[JanVigne]

The most I've dabbles into alternate tunings has been drop D.

With my finger still unable to play my acoustic guitars, I'm back to spending time with my lap steel. The issue with the steel though is the tunings. C6 is common along with E9. Right now my steel is tuned to open G. However, steel players often talk about various methods of the same generic tuning. "Low G" and "High G" are different ways to tune to the same generic tuning. The technicalities of these various tunings are beyond my experience.

I can play in any tuning by looking at tabs, but that can only take me so far. What's the accepted way to learn playing alternate tunings using notation? Looking at standard tuning for my acoustics, it makes sense. One note follows the other chromatically from open sixth string to up the neck on the first string. Tuned in fourths (mostly) I can follow the flow of the notes on the page with the note positions on the neck.


How do you begin to learn alternate tunings while reading notation? Is there a common method for learning, say, open G, E9, C6, etc? Or, is this just simple rote memorization for each tuning?

Are there any good (free) on line resources for this sort of approach?