Alt Tunings

[mr. beaumont]

If standard tuning has you boxed in, you don't know it well enough.

[rick-slo]

Originally Posted by mr. beaumont

If standard tuning has you boxed in, you don't know it well enough.

I was thinking just that thing.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by YasunBey13

Wow thank you all for the help. i dislike standard tuning i feel im boxed in which is why I was trying to learn ways to really bend the way I can play. Everyone that posted in here has been a help. I'm taking screenshots and learning thank you!!!!

EADGBE is the least "boxed in" tuning there is, in the sense that it's evolved as the best compromise for playing in a maximum number of keys without too much difficulty. Nothing is particularly easy, but everything is within reach.

What other tunings let you do is play more easily in one or two keys (maybe three), while making other keys and chords more difficult. This is obviously why players in these tunings use capos much more liberally than EADGBE players.

Another attractive aspect of most of them is the resonances created by the open strings. Strum the open strings in EADGBE and it's kind of "meh"; strum them in (say) DADGAD, and - hey that's nice! It makes you want to experiment with it. EADGBE doesn't draw you in in the same way; it kind of keeps its secrets hidden....

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by YasunBey13

I read somewhere that Joni Mitchell used more than 60 different types of tunings. How does one make up a tuning to that extent. How can she or whoever make up tunings. My question is what steps does she take does she just randomly change the strings or is there a specific way. Thank You!!

I think it was "more than 40", but that's still a lot. (I read that only three tunes in her whole output - 50 years now! - were recorded in EADGBE.)
The reason was she had polio as a child, and it affected her hands. She sought out ways of tuning which were easier on the left hand - as well as producing interesting sounds of course. Some of her tunings were common alternatives (open D was a favourite, open G too), but most were her own invention.

It may well be that this freedom from EADGBE also helped free up her musical imagination, which was extraordinary. I.e., most people who get into alternative tunings stop at 3 or 4: drop D, open D, open G, DADGAD. Each one of those is like a rabbit hole you can spend years exploring. But a rabbit hole is also constricting! (EADGBE is the least restricting one, and for most players there's a lifetime of exploration there.)
Real freedom comes from sticking with no particular tuning! But then you do need a good ear, and total fearlessness....

This is the site you need if you want to investigate further:
http://jonimitchell.com/music/tuningpatterns.cfm

[westman]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

Open D "over one string" can be Open G.

yeah Doug thanx - the tuning I'm after is in the other direction - if ya get my drift.
I’ll play with your suggestions ’n see what comes up.
To my way of working open ‘G’ is the same intervals (plus 1) one course (string) over to the bass side - picking up on a bass note and dropping off a treble.
The EADEAE suggestion is somewhere in the all park - with maybe a # in there ??.
I had this tuning years ago and thought it might be useful for bass extended stuff in D shaped fingering which would suite some old Gaelic tunes I want to arrange. I dumped the old computer it was on !.

[M Sarad]

After many years of picking up my guitars in altered tunings, my son asked me one day, Dad, your guitar sounds really weird. What kind of tuning did you put it in?"

"It's called Standard tuning."

[rick-slo]

Use of a bunch of alt tunings = a constant retuning hassle, the need to keep notes on what tuning for what tune, the accumulation of forgotten tunes, not being highly adept in the use of and possibilities of a specific tuning or two.

[mr. beaumont]

I guess it depends on what you're looking for...if you like the constant element of surprise, keep twisting those pegs...

Me, I like to know where my notes are at, and I do not have enough mental capacity to keep moving them around!

[Gitfiddlemann]

Originally Posted by mr. beaumont

Me, I like to know where my notes are at, and I do not have enough mental capacity to keep moving them around!

Said jokingly, but it makes an important point. Using alternate tunings, especially the more exotic ones, makes you a lot more dependent on availability, and accuracy, of TAB. Not always a given.

Getting back to what Doug Young mentioned about Don Ross, here is a quote from Michael Hedges on the use of non-standard tunings:

"The tuning is the main symptom of evolving harmony. If a certain musical event is going to be the cornerstone of the music and its development, why not make it easily executable on the guitar? I'm not interested in contortions for contortion's sake. I develop a tuning to accommodate a musical idea; I do not use tunings to develop music."
- Michael Hedges.

So, following the music first, and then selecting the tuning that makes it as easy as possible on the guitar.
Makes sense.
From that point of view standard tuning is just another alternative, but an enormously useful one at that!

[JeffreyAK]

I think writing music is an interactive process, unless you truly think through every note and flourish in your brain first and then commit that to an instrument, and I'm guessing very, very few people are able to do that. Beethoven, perhaps. This is particularly true on a guitar, where you can only reach so far and where open strings are whatever they are tuned to, no matter what is or isn't already planned in your brain. So yes, standard tuning is just as limiting as every other tuning, but each opens up different advantages and sonic capabilities that the others do not. If we don't explore those alternatives, we're not exposed to all that is possible, and all that can feed back into our creativity. I know for sure in my case, exploring and becoming proficient in several alternative tunings has greatly expanded my musical abilities, even if I spend most of my playing time in only a few of them.

[Doug Young]

I agree the "boxed in" thing is a symptom of not knowing the tuning well enough, but it applies to any tuning, not just standard. In any tuning, you have the same 12 notes, you just alter the palette of notes that are available within reach at any given position, which affects the available chord voicings, and to some extent, the resonance of the guitar. Some tunings (including standard) certainly lend themselves more easily to certain keys, meaning that other sounds and keys require you to dig a little deeper. But there's no reason you can't play in any key in any tuning. Pierre Bensusan will gleefully play in all 12 major and 12 minor keys for you in DADGAD, using every imaginable complex jazz chord in the process. Peter Finger can do the same in EBEGAD. It's all about how well you know the tuning, whatever it is.

The other approach - choosing a tuning per tune and never getting to know how to use all keys is fine too. There's a big benefit to really knowing a tuning, all the notes, all the chords, etc, but there can also be a big benefit to letting yourself be lost, using your imagination and ear to create something new while in unfamiliar territory. Whatever sparks your creativity.

[rick-slo]

I have composed in various tunings for variety and for some particular sound or mood I wanted to achieve.
However if I get something I like in some odd tuning I will try to get a good recording of it and then move on.
I don't expect to keep playing tunes I have composed in experimental tunings.

[YasunBey13]

Wow i still have much to learn. Thank you all Ill keep practicing!