Bill Dutcher – Modern Acoustic Guitarist

People often ask about how to get started with playing with altered tunings.  If you Google “alternate tunings” you’ll find a multitude of resources to get started.

Probably the easiest tuning to start with is Drop D.  You simply drop the pitch of your low E-string one whole tone, down to D.  Now when you strum a D chord you can strum all six strings and the result is a nice full timbre that really sounds full.  The thing you have to pay attention to is that any chord shapes in this tuning that use the low E string have to be transposed up two frets.  Once you grab this concept it’s pretty easy.

Some tips on composing in altered tunings:

Sometimes I’ll start twisting tuning knobs until I hear something interesting.  The next step is to locate fingerings for the basic chord families:  Major, Maj7, minor, mi7, Dom7, etc.  Play these shapes and try to locate the scale tones within the shapes, most importantly 3rd’s, b3rd’s, 7th’s and b7th’s.  Once you relate the ‘shape’ with the mood, color or sound of the chord name you’ll have a ‘road map’ in which to start composing.

Next locate the I, IV and V chords, then the ii, iii and vii.  Now you have the diatonic chords for the tuning. 

When I hear players write in altered tunings I tend to hear the I (one) chord as the lowest sounding chord in the progression.  In other words they use the low E strings pitch as the I (one) chord.  A suggestion is to try to play in a different key than the lowest note and save the low note for the IV or V chord….or whatever chord you like.  Remember, the shapes for the chords stay the same, your just shifting things around.  It’s less predictable and sounds more powerful when you play it .

Some tunings I like to use.  All are low to high (left to right)

D-A-D-F#-A-D

D-A-D-G-A-D

D-G-C-G-A-D

A-A-D-E-A-B

C-G-D-G-B-D

B-F#-D-F#-A-D

Now if you really want to screw with things you can start adding partial capo’s to these tunings…But hey!…That’s for next time!