I've learned enough about you to know that you didn't do this for my "thanks," but you certainly have it nonetheless! I just re-tuned one of my guitars and will likely just have it properly setup permanently in Open E tuning. Again, my profound gratitude and thanks is yours. (As an aside, it's a wonderful lesson regardless of the song; very thorough and easy to understand!)
Well, I'm not ready for Prime Time yet but I've definitely learned what you've shown here, Paul. Working on properly singing it while playing. Thank you, again!
I'm not understanding your question. Standard Tuning is E A D G B E. Glenn Hansard plays this song with his guitar tuned to E B E G# B E. It's an open E Major chord. One of the benefits of playing in open turnings is that you can fine tune the strings to really lock-in to the key (in this case E Major). Standard tuning is more flexible. If this song had a key change to F Major, for example, the guitar would immediately sound out of tune if we were playing in Open E Alt tuning.