Why Use Alternate Guitar Tunings

     There is an old tradition of players tuning their guitars to alternate guitar tunings. From old blues-men with their odd slide guitar tunings, to the deceptively complex lap steel guitar tunings of country pickers, to melodic yet always uniquely different guitar tunings of writer’s like Joni Mitchell; to the radically odd open guitar tunings Keith Richard employees in his ‘ancient art of weaving’, (as he calls his live playing with Ron Wood) so many guitarists, from so many generations and styles, have used alternate guitar tunings to get the sound they want.

You might ask why use alternate guitar tunings? You aren’t Keith Richards, why should you bother with anything beyond common guitar tunings?

     There is nothing wrong with knowing what notes you are going to get tuning a guitar neck, but for those of us who think about the guitar as an instrument of infinite possibilities, alternate guitar tunings is a challenge. Every time you use alternate tunings for guitar (or alternate then what you are used to) you open up the possibilities for new sounds and colors. Admittedly a player doesn’t always hit on a good sound, but quite often the new chord forms, inversions, can inspire because of the new sounds produced. Playing something familiar but in a new way can be as an unfamiliar as it is exhilarating.

     And a guitar is one of the few instruments you can try alternate tunings with; a piano doesn’t give you this freedom!

     The simplest alternate tuning for guitar is retuning the low E string down a full step (which is a D); this is known as ‘drop-D tuning’. A player can then use this low D bass note against ‘regular’ fingered chords you’d get in common guitar tunings or for radically different scales. The sound is often times interesting and sometimes inspired. With drop-D tuning you are doing what most players do when they are looking for alternate guitar tunings, you are lowering a string. There are those cases when you might want to raise the tone of a string (or strings) but that can put strain on those strings and your fret board. To avoid too much string snapping (or having to go out and buy new strings every day) you can always tune down then apply a capo a few frets up. Unfortunately the sad fact is that re-tuning strings wears them out quicker then normal use.

     Keith Richards can afford to tune his guitar neck anyway he wishes, he gets all his strings for free!

     The only real problem with alternate tunings for guitar is that they can become addictive. You simply might not want to open this Pandora’s Box, you might never stop in your quest for inversions and ringing tones. But if you feel you have come to an impasse in your playing, or that common guitar tunings leave you playing the same old things-in the same old way-you might just want the challenge that alternate guitar tunings gives you.