A Guide to Guitar Tunings
One of the first things you likely learnt to do when you began learning how to play the guitar, was tuning.
After all, you can’t play anything if your instrument is out of tune. But did you know that there is more than one way to tune your guitar? In fact, musicians are continually finding new and inventive things to do with their guitars all the time!
What is Standard Guitar Tuning?
First of all, let's explore standard guitar tuning. As you might know, standard guitar tuning is EADGBE. Standard guitar tuning is the tuning most beginners learn and is the type of tuning that allows you to play the most common chords.
What is an Alternate Guitar Tuning?
Then there's alternative guitar tuning. Alternative guitar tunings are simply anything that isn’t the above tuning. Anyone who wants to branch out and explore unusual new sounds in their music will try out alternative guitar tunings to see what cool effects they can come up with.
Popular Alternate Guitar Tunings
Drop D
The most popular alternative tuning, especially among metalheads and rockers, drop D is the resonant-sounding alternative tuning you might recognise from Nirvana’s All Apologies, The Beatles’ Dear Prudence, or Everlong by the Foo Fighters.
But what exactly is drop D?
The standard tuning is kept, except for the low E, which is tuned down to D. This results in a tuning - DADGBE.
You can reach drop D by sounding the natural harmonic at the sixth string’s 12th fret, then tuning it down to match the pitch of the open fourth string.
Double Drop D
As the name suggests, the double drop D tuning is much like normal drop D, but it also features the high E string tuned down to D - DADGBD.
Heard in songs like The Doors’ The End, Neil Young’s Cinnamon Girl, and Puddle of Mudd’s Drift and Die, one way to produce double drop D is to tune your high E string down to sound the D natural harmonic on your fourth string’s 12th fret.
But if you find it tricky to judge the difference in tone, you can also use the D note on your B string’s third fret as your reference pitch. Simply pick and hold both the D note and the open high E note, before reaching over to tune the second down to D.
DADGAD
A typical tuning among fingerstyle acoustic guitar pros, you’ll have heard DADGAD used in classics like Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir. Other artists, like Martin Simpson and Phil Keaggy, take it further by lowering their guitar’s B string by a whole step to A.
Thanks to the unresolved Dsus4 chord, DADGAD sounds fantasy-like yet inconclusive and mysterious. This alternative tuning uses three open D notes in different octaves - two As and a G. Many guitarists use this as their main melody string.
Open D
With a G string lowered by a half step - DADGAD’s sus4 - you achieve a deep, rich, warm-sounding open D major chord. Then, low to high, you tune DADF#AD, or root, fifth, root, major third, fifth, and root.
Open D is famously used on Elmore James’ Dust my Broom and by Jerry Cantrell for Alice in Chains’ Over Now. With its interval stack of a root-fifth-octave power chord on the bottom strings and a first inversion major triad (3-5-1) on the top three, this relaxed tuning is perfect for playing slide on an acoustic guitar’s thick, tight strings.
Open E
Open E tuning is EBEG#BE.
In the middle of the 20th century, when the more slinky solid-body electric guitars began to grow in popularity, many brilliant slide players, like Derek Trucks and Duane Allman, chose open E tuning as their foremost slide playing tuning.
Open E features the same signature interval stack as open D but a whole step higher. If you used a capo on the second fret in open D tuning, its open strings would give you what would usually be a first-position E chord in standard tuning.
Open E is tighter than open D; however, making the neck bow more than it would in open D. This means breaking a string is possible.
EEEBE
This tuning is one-of-a-kind and genuinely remarkable. EEEBE is also called Bruce Palmer modal tuning, after this tuning’s inventor, the late Buffalo Springfield bassist and guitarist Bruce Palmer.
To create this tuning, you tune the low E, high E and B strings the usual way. Then, the A string goes down to match the low E, while the D string goes up to E, and the G string moves down to E, with the “middle E” string. This results in a heavenly, droning E5 chord.
How to Change your Guitar Tuning
When it comes to alternative tuning, an electronic guitar tuner is your best bet for quickly and easily reaching the alternate pitches that you want. An electronic tuner will also help you get back to normal.
That being said, you should also make an effort to tune your guitar by ear, too. You could use reference pitches like fretted notes, open strings, or the natural harmonics of the 12th 7th, or 5th frets.
If you can’t wait to explore the intriguing sounds of these alternative guitar tunings, why not brush up on how to tune your guitar?
Summary
So, why use alternative guitar tunings? Well, alternative tunings are a great way to learn more about music theory.
On top of that, changing up your guitar tuning allows you to experiment and develop that all-important dexterity. But above all, alternative guitar tunings are fun, making playing the guitar more interesting!
Explore my website to learn more about guitar playing in general!
