A-A-D-G-B-E • OVERVIEW • Use the ‘slack thwack’ to access the bass guitar register in your lead playing (well, all but the very lowest 5 tones of it). Tuning the 6str right down to A – downwards a perfect 5th – will likely bring a strange buzz…but opens up some unique textures and grooves. Some […]
• Drop A (‘Slack Thwack’) tuning •
• Drop D tuning •
D-A-D-G-B-E • OVERVIEW • Probably the first altered tuning you ever learned. Easy to remember, simple to reach from Standard, and innately fun to jam in across a countless range of genres. Notably, 6-5-4str form a ‘straight line’ power chord, with the slackness of the 6str bringing subtle pitch instabilities when strummed hard (looser, lower […]
• Icarus tuning •
D-A-D-G-B-C • OVERVIEW • Brings a mystical, floating resonance, resulting from the ‘clustered’ presence of four adjacent diatonic scale tones (4-5-6-b7 on 3-5-2-1str). Its intervals get progressively narrower as you rise in pitch (7>5>5>4>1), ending with a minor 2nd (2>1str) – a rare feature in the wide world of altered tuning (also see Ethereal, Gothic, […]
• Low Drop C tuning •
C-G-C-F-A-D • OVERVIEW • The same interval pattern as Drop D, but everything is moved down two further semitones. Brings a loose, chaotic, imperfect texture: total string tension is lowered by around 25% – equivalent to a ~40lb/18kg drop on a steel-string acoustic (an instrument on which EADGBE tension can exceed 180lb/82kg…hence you need the […]
• Drop C (‘Neon’) tuning •
C-A-D-G-B-E • OVERVIEW • Dropping the 6str down four frets is simple – but will give you a different perspective on how the other open-string tones can fit together. Swapping the low E to a low C turns EADGBE’s somewhat vacant-sounding Em7(add11) open chord into a sultry, jazz-laden Cmaj9(13) voicing. This drop makes it significantly […]
• Double Drop D (‘DDD’) tuning •
D-A-D-G-B-D • OVERVIEW • ‘Double-dropping’ both the top and bottom strings to D provides you with strum-friendly open drone tones, while leaving the middle four strings intact from Standard. Like Open D, 6-5-4str form a straight-line power chord (D-A-D), and like Open G, the 3-2-1str give a G major triad (G-B-D) – with the famous […]
