DGDGBE or just EGDGBE. Mostly for Celtic stuff, (like March of the King of Laois) because you get that drone thing going on.

Planish, do you use a particular Celtic scale ?

Tim O
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