What Is Your Favorite Alternate/Open Tuning?

[Wade Hampton]

I’m pretty boring and white bread when it comes to alternative tunings on guitar: I use Dropped D a lot and Double Dropped D a bit (D A D G B D.). Other than that I don’t get especially adventurous with my guitar tunings.

This is mostly because I don’t play that much melody on guitar, but use it primarily as an accompaniment instrument. I play a lot more melodies and improvisational lead lines on mandolin, mountain dulcimer and five string banjo. On both dulcimer and clawhammer banjo I use quite a few different alternative tunings, but those instruments both lend themselves to that sort of approach.

I know precisely one alternative tuning on mandolin, and know precisely one song that uses it: “Get Up John.”

Since it’s such an enormous pain in the butt to mess with retuning the mandolin, I don’t play “Get Up John” very often! It’s a great song, but the tension on the mandolin is so high that putting the instrument into another tuning can be a real
string breaker....

But I use Dropped D on guitar virtually every time I play guitar in performance. It’s such a powerful and useful tuning, from my perspective it would be foolish not to!

Hope that makes sense.


Wade Hampton Miller

[AndrewG]

Looks like I'm with the majority using mostly open D and open G for slide. Slides used are either Dunlop #228, or brass/gold plate Rock Slide (if I can't find the Dunlop!).

[rnjguitar]

I don't do much with open tunings yet - drop D here and there occasionally if the tune calls for it. However, I just learned "She Talks to Angels" taught by justinguitar. He teaches it in open E - so I had a lot of fun noodling around on that tuning for awhile.

[Laughingboy68]

Drop D, Double Drop D, Open G (these three can go sequentially in a set tuning one string down at a time), Open D or Open E (if you aren’t too worried about the added tension), Open G with a low C (learned this for Running On Empty, but now use it for some original songs as well), and once in a blue moon, DADGAD.

I’m a pretty limited fingerstylist, so I mostly use these for strummed and flatpicked songs. Certain tunings work well for certain keys and can give an arrangement the harmonic and tonal depth that makes it seem bigger than one guy playing guitar.

[Ovation1]

My favorite would be FAGDAD

[varmonter]

I like an open C alternative.
CGCGCF

[three4rd]

Originally Posted by ryevick

Ah yes... The early Windham Hill releases were fantastic. They really set about a complete paradigm shift in the way I listen to and appreciated music. They also were responsible for my interest in alternate tunings for the reasons you mentioned. Alex de Grassi is wonderful. I was lucky enough to see Michael Hedges live... incredible! Aerial Boundaries was a complete game changer for acoustic guitar.

Around that same time I owned a beautiful Seagull 12 string. It fit my hands so well and the string spacing it had was great. I did actually play the wound octave string sets individually quite often... Until someone dropped an amp on it and broke the neck

Ryevick....I saw Hedges in concert too...was fortunate that it was within an hour's drive of me. As you say, incredible. He was one of a kind. What amazed me was how he'd be talking to the audience in between songs and changing those tunings at the same time. I swear the guy had more gear than probably a good number of bands were using at the time.

Indeed, Aerial Boundaries is a classic...but I always really liked "Rickover's Dream" too. I liked his philosophy of having considered himself first and foremost a musician and artist who happens to use the guitar rather than just viewing himself solely as a guitar player. Love the story about Ackerman, after hearing him play, signing Michael up on the spot for recording and writing out some sort of basic agreement on a napkin or some such. Sounds like something Will would have done.

Unbelievable story on the Seagull When I was in Jr. High School, I was playing for a talent show and during a rehearsal on stage - while I was temporarily out of the auditorium, there was some sort of incident that resulted in the neck of my Gretsch Double Anniversary model electric (my first one) getting broken. Talk about being horrified upon coming back into the room and seeing the strings just laying all over the body of the guitar! Would love to have seen a picture of my expression at the time. None of the kids admitted to it initially, but then eventually the truth about what occurred was revealed. Had it repaired and used for a good while after that but...yeah...so I can sort of relate.

[three4rd]

Originally Posted by varmonter

I like an open C alternative.
CGCGCF

Cool! From right to left it sounds out a nice Csus4 chord!

[three4rd]

Originally Posted by Ovation1

My favorite would be FAGDAD

Wait...is that order of strings listed correctly? Or might it be FADGAD?

[LiveMusic]

The poll is incomplete without Double Drop D listed!

[jaymarsch]

I voted Open G though Drop D is a close second. I might have voted CGDGCD, if it had been on the list. Gsus4/4 - what Steve Baughman calls Orkney tuning. Easily remembered by: Celtic Guitarists Deserve Good Cold Drinks.

Best,
Jayne

[roylor4]

Open G for slide Blues.

[Trevor B.]

Originally Posted by WordMan

Open G, ignoring the Low E.

You can open a lot of musical doors by dropping the 6th string down to C with the open G chord above it. So from the bottom up pitch wise the tuning is C G D G B D. That's the tuning I use for Hewlett's Planxty and a few other "Celtic" tunes like Raglan Road.

[JonHBone]

Two other Nick drake tunings

Bebebe

And another also used by some classical guitar players (some of whom are likely unaware of drake)

Eadf#be

[TBman]

I just bought another of Simon Fox's mp3/tab packages and there's a few tunings there I've never seen before. Should be interesting.