Alternate Tuning?

[Denandannie]

When a piece calls for an alternate tuning, is that like a suggestion? Or can I just play it in the usual EADGBE?

[rmp]

Some examples would help,

but.. IME, Most of the time, no.

The alternate tunings create chord voicings that otherwise are usually not possible. The piece wound not sound the same, or right if fudging it in standard tuning.

Why not just retune to how it was written?

[Earl49]

The reason for using an alternate tuning is usually to make specific notes, voicings, or licks easier to reach. Secondarily a tuning allows for more open strings to ring. If you work hard enough you could probably play almost any tune in standard, but you had better be double-jointed in all seven fretting hand fingers.

It took me a long time to warm to altered tunings. It seemed like a big pain to re-tune several strings just to accommodate one piece. My solution is to learn several pieces in each tuning, so I can stay there a while. You also get better with practice re-tuning, just like any other skill. I play in seven different tunings (if you count standard). Sometimes when performing it was easier to have a second or third guitar handy, or plan my sets accordingly to re-tune during breaks. There are at least two guitars in the house that virtually never see standard tuning.

[charles Tauber]

Originally Posted by Denandannie

is that like a suggestion? Or can I just play it in the usual EADGBE?

It depends. In some circumstances you can play a piece in standard tuning. In some circumstances, you can more easily play a tune in standard tuning in an altered tuning. In some circumstances, I can't even image doing what the author did not using the tuning he or she used.

Here is one example, Cockburn's Foxglove in open C tuning. I can't imagine playing that not in open C.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFAsoKHepRI


By contrast, I play Blackbird, which was originally played in standard tuning, with the A string lowered to G. Doing so sounds the same but radically simplifies the fingerings, never touching the first or last string.

[BluesBelly]

Originally Posted by Denandannie

When a piece calls for an alternate tuning, is that like a suggestion? Or can I just play it in the usual EADGBE?

The only way that would work is if the piece called for a G chord (as an example) to be played, you would then have to strum a G chord. No matter what tuning you are in a G chord is still a G chord.
Alternate tunings are most helpful for folks that play finger style or pickers that use partial or inverted chord voicing. If you play slide round neck guitar or Dobro you will enjoy playing in an alternate tuning. Usually open G or D. I play slide guitar as well as banjo which is conventionally tuned to open G.
Any stringed instrument can be tuned to just about any tuning imaginable no matter how unconventional

Blues

[TBman]

Originally Posted by Denandannie

When a piece calls for an alternate tuning, is that like a suggestion? Or can I just play it in the usual EADGBE?

No, you have to play it in the tuning that it states.

The alternative is to transcribe it to standard which often results in changing the key of the tune and then the resulting fingerings can become inconvenient/impossible.

[rick-slo]

Standard tuning is good for being able to reach with the fretting fingers a wide variety of chords in various keys.
Various other tunings may make some specific variety of chords available and often for the use of steadily ringing
open strings. You can take a tune written for a one tuning and play it in a different tuning but you will have to make
fingering and chord changes and it will sound different.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by Denandannie

When a piece calls for an alternate tuning, is that like a suggestion? Or can I just play it in the usual EADGBE?

Hi D&a
Do you have a particular song example in mind?

I'd say it's more than a suggestion and less than a mandate. If they can be played in standard tuning with the same ease and complexity, then what would be the point in alternate tunings?

I think it's worth spending some time dabbling in alternate tunings and open tunings. After all, Standard Tuning isn't the LAW. When something is standard, it seems to infer there are non-standard variants.

Alternate tunings often have much lower bass notes, and different intervals between strings than standard tuning. Many are played in more linear fashion than in standard. If you include Open tunings in alternate tunings (strings tuned to an open chord), in those cases they could be essential.

I once heard a guy play a perfect arrangement (note-for-note) of Ed Gerhard's The-Water-Is-Wide (which Ed arranged & recorded in Dropped D) in DADGAD. The player was convinced it was in DADGAD and figured out how to play it that way. Either way he could not have played it in standard tuning.

If you ever listen to/watch Laurence Juber play Pink Panther - you begin to experience the created power of alternate tunings. His tuning was C-G-D-G-A-D

and BELOW he explains why that tuning at a workshop…

I attended an Al Petteway D-A-D-G-A-D workshop at Healdsburg and someone in the class asked him why he confined himself to such a narrow-use and limited tuning. Al immediately broke into some Solo Jazz linear guitar passages, and then comped an additional 16 bars of complex jazz chords (switching chords every beat) all in D-A-D-G-A-D.

He then commented he didn't find it limiting.

The point is, Alternate tunings make it easier to play complicated things more easily.

Their differently spaced string intervals sound different than standard tuning intervals. D-A-D-G-A-D lends itself easily to a distinct Irishy feel.[/I]

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by Denandannie

When a piece calls for an alternate tuning, is that like a suggestion?
Or can I just play it in the usual EADGBE?

It should tell you what the tuning is, and if it's fingerstyle it pretty much has to be played in that tuning.
If its just strummed chords, it would be possible in EADGBE (using different shapes obviously), but it would sound different.

Even a fingerstyle piece in an alternate tuning may be possible in EADGBE, but would need re-arranging, and (a) probably wouldn't sound as good, and (b) might be more difficult.
IOW, that alternate tuning is chosen for a reason!

As the others say, if you can give an example you've seen, we could give a more precise answer.

[Howard Emerson]

Originally Posted by Denandannie

When a piece calls for an alternate tuning, is that like a suggestion? Or can I just play it in the usual EADGBE?

Dennis,
No, there really is no choice if you wish to play/learn the piece as it was played by the artist.

Perfect case in point would be my composition, Crossing Crystal Lake, which is played in open D tuning, capo 2, but played in the key of B to make matters more confusing.

It is a featured piece in Mel Bay's Fingerstyle Anthology Vol.III

When music editor Stephen Rekas approached me about including it in that Mel Bay publication, we had several discussions regarding the accuracy of the tablature, etc. I don't read or write tab, so it was moot point.

There are at least a half dozen Youtube covers of CCL that prove the tab was accurately done, but I digress........

The bigger issue was his insistence that it also be written in Standard Notation, which I found amusing. I am quite certain it is unplayable in standard tuning, but perhaps there's an outside chance of a player who can read standard notation WHILE playing in open tuning.

The advantage, of course, is the rhythmic part of the notation being much clearer.

In all my years of teaching, playing, etc I've never met someone who can play in open tuning while sight reading standard notation, but I can't read either, hence my skepticism.

In any case, Dennis: Just do it, and expand your horizons!

Regards,
Howard Emerson

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by Denandannie

When a piece calls for an alternate tuning, is that like a suggestion? Or can I just play it in the usual EADGBE?

I am guessing this C add 2 tuning song, could not be done to any similar effect in standard tuning.

[rmp]

Originally Posted by KevWind

I am guessing this C add 9 tuning song, could not be done to any similar effect in standard tuning.

First I heard of this guy.. great song.. I need to learn more about this one..

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by rmp

First I heard of this guy.. great song.. I need to learn more about this one..

opps I guess it is C add 2 it's tuned CGCGCD

Chuck Cannon is a prolific Nashville based songwriter who not only has written a number of hits for Nashville stars. But has produced albums of his own. Music that does not get cut in Nashville (doesn't fit the demographic) but IMO is actually better than the stuff that does get cut.

[MakingMusic]

Originally Posted by Denandannie

When a piece calls for an alternate tuning, is that like a suggestion? Or can I just play it in the usual EADGBE?

It is much more than a suggestion.

And it is not the same as merely changing keys as we all sometimes do.

An alternate tuning gives the piece a very different voicing and while you may sometimes be able to play it in standard tuning, it will not sound as it was intended. Besides not sounding right, it is usually difficult to play it in standard tuning and I'm not sure why anyone would want to.

Alternate tunings are a lot of fun, by the way.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by MakingMusic

It is much more than a suggestion.

And it is not the same as merely changing keys as we all sometimes do.

An alternate tuning gives the piece a very different voicing and while you may sometimes be able to play it in standard tuning, it will not sound as it was intended. Besides not sounding right, it is usually difficult to play it in standard tuning and I'm not sure why anyone would want to.

Alternate tunings are a lot of fun, by the way.

Hi MM

I agree with most of what you are saying. Alternate tunings bring a different 'flavor' to the way we play either through unique licks based on the tuning, and unique voicing based on the tuning. It's why I think DADGAD chord charts are useless. DADGAD playing is usually not Chord-centric but more linear.

But CGCGCD (or CGCGCE) can easily be ported to DADGAD or even using a cut capo in the Esus position (DADGAD intervals) at the second fret and playing in key of D relative to the cut-capo with some minimal arranging.

Having written DADGAD and CGCGCD songs, and then wanting to perform them without carrying 3 guitars or making the audience sit through me re-tuning the guitar three times, I find using the cut-capo cheat version allows me to still reproduce the alternate tuning 'flavor'. And if not the exact licks, close enough that nobody but me knows the voicing or lick changed.

I've even discovered using the cut capo that I can change the flavors of songs I've performed in standard significantly without re-tuning.

And we have not really discussed Open Tunings (any tuning which plays a major or minor chord when strummed in open position). While they are in the same sub-group (Alternate tuning) they are their own unique sub-group in that they usually are chord centric.

Hope this adds to the discussion…