Tuning up to Open Em
 

How safe is it to tune up to Open Em on my flamenco guitar?

This would be tuning up the A string to B, and tuning the D string up to E.

Will the strings snap?
Will it be too excessive for the guitar?

I currently use carbon strings, normal tension, the bass strings appear to be similar in tension to a normal tension nylon set.

It depends... :D

If your guitar can handle high tension strings, then tuning up just those 2 strings shouldn't be a problem for the guitar.

Yes, your strings may snap, even more likely if you do a lot of bending.

My guess is that those 2 strings are probably going to wear out significantly faster than the others. Most D strings are already known for wearing out before others and adding tension to it will just speed up the process.

My other thought is that with the imbalance in tension between those 2 strings and the others, you may experience an imbalance in tone.

You could tune to open Ebm, capo at 1, and duck for cover :D

Even better... tune to Dm and capo 2.

You have CARBON strings?

I just wonder why you may think it necessary to tune to an open Em chord. What is the purpose? Why not just play an Em chord in the normal way? I don't know for certain, but I don't think flamenco players do that, at least I've never heard of it. But there's always a first time. :)

I need to tune to open Em, or open Dm, so I can play some songs that are written in that key. At the minute that would be Red Pony. Open Em is easier to tune to than open Dm, but seems like ill stick to open Dm

OK. Perhaps you can help me to understand a bit more. Are you playing this piece from music and if you are, does it say tune to Em at the begining? I have heard of alternative tunings such as DADGAD , Dropped D, Open G etc, but open Em is a new one on me. Having said that, I believe Albert King tuned to an open Cm or something similar and shifted a capo round to accommodate different keys. Nevertheless, it is a bit unusual to tune your guitar to the key in which you are playing.

If I recall correctly, Sirwhale is playing blues and John Fahey type songs on his nylon string guitar.

Delta bluesman Nehemiah "Skip" James (1902-1969) used Em tuning a lot,
he called it "E minor cross note tuning" and most of his compositions were based on it.

My guess is that there are other blues guitar players that used this tuning

Skip James played a lot in the D version - D A D F A D (as opposed to the more common D A D F# A D). He called it "cross note" tuning.

Yes, Red Pony is by John Fahey and is written for the tuning of open Dm. I'd also like to learn Hsrd time killing floor blues by Skip James.

Basically, its just laziness as open Em requires less effort to get to from standard tuning than open Dm.

I quite like the tuning because the treble strings retain the same relationship with each other ad they do in standard tuning, so its easy to adapt. But you have the root on the 6th & 4th strings and a 5th on the 5th string.

Thanks for the explanation, folks. That is probably what Albert Collins' tunuing is based on. I hadn't heard of it before, I guess we learn something new every day.