Easy Chords in Open D Tuning - Altered Tuning Guitar Lesson 

Here is an easy yet incredibly effective way to create some beautiful sounding chord progressions using Open D Tuning. Open D tuning (also named D vestapol tuning) is one of the first altered tunings (i.e. anything other than standard tuning) that I like to present to my students. Another key tuning is Drop D, which you can find out more about in my lesson (link below):
Drop D Guitar Lesson - • How to play Guitar in ...
Open D has us tuning some of the guitar strings lower so that the sound of the open strings is a D major chord (hence the name open D).
A D major chord contains a D, F#, and A. On that basis we tune the guitar strings in the following way:
6(E): D
5(A): A
4(D): D
3(G): F#
2(B): A
1(E): D
This tuning is preferable to open E tuning which would require strings 5, 4 and 3 to be tuned higher (at the risk of breaking strings!)
There are a lot of possibilities with this tuning but I wanted to present an approach using only two chord grips. We will be using diatonic chords in the key of D major. Each chord shape references its root note on string 6 which will be fretted with finger 2 and another finger (either 1 or 3) will grab the corresponding 3rd of the given chord on string 3. In the case of a major chord (the I, IV, and V chords) there will be a major third in the same fret as the root note. For a minor or diminished chord (the ii, iii, vi, and viib5) there is a minor third one fret lower than the root note.
Major Third Interval Lesson - • Learn Fretboard Shapes...
Minor Third Interval Lesson - • The minor third interv...
Fretting just two notes gives some beautiful colour to otherwise standard diatonic chords.
★ FREE Fretboard Mastery eBook: bit.ly/3G0Gco9 ★
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WHO AM I?
Hey! I’m Ry Naylor, a British-born guitar instructor and professional transcriber based in the south of France.
You’ll find loads of song lessons in my archives, but my focus more recently has been to share my passion for the benefits of music theory when learning guitar in a fun, visual and accessible way. You will find more instructional content on my Instagram and Pinterest pages. If you like what I do please help support my work on Patreon or check out my premium guitar video courses in my online school.
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