Brilliant comment at the end and so very true. Put the guitar in a strange tuning and just start exploring. That’s how I started almost sixty years ago. I played for nine months in an open “A” tuning before I came across a guy who showed me what standard tuning was. I thought he was crazy. LOL
@@ClichéGuevara-2814 Those are relatively common open tunings, though, along with open E and A. Open D is pretty common (first in the video), too, especially for disciples of Elmore James and the Delta Blues masters. But I think Joni Mitchell used open D in unique ways.
I love Fripp's tuning because I come to the guitar from the piano/keyboard and it makes so much sense in terms of layout. I would have had a much easier time learning guitar had I started with new standard tuning. It would have sucked for learning other people's music, but great for exploring compositional ideas of your own (Sweet Child 'O Mine sounded hilariously like something from Larks Tongue in Aspic and not GNR). I also really liked Joni Mitchell's tuning too. BTW that Taylor sounded beautiful.
I use a LOT of alternate tunings (mainly open tunings). But my faves are DADF#AD (Open D), DADGAD (Dadgad), CGCGCE (Open C), DADF#BE (D6/9, I think?), EADEBE (Idk if this tuning has a name, but its a tuning I picked up from Ed Sheeran), and my all time favorite, DADEAD. Idk, I just love alt tunings.
Alternative tunings are great! So inspiring 😎👍 My fretless bass is tuned in fifths (low A, E, B, F#), my acoustic has the Nick Drake tuning, and an electric uses Fripp's New Standard Tuning but I'm at a half step lower, as that is literally a lifesaver on your high string! 🤣🤣🤣 Fifths isn't too difficult to get your head around, people have used it for ages when playing drop-D for instance 😉 I was used to it already anyway, as I also play cello and Chapman Stick...
The weirdest tuning I’ve ever heard was from the Potent Pairings - Sonic Youth video, I still have no idea how they get those tunings but they sound awesome
@@ph476 True, that's also important. But when you're using tuning with all 6 strings set to the same note and octave, for example, it's one helluva risk trying to tune thick strings up to that without breaking.
Kyle Tekaucic why would you even use bigger strings if they’re all gonna be tuned to the same not. Just get 6 high E or maybe use an E B G G G and tune them all to the same note so they feel a little thicker.
This is possibly my favorite Reverb video ever. I honestly don’t remember how I got into alternate tunings (I think just fiddling with the tuning heads and growing up on so much blues 🤷🏼♂️), but I’ve found more and more of my very favorite musicians over the years have gone down this road. Keef, of course, Nick Drake and Joni Mitchell as you mention here, Richie Havens. No shortage of these sorts of pure explorers, and as Joe touches on, there’s something very *essential* (in every meaning of the word) to music in just stepping into the unknown and being led. Love it, love it, love it! 😄❤️
great video, vestapol (D maj), cross string (D min), and the Drake tunings are in my top 5 tunings. My favorite however, is Guy Clark's tuning. Capo every string on the 2nd fret, except the low E. This allows you to play drop D structures (in E). What makes it better than drop D (besides not having to actually touch your tuning pegs), is being able to still play open G, as well as every barre chord.
Skip James is one of the great Delta Blues singers/guitarists/pianists ever, fellow bluesman. Sounded like dude went into Hard Time Killing Floor Blues for a second there.
Fripp's NST uniquely makes everything SOUND orchestral,- very "pretty". Surprised it hasn't been more widely embraced by the ambient crowd, though as demonstrated, you do have to reconfigure the nut, truss rod, etc,- and use non standard string gauges.You can achieve similar effects with pedals, but it does help you to see and write in a different way.Also as indicated, not easy to adapt to standard "rock",; just seems adverse to the necessary rough edges.One of the best examples of this done successfully is , no doubt, Fripp's work on Bowie's Heroes & Scary Monsters LP's.Eye opening, unique in structure and tone( courtesy , supposedly of the rare Buzzaround Fuzz- very distinctive & nasty).Still ahead of it's time today.
New Standard Tuning is awesome! I used it for a year and expanded my sound a lot. Then I switched a "mirror" tuning (CGDADG) and that symmetry is quite interesting too.
I've been using alternate tunings for about 30 years (on acoustic), but I still picked up some helpful insights here. Very well done. Joe, consider linking up with TrueFire or a similar company to do a more extended course on this topic (yes, I'll look on the Reverb blog for more). BTW, top-quality A/V work on the part of the Reverb media team. -Tom
ive been playing ADADG on my 5 string bass, and it has this openess and feels like the assbackwards cousin of dadgad. its a drop tuning too so i can play with people in A or D and just feel exploitative. big thing too, any lower than A and you start getting extra tones.
Quick question: after how many years of guitar education would you expect a student to find this useful? After just 1.5 years music school, this sounds way above my head.
I would say that it differs from student to student. But part of the point of this lesson, is that even if the language of it is above your head, it may still be worth exploring simply for the different sounds and colors you can achieve. I encourage you to keep working on whatever you are currently working on with your instrument, and at some point, take a chance on an open tuning :)
one alternate tuning that I like is EAEGBE, just taking the D string and tuning it up a whole step. it's not a tuning that anybody that I know plays, I just think it's a sweet one, makes sus2/add9 voicings very accessible while still making more regular voicings a breeze :+) also minor 2nds and lydian chords like C lydian (regular Cmaj shape)
+Thee Turkey DADGAD begets the "Nick Drake" tuning. Same intervals but all strings down one full step - CGCFGC, as opposed to DADGAD. DADGAD is relatively common (and fun), while Nick's tuning is uncommon. Pierre Ben Susann, the great French acoustic artist, plays only in DADGAD. There are others, also. Page used it frequently and to great effect.
@@larrygeetar9309 DADGAD is close to Nick Drake tuning, though the B and high e strings are tuned to C and E respectively, which gives a more harmonically complex chord, rather than DADGAD which is basically tonics, 5ths and 4th stacked on top of each other giving, admittedly similar intervals to NDT, though slightly more obvious direction than NDT, as well as more places to go, hence its greater use in a wide variety of music. Interesting idea that DADGAD begets NDT. I can certainely see why it would, though I think this might just be coincidence as Nick Drake's various tunings can be more clearly understood as attempts to voice chords in the same (quite clustered) ways his mother, Molly Drake, played on piano.
Bit late to this, but thanks for this. Oddly I play in open F# a lot of the time (because I sing in F#) but had no idea that Curtis Mayfield used it. Big fan of the man.
You mentioned about the need to have the guitar setup for a tuning. It would have been nice to have gotten a hint of what that might entail. Thanks! Nice stuff.
Every guitar is a little different, so you'd want to take it to a luthier and ask them about adjusting neck tension and intonation for the string gauge and tuning. Thanks for watching!
Anytime I try to play with a slide, everyone in the room including myself vomits nearly instantaneously due to my inducing terrible sea sickness. It’s a gift.
Great lesson, of course Open G by Keith Richards and Jimmy Page does so much! Stephen Stills has a couple of interesting tunings and Dylan on Blonde on Blonde did Drop C, low E string tuned to C.
I think that open minor tuning is an excellent idea and I don't know why it isn't more common, because until today I had never given it any thought, and the more I think of it the better the idea sounds. To be able to swap between major and minor chords, and even sus chords with 1 finger and 1 or 2 frets is much easier than attempting to finger a minor chord in open major chord, because to be perfectly honest I don't know how to play a minor chord in open tuning. I know that open minor tuning probably makes slide guitar that bit more difficult but we can't have everything can we? Besides, it's still easier than playing slide in regular tuning. What a revelation open minor tuning is !! 😎👍
Great job! Very enjoyable video! One word of caution to anyone new to open tunings. When re-tuning from open G back to standard, tighten the high E string VERY CAREFULLY! If you go too fast they break!
You didn’t explain Nick Drake’s tuning CGCFCE the C’s are not the same and what diameter strings are you using ! This is very important ! I have been using alternative tunings for over 50 years . Thank you 🙏❤️🎶
Nick Drake was the obvious choice here, amazing artist. Joni Mitchell used lots of open tunings to make her chord changes a lot easier, quite clever, and saved a lot of stretching. Surprised no mention of the OG Davey Graham and his DADGAD, stolen by Page. Or john Martyn, who had some unique tunings.
Every time I think of open tunings I mainly think of Delta Blues guitarists like Robert Johnson, Blind Blake, and Ry Cooder, and Elmore James and Johnny Winter. But when it comes to other alternative tunings, the first person I think about that I believe could have been included is Johnny Rzeznik of The Goo Goo Dolls. Although most wouldn’t consider him a guitarist more than he is a singer-songwriter, I’ve read that a lot of his material had been recorded using many various and unorthodox guitar tunings, even their most famous song “Iris”. Another guitarist I believe should have been included is Jimmy Page. Songs like “The Rain Song”, “Kashmir”, “Traveling Riverside Blues”, “In My Time of Dying”, “Bron Yr Stomp” had utilized different and unorthodox open tunings
DADGAd /Dsus4/ Celtic tuning should be mentioned as is crucial to many traditional instrument tunings around the globe, Irish (Celtic in general), Greek (or Balkan in general), Turkish, Arabic, Middle Eastern, Oriental & Eastern European traditional & folk music in all ways as well as modern up to day country & folk music, African, Afro beat etc. Being an alternate tuning player for years it's the only one I find myself still using. It is extremely balanced and derives from God Apollo's tuning of Lyre, EABE, DGAD. etc. What I consider most about alternate tunings is being able to cover as many musical genres as possible. I 've ended to-> Standard & Variations (etc single or double dropped D), DADGAD, DADFAD, CGCGCE. Out of open Major tunings the most common is Open G aka Spanish DGDGBD besides blues/ folk/ country/ rnr even used in traditional instruments such the spanish and the melodic 7-string Russian guitar, then DADF#AD (plus the aforementioned CGCGCE, great for covering Videogame and movie themes at times in the key of C). Some specialties are EAEABE (Celtic tone up), EADEBE, DADAAD (great for droning & soloing, sliding etc), EADGCF (All-4ths), DADGCF (All-4ths variant), CGCGCD. I have only taken under consideration alternate tunings that apply well to normal gauge strings without the risk of string snapping or pushing the neck too hard. I hope this is of some help and doesn't disencourage anybody from trying any alternate tuning out! P.S. I forgot to mention a couple of legendary DADGAD players- Rory Gallagher & Jimmy Page, Jimmy Page & Rory Gallagher. Not to mention the countless Irish or American Folk Folks, as well as the Balkans ones! There are also all those great modern or older Dark Blues & Country fellows playing the atmospheric Skip James Tuning. Cheers!
It's nice to have something like the Roland vg-99 or later units. You can just set up different tunings on a modeled guitar patch. No guitar setup gymnastics to go through. I hear Joni used one of these so she didn't have to change guitars for every song!!! Also, I understand the modeled guitar sounds leave something to be desired, but you can just use this for experimentation till you find the tunings YOU can utilize and have another guitar setup for that.😁😎
The obvious alternative to the open D tuning is DADGAD. I've played in this tuning for decades. Another interesting one that I've played a handful of songs in over the years is one that I learned from Martin Carthy. It's another low C tuning...CGCDGA. I'm not sure if this is that tuning in this clip, but it sounds like it. If you're not familiar with Martin Carthy, he was an important figure in the British folk revival of the 60s. He's worth checking out. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9Aj_cEP-PdA.html
if you're tuning down to open c get some heavier strings. more tension will remove the rattling of the strings. for nst, you'll need a specific set of strings, i believe there is a list on wikipedia for what gauges you need to buy for each string to properly tune. for both, after getting the right string gauge you'll have to do a proper set up of the truss rod and intonate the bridge saddles (acoustics typically can't adjust bridge saddles so you may need a new bridge if it sounds too out of tune)
@@navvmalav I'm aware of the different string gauges. I'm wondering what else can or needs to be done to accomplish a proper sound without hurting my instruments (my acoustic has 13-56 and doesn't have a truss adjustment, we may just not tune to c)
I think probably some form of reinforcing the neck, you could also in theory fork out a lotta money for a legit Guitar Ensemble Course as well as a custom Guitar Craft acoustic, but it's predictably costly.
I stick to standard and learn all the modes. CAGED systems(Major and Minor) was built around Standard. These Alternative tunings are great for creating but you limit your self to one major and minor key.
Good video, but missed opportunity. If you're gonna talk about Joni Mitchell, I have trouble understanding associating her with a very generic, widely used open D tuning, rather than her most distinctive and most interestingly useful tuning, in Coyote for example: C G D F C E. It's amazing and rich and forces a person to think and hear differently.
Harpo Marx learned to play the harp without it being tuned correctly. That’s right the harp wasn’t tuned! He also took one lesson from a proper teacher of the harp when he had enough money to pay a teacher. The teacher asked him to play something on the harp and after listening to Harpo play the teacher said that he couldn’t teach Harpo anything more so that was the beginning and end o Harpo Marx’s music lesson. He found the harp in the closet , it belonged to his grandmother ! Listen to Harpo play on RU-vid ! Thank you 🙏❤️🎶😎
