Open Tunings
Open tunings will change the way you play guitar.Instead of fumbling for chord fingerings, you can concentrate on timing and what the right (strumming/picking) hand is doing. I switched to an open tuning for 2 years and it completely redefined the way I look at rhythm guitar. Listen to Bo Diddley, Robert Johnson, Richie Havens, the Everly Brothers, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker or Kieth Richards, and you’ll hear the difference. Rhythmic elements seem stronger. All of these artist’s use open tunings.
Many Guitarist’s will avoid using even simple Open Tunings like Dropped D because they are conditioned to view Standard Tuning as “normal” and Alternate Tunings as being “abnormal”. Around the turn of the century (early 1900’s), “Sabastapol” tuning was as common as Standard. G tuning (D,G,D,G,B,D) is made up entirely out of Notes used in Standard Tuning (E,A,D,G,B,E). I found that after becoming familiar with Open G, I was getting a lot more, out of the D,G and B strings in Standard Tuning. I look at it as having a 3 string Open Tuning, within the Standard Tuning.
For singers, songwriters and accompanists, open tunings make it easy to create chord patterns and concentrate on the tempo. The first problem with open tunings is most beginners don’t have an extra guitar laying around that they can leave set-up in an alternate tuning. This is a great excuse for buying a second guitar and there’s a lot of good guitars around for under $250. Squires, Epiphones, and Danalectros are good safe choices.
With open tuning, we see the guitar as a linear instrument like piano. Your chord choices line up from low to high.This makes it much easier to visualize chords and progressions.You can focus on the relationship of notes instead of memorizing chord positions.
The first open tuning assignment, is Dropped D. If your guitar has a whammy bar or a floating bridge this wont work. SG’s , Les Pauls, Tele type guitars, and most flat-top acoustics are good for open tuning. Simply tune up your guitar in standard tuning and detune the 6th(fattest) string one whole tone, from E, down to D. It should sound the same as your 4th string (D) when you play a harmonic on the 12th fret( 6th str./12th fret) Using a tuner it will register as your 4th (D) string, when you play a 12th fret harmonic. Don’t touch the 3 high strings they aren’t part of this exercise.
You can strum all 3 bottom strings together, or play arpeggios. Don’t forget to count beats and bars! Choose a simple chord pattern for example a 12 bar D-G-D-A-D, starting with your (open) D chord, to G (bar all 3 strings on 5th fret), and A is barred at the 7th fret. Don’t be afraid to fool around and experiment. Be aware of the distance between chords in a progression and try starting songs in different keys.
Example: dropped-D-demo
Try to hear the relationships of chords, a D to a G, is a fourth, so is G to a C. D to an A is a fifth, so is G to D. When you start thinking of chord progressions as numbers it is much easier to transpose a song from one key to another. This will also help you recognize chords as major, minor 7th,9ths ect. In standard tuning most of the strings with the exception of G(3rd) to B(2nd) string (which is a Maj third) are tuned to Fourth’s eg. E-A, A-D, D-G, and B-E. Open tunings generally include a Fifth interval. Voilin, Cello and Mandolin tunings are all intervals of Fifth’s.
Open Tunings part 2
So you’ve tried the dropped-D example on the 3 low strings and now you want the Full-on open tuning experience. This first example is open D;
Drop both E strings (1&6), down a whole tone, to D.
Then tune the 2nd string (B) down a whole step, to A,
Finally tune the third, G string a half-step, to Gb or F#. The fourth and fifth strings stay the same.
Strum all six strings it should sound full. Are all 3 of the D strings(1,4,6) perfectly in tune? Being in tune is especially important when there’s multiple octaves of the same note ringing. Same principle with the 2 A strings(2&5). Your third string F# is also the 3rd step of the Dmajor scale.
Example 12-bar-D
To make a chord sound “Minor” in this tuning, we must either mute that string or play it 1 fret lower e.g. bar top 3 strings; ( str/fr) 1/5, 2/5, 3/5, 4/4, 5/5, 6/5 This would be an Am. The other option, if playing a song in a Minor Key is tuning the 3rd string down another half-step to F.
So This tuning (D) works best for songs in Major Keys. The best Keys to Jam in IMHO, are D(open), A(7th fr), G(5th fr), F(3rd fr) and B(9th fr). These keys optimize the open strings allowing quick chord chord changes. Not having to think about fingering makes chord changes much smoother.
Open tunings are great for songwriting, because they allow you to concentrate on the Chord Progression and the Tempo. You can move chords around easily without having to understand how the CAGED chord system(standard tuning) works.
If you are not familiar with playing an F bar chord ( standard ) where you bar the first finger across the fretboard, covering all six strings. With the F bar chord you only press your index finger down on the first, second and sixth strings. Other fingers are fretting the third, fourth and fifth strings.
With Open D tuning you have to get used to fretting all six strings with one finger e.g. G chord 1/5, 2/5, 3/5, 4/5, 5/5, 6/5(str/fr). You dont always have to voice the chord using all 6 strings. You can play just the bottom 3(4,5,6) or the top 4(1,2,3,4)
Practicing with this tuning can greatly improve your rhythmic sense especially the right strumming hand. I found it all applies to standard tuning as well. When you go back to standard tuning and the CAGED chords, it’s easier to visualize how the chords relate to each other spatially.
Plus it makes it much easier to learn to play Slide/Bottleneck if you already know where the notes are!
This is by far the simplest way to learn to play a few songs on the guitar. It practically plays itself, it’s hard to make a bad sounding chord. Not too far away from an Autoharp. You can start playing songs right away.
Using a Capo and Open Tunings seem to go together. I rarely use a Capo for Standard Tuning.
Lets try playing “Stepping Stone” progression (Monkees) in the key of D, using the chords D,G,A and B:
Ch/fr(#) D/0 D/0,D/0, F/3, F/3,F/3, G/5, G/5, A/7, A/7, A/7~
here’s an example of what it should sound like:
