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As per request, I thought I would start this thread..basically any discussion about alternate tunings on guitar or bass can come here

I posted a list of the tunings I've used over the years in another thread...I'll try to scrounge that up again..but in the mean-time... discuss!

HERE IS ALIST OF THE MOST IMPORTANT TUNINGS IN THE HISTORY OF MUSIC

Aenstandard DADAAE
Shortscale Baritone BF#BB
Baritone "pushing it pretty herd there, fella" AEAA

AenBass DADD
The Crow DADGGD

For guitar (I don't use enough tunings on bass to warrant a list - just E Standard and Drop D)

My most frequently used tunings:
1. E Standard
2. Eb Standard
3. C# Standard

My occasionally used tunings:
1. Drop C
2. Drop C#
3. Drop D
4. P4

P4's ok, but I don't care enough to use it often. I really don't like drop tunings but my band plays in them so I have to. They aren't in my frequently used list though because I'll usually write our songs in a standard tuning then just muck it up for a drop tuning for the group to play. I don't use anything else unless I want to learn a specific song enough to bother changing tuning (if it can just be transposed though I'll do that instead of changing tuning).

As for me, I never use altered tunings on electric (except maybe Eb standard on ocassion), but I always, ALWAYS use alternate tunings on acoustic, because I just dont think my acoustic sounds that good in standard.

I don't think I can possibly list all of them, or even remember most of them..but lately I've been in some kind of dropped tuning in the key of C

I've never understood why songs will be in "drop D" when they're just tuning the 6th string down, and maybe the song doesn't even touch the 6th string, or doesn't use the open 6th string to get that low D. Explain?

mathias wrote:I've never understood why songs will be in "drop D" when they're just tuning the 6th string down, and maybe the song doesn't even touch the 6th string, or doesn't use the open 6th string to get that low D. Explain?

Band's that use drop tunings tend to leave the guitars in that tuning even if a song isn't making use of it. If you're seeing a song in drop d that isn't using that low string that may be why. Playing in a drop tuning does what any other tuning does, it opens up different chords, or simplifies fingerings, although you may lose some others in the process.

e|-
B|-
G|-5
D|-5
A|-3
D|-3

Chords such as this ^ would be very difficult in a standard tuning - especially when playing at a fast rate. So, it's a matter of deciding what you want to play and using what you need to use to play it. I don't particularly like drop tunings, but they have their place.

mathias wrote:I've never understood why songs will be in "drop D" when they're just tuning the 6th string down, and maybe the song doesn't even touch the 6th string, or doesn't use the open 6th string to get that low D. Explain?

cause it sounds so heavy, bro. /parody

Laziness. Why fret power chords when you can just barre them?

I believe it came from blues musicians who were playing slide/bottleneck guitar. Incidentally, it was popularized in a rock/metal context by original Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi after he lost a couple of fingertips in an industrial accident and needed to decrease the tension of that fatty low E string. Now people often rely it to sound heavy as a superficial way to compensate for a lack of originality.

I've been playing in EBBGCE lately. I like to let the bottom 2/3 strings drone while I'm playing some kind of arpeggio riff or chord progression on the higher strings. You can also bust out some barred jugga-jigga-wugga riffs if you like(hey, it works in the right context).

It's all about that D standard. Or, occasionally, I tune my bass in GGCF with an octave difference between the low G and the high(er) G.

I can see that making sense. The drop D thing seemed like an annoyance when I bought the SRV songbook. I refused to tune down my E and then had to make the mental jump to where the note really was whenever the song hit the 6th string. I couldn't see a reason for it, and the chords ignore the changed string like it is the same note, which was weird.

I can see the point of tuning, say, open D or open G for acoustic guitar. That's a nice way to be able to accompany yourself while singing, or while others are playing, and you can focus on other parts of the song, or play slide, or whatever.

I agree with unownunown, the B in standard tuning is silly, but I get the logic behind it with the half step in there. It'd be nice if everything was tuned to fourths, but that's not convenient.

the cool things for me about alternate tunings are 1) drones and 2) hammer-ons/pull-offs/chords that aren't available in standard tuning. drones kind of speak for themselves. this is a nice thing about open G and (particularly) open D/open D variants for non-slide applications, you've always got a tonic or fifth going in there somewhere if you leave a top or bottom string ringing/unstopped. some good tunings for this include (low to high):

DGDGBD yer typical open G
DGDGBE leave the high string normal and you can play regular stuff on the top 3 strings
DADAAD Stills/Young drone tuning as used on "Bluebird" and "Judy Blue Eyes"
DADADD alternate of Stills tuning i use sometimes

Kevin Shields uses droney open tunings a lot in MBV...some easily audible examples are "Soon" and "What You Want."

for hammer-ons and pull-offs my favorite tuning is DADGAD, the best application of which can be found in the playing of Richard Thompson. you can have a freaking festival hammering and bending in the first position in the keys of D/G/A wandering back and forth between Britain, Asia Minor, and Louisiana. this tuning and variants with one or another note dropped or raised (e.g. the Em6/9 tuning David Crosby uses EBDGAD) are also great for voicing unusual polychords; Joni Mitchell's whole thing post-Blue is based on exploiting the harmonic possibilities of alternate tunings.

why do people leave that low D string dropped when they aren't playing in D? simple...when that D string is dropped, if you barre straight across the bottom three strings = POWER CHORD

whenever you think about an alternate tuning, look at the chord shapes created by the notes that moved.

All of my stuff stays grounded in D standard (DGCFAD.) I started doing this when I was 15 and never looked back. It annoys the hell out of anyone playing in standard who tries to follow my fingers.

In my one band, The Ciem Show, in which I primarily play bass, the two tunings that I switch between are CGCF, of BGCF.
The one guitarist switches between CGCFAD, BGCFAD, and BEADGBE (for his 7 string.)
The other, who plays an extended scale 8 string, tunes his either BGBGCFAD, BGCGCFAD, or CGCGCFAD, with the strings in bold being in the bass octave and the rest in guitar.

As you can guess, it can be a clusterfuck when organizing parts/sheet music.

f# f# f# f# b e

snipelfritz wrote:

mathias wrote:I've never understood why songs will be in "drop D" when they're just tuning the 6th string down, and maybe the song doesn't even touch the 6th string, or doesn't use the open 6th string to get that low D. Explain?

cause it sounds so heavy, bro. /parody

Laziness. Why fret power chords when you can just barre them?

I believe it came from blues musicians who were playing slide/bottleneck guitar. Incidentally, it was popularized in a rock/metal context by original Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi after he lost a couple of fingertips in an industrial accident and needed to decrease the tension of that fatty low E string. Now people often rely it to sound heavy as a superficial way to compensate for a lack of originality.

I've been playing in EBBGCE lately. I like to let the bottom 2/3 strings drone while I'm playing some kind of arpeggio riff or chord progression on the higher strings. You can also bust out some barred jugga-jigga-wugga riffs if you like(hey, it works in the right context).

I respectfully disagree. If you want to sound heavy sans originality nowadays, you have to go to at least Drop B.
But on the reals, saying that tuning "drop" is lazy, to me, is kind of jank. It has it's advantages and disadvantages just like any other tuning.

Also, I really have nothing to add, as my guitars never venture far from standard (because I'm a terrible person).

My covers band plays mostly in drop-D or drop-C, so I usually leave my 5-string in ADADG and my 4-string in CGCG.

As for guitar, I like playing in totally fucked up tunings that sound dissonant and awful. Like EBbEbGBE, which is based on a chord I ripped off the Deftones.
I also have a crappy old strat copy that is only strung with 5 strings (I removed the high e saddle altogether) and I usually leave it tuned for doomy stuff AADGC. The two A's are tuned to unison, not octaves. As was said above, it lets out some evil drones when you do arpeggios.

at the moment:
D-A-D-G
C-G-D-A

for the Gretsch G5265
C-G-C-F-A-D
think of baritone guitar, but almost one octave lower.