Favourite tuning?

[MechaGodzilla]

The tuning I use in the metal band is now CGCFGD all the time. It is the best (the best, the best, the best)

so it's drop C... but with that weird 2nd string G ?? cool.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Yeah! Having the second interval is great for playing unison lead bits and slightly dissonant chords

[MrNovember]

So I watched an interview with Keith Richards last night:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceWWMfhAvD4

I was intrigued by how he described his 5 string open G tuning, which is apparently a common saying of his:

All you need is 5 strings, 3 notes, 2 hands, and one asshole

Longish story short, I decided to try it out on my resonator, but I didn't want to lose the 6th string, so I tuned it GGDGBG. It's actually super fun to play and rather drone-y with all the Gs. Going to keep it tuned that way for awhile I think.

[BoatRich]

The band I play guitar in is just regular drop C but I’m thinking about switching to DADGAD in C or something similar to get more drones on the high strings with leads. Not quite sure how to find panic chords and dissonant stuff as easily though?

[coldbrightsunlight]

I've got really used to it and dissonance is E Z with the 2nd interval between the F and G strings (G and A in regular DADGAD).


And the Keith Richards open tuning is great fun, I usually do it like you it MN with the two low Gs and it's excellent.

[oscillofuzz]

I've always been the standard tuning guy, with the occasional dropped D thrown in if I really need that open low D instead of 'faking it' with an octaver or using an inversion. But recently I wrote a song/bunch of riffs that demanded (to my ear) some additional droning high D's, so I tuned to EADAAE with a capo on 5th and am enjoying the chord shapes with those additional droning open strings as I riff on the 3 lowest strings. I then realised I could also set up a baritone for this exact same tuning but an octave lower and capo-less with a low A and still have it sound like a guitar (IMO, any note below A @ 55hz starts sounding like it has the timbre of a bass, but that A can still sound like the timbre of a guitar). Might actually do that if I can figure out the right scale length for a low A baritone because 30" is definitely gonna be too long. Hmm...

[Errant Tiger]

Sometime this summer I discovered (as in "probably found on that list of Sonic Youth tunings") FADFAE and swore I would never tune any other way. I forgot, though, and went back to my usuals, and then this week I went back to it and am now once again swearing that I will never tune any other way.

[Chankgeez]

I see what's goin' on here:

FAD.

[Errant Tiger]

I see what's goin' on here:

FAD.

... um?

[Chankgeez]

FAD

[Errant Tiger]

:erm:

FAD

Right, I know that much - I thought I'd evoked some kinda ILF joke thing by mistake...

[Chankgeez]

Just another lame joke on my part.

[Errant Tiger]

:lol:

Just another lame joke on my part.

[VREEEEVROOOOOW]

So these days I almost exclusively tune my guitar to open d minor, though I capo it for some songs, and actually use C#ADFAD on half a song.

However, I've recently discovered that CF♯B♭EAD is the perfect «piano tumbling down a flight of stairs» sound for free improv noise rock.

[niftyprose]

Hello guys, slightly nervous about taking this as the subject of my first non-effect post. I feel a bit like the artist in that early Daniel Clowes comic: "An eagle's quill? Can you *believe* how outre I am?" Nevertheless, here I am plugging Leavitt tuning.

Leavitt was a guitar teacher at Berklee before it was Berklee. He played a regular guitar but had a particular fondness for lap steel, and towards the end of his long career started developing a new tuning that would enable lap players to get jazz voicings without recourse to slants, behind-the-bar bends and of course kneelever retuning systems. Leavitt tuning puts a diminished chord in the bass and sticks the top strings on a couple of wholetone intervals, thus:

C# E G Bb C D

It's kind of the opposite of Fripp's New Standard tuning, which is mostly fifths and stretchy. Simple as it looks, you can get a lot of hip inversions out of Leavitt's basic notes, at the expense of overall range (to spell it out, you don't get much below the D string of a standard-tuned guitar). Leavitt's friend and student Mike Ihde, a helpful guy, has a couple of book-and-CD offerings on the tuning, if anyone thinks "Aha"!

I got into Leavitt because of wanting to play jazz on slide guitar. I'm apparently pretty strange for trying it on a 'normal' guitar, but once you start using Freeze pedals and granular effects the limits it places on conventional licks don't count for much. The main problem for me is that I very often want to drop the bass from C# to C because doing so gives me a major chord on the bottom three strings. I'm looking at installing a Hipshot for that.

Incidentally, going back to the top of this thread, where there was some discussion of Orkney tuning, CGDGCD? The guy in those videos is Steve Baughman, who pretty much invented Orkney tuning (if you can invent a tuning). He has a few lessons on YouTube and will still sell you his earlier 'Power of Claw' video, which introduces clawhammer styles on a couple of tunings including Orkney. PoC is an excellent course, and clawhammer is crying out for reapplication outside of folk. Just sayin'.

NP