Steps to Alternate Tuning
Alternate tunings are a great way to inspire new musical thoughts and patterns. The common sounds and fretboard patterns that you play are unique to you, they can become repetitive at times and sometimes hard to shake. Alternate tunings for your guitar are a great way to spark inspiration and new ideas in your playing.
They can unleash a whole new aspect to playing guitar. The good points are that it forces you to play outside the realms of your common style, and physically impossible chords can now be played with ease. Tuning your guitar to these alternate setups with not allow you to play more or different notes, it simply moves the existing positions of notes to different positions on your fretboard. However, the downside to this is the fact that a new tuning pattern means you have to re-learn everything as different notes.
Experience in alternating tunings will give you a great concept of notes and give you the edge to playing by ear. This is because rather than consistently relying on physical note positions you are forced to play them by sound.
The following alternate tuning guide gives you all you need to explore the new possibilities on your own guitar.
You can figure out how to tune your guitar to these configurations yourself by remembering the below note setup.
Musical notes go from A to G with semitones between each notes other than B to C and E to F. The layout is A, A#, B, C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, and back to A (next octave).
This example shows this structure on a guitar neck. From there, you should be able to work out where to tune your strings from for all following tuning configs.
We’ll start simple:
Drop D Tuning
DADGBE
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This is similar to standard tuning, the only difference being the 6th string is tuned down a note to D.
Drop D tuning is popular among rock/metal songs, it creates a deep, heavy sound, and can allow powerchords to be played on one fret with one finger.
Tuning from standard:
- Tune 6th string down one tone(note) to D (tune to 4th string).
D Modal Tuning Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
DADGAD
Primarily used in Celtic music, this tuning is called the D Modal tuning, played open it is a D suspended 4th chord, meaning it is neither major nor minor. Jimmi Page of Led Zeppelin used this tuning in their song Kashmir.
Tuning from standard:
- Tune the 6th string down one tone to D (tune to 4th string).
- Tune the 2nd string down one tone to A (tune to 5th string).
- Tune the 1st string down one tone to D (tune to 4th string).
Open D Tuning
DADF#AD
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Open D tuning is developed from the 3 triad notes of the D Major chord. When openly strummed it sounds a D Major chord, this allows any Major chord to be played by barring (holding all strings down on a single fret) the desired fret.
Tuning from standard:
- Tune the 6th string down one tone to D (tune to 4th string).
- Tune the 3rd string down one semitone to F#(sharp) (tune to fret 4 of 4th string).
- Tune the 2nd string down one tone to A (tune to 5th string).
- Tune the 1st string down one tone to D (tune to 4th string).
Open G Tuning
DGDGBD
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Open G tuning is tuned like all open tunings, where playing all strings openly will play the chord (In this case, the G maj chord). This allows any Major chord to be played by barring (holding all strings down on a single fret) the desired fret.
Tuning from standard:
- Tune the 6th string down one tone to D (tune to 4th string).
- Tune the 5th string down one tone to G (tune to 3rd string).
- Tune the 1st string down one tone to D (tune to 4th string).
Open C Tuning
CGCGCE
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Open C tuning is tuned like all open tunings, where playing all strings openly will play the chord (In this case, the C maj chord). This allows any Major chord to be played by barring all strings on the desired fret.
Tuning from standard:
- Tune the 6th string down two tones to C (tune to 3rd fret of 5th string).
- Tune the 5th string down one tone to G (tune to 3rd string).
- Tune the 4th string down one tone to C (tune to 6th string).
- Tune the 2nd string up one tone to C (tune to 4th string).
Low C Tuning
CGDGAD
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Low C tuning is another fairly common tuning, normally used in Celtic music. Here is how you tune to Low C.
Tuning from standard:
- Tune the 6th string down two tones to C (tune to 3rd fret of 5th string).
- Tune the 5th string down one tone to G (tune to 3rd string).
- Tune the 2nd string down one tone to A (tune to 2nd fret of 3rd string).
- Tune the 1st string down one tone to D (tune to 4th string).
So this was a simple guide to some common alternate guitar tunings, in later lessons for my subscribers I will give them a free alternate guitar tuning chart for reference to loads of tuning configurations.