G-G-C-E-A-E • OVERVIEW • Mimics a common tuning of the charango: a small 10-string lute found in Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, and elsewhere in the Andean region. A distant cousin of the guitar, the charango’s strings are paired into 5 ‘courses’ (like a 12-string) – and tuned to cluster within the span of a single […]
• Charango tuning •
• One-Tone Drone (‘Ostrich’) tuning •
D-D-D-D-D-D • OVERVIEW • A ‘one-note drone’ tuning – comprising nothing but D tones. If you ignore octave-scatterings, these ‘monotonal’ arrangements can be classified as ‘trivially repetitive‘: referencing the ‘optimal simplicity’ of the note set (=triviality), and the ‘ever-looping’ sequence of tones (=repetitiveness). However, despite this apparent purity, the tuning’s true magic arises from the […]
• Wind of Change tuning •
D-D-D-A-D-F# • OVERVIEW • A low-droning variety of Open D, featuring a powerful ‘triple D’ across 6-5-4str: meaning that you have to move vertically (i.e. up and down the neck) to generate melodic motion. Famously used by Peter Frampton on Wind of Change (a semitone down) – although he got the idea via browsing George Harrison’s […]
• Pink Moon tuning •
C-G-C-F-C-E • OVERVIEW • A resonant Open C variant, with 1str left at E to create a wide-spread Cmaj11 voicing. Used by enigmatic English folkster Nick Drake for Pink Moon, the opening track of his 1972 album of the same name: capoed at 2fr, and slightly sharp of concert pitch (n.b. lower 2str by 5 […]
• Bağlama (‘Saz’) tuning •
G-G-D-D-A-A • OVERVIEW • The bağlama is a three-course lute of variable neck length, popular in Turkish folk music (n.b. nearby cultures call similar variants the saz, while other local names include kopuz, irisva, balta, and bulgari). Played with a hard cherrywood pick, the frets, often made of fishing line, are moveable – opening up […]
• AirTap! tuning •
F-A-C-F-C-F • OVERVIEW • Used by Montreal acoustic genius Erik Mongrain to facilitate the virtuosic ‘lap-tapping’ techniques of AirTap!, an oldskool viral favourite (uploaded way back in 2006: YouTube’s early days). Like playing piano, bass, & drums on the strings – all at the same time… The interval structure matches our ‘classic’ Gmaj shape […]
• Schizophrenia tuning •
F#-F#-G-G-A-A • OVERVIEW • Highly unorthodox droning triad used by Thurston Moore on Sonic Youth’s Schizophrenia (1987) – a Joy Division-like song that explores the tuning’s strange slacknesses with long, wordless interludes, replete with dreamy harmonics and a slight microtonal spice. Requires a thinner 4str. Contains nothing but three sequential diatonic scale tones, all […]
• Ten Years tuning •
D-E-C-A-D-E • OVERVIEW • One advantage of tuning via spelling is that you will always stumble upon some melodiously counterintuitive combinations. ‘Decade’ is a fantastic example of this, placing a wide middle between narrow outer intervals (‘major & minor 6ths sandwiched by major 2nds’). Take account of the uneven tension profile – e.g. between the super-slack […]
• Iris tuning •
B-D-D-D-D-D • OVERVIEW • Unique droning layout created by John Rzeznik for Iris, the Goo Goo Dolls’ 1998 smash-hit power ballad. Balances purity and dissonance: 5-1str are all tuned to D, while the 6str is taken right down to a superlow B – giving a narrow, crunchy minor 3rd gap between the deepest pair. […]
• Place to Be tuning •
C-G-C-F-G-E • OVERVIEW • Used to give life to the legato-tinged cluster voicings of Nick Drake’s Place to Be – the second track from 1972’s Pink Moon, his third and final album. Almost identical to his tuning for the title track: the only difference being that here, 2str is a full 5 semitones lower – decreasing […]
• Hejira tuning •
C-G-D-F-G-C • OVERVIEW • Joni Mitchell’s setting for the divine arpeggiations of Hejira, released on her 1976 album of the same name. The title derives from an Arabic word (hijra / الهجرة), signifying ‘departure’ or ‘migration’ – particularly the Prophet Muhammad’s journey from Mecca to Medina. Joni came across the term while flicking through an […]
• Zigzag Thirds (Major) tuning •
F-A-C-E-G-B • OVERVIEW • A ‘stack of thirds’, alternating between major and minor (i.e. semitone gaps of ‘4, 3, 4, 3, 4’). Proposed by Greek mathematician Dr. Costas Kyritsis as an ideal landscape for simplifying the shapes of all common diatonic chords – a logical point, given that much of Western harmony is built from […]
• Gothic tuning •
Eb-G-D-A-Bb-C • OVERVIEW • Introduced by Japanese solo star Ichika Nito to explore fresh avenues of his imaginative electric fingerpicking style. With a different tone on each string, it offers up a complex chordal canvas. Only 4str stays familiar from Standard. Try raking through the divine natural harmonics at <12fr>, <7fr>, &<5fr>, and sliding […]
• Ethereal tuning •
D-A-C#-F#-C#-D • OVERVIEW • Introduced by multi-tuning Japanese virtuoso Ichika Nito in 2019. His jagged configuration twists all but the 5str away from Standard – while never taking any of them more than 2 semitones from this starting point. Fantastic for fresh major-key melodies and extended chord shapes. Try teasing out the dissonance of the […]
• Mesopotamian tuning •
B-A-G-D-A-D • OVERVIEW • ‘I once met a mysterious musician from Mesopotamia, who would only play guitar in his local tuning…’ Pattern: 10>10>7>7>5 Harmony: D6(sus4) | 6-5-4-1-5-1 • TUNING TONES • • SOUNDS • The actual music of Baghdad spans a rich variety of sonic and social influences, both ancient and modern. Long renowned as a […]
• New Standard (‘Crafty’) tuning •
C-G-D-A-E-G • OVERVIEW • Robert Fripp, of King Crimson and Brian Eno fame, devised his fifths-based ‘New Standard Tuning’ (NST) in the 1980s – chiefly seeking to open up a broader range of melodic movements. He stacked up four perfect 5ths, completing the tuning with a min. 3rd at the top to balance out the extreme […]
• Overtone Series tuning •
G-B-D-F-G-A • OVERVIEW • My basic setting of overtones 4 to 9 in the harmonic series – if ‘squashed’ to 12-tone equal temperament, they spell out a dominant 9th arpeggio as an ascent-ordered stack of thirds (1-3-5-b7-9). Also see Sethares’ variant: which keeps tension within more sensible bounds by adding a register-jump in the middle (C-E-G-Bb-C-D). […]
• All Major Thirds tuning •
E-G#-C-E-G#-C • OVERVIEW • A ‘regular‘ stack of major 3rds (i.e. 4 semitones separate each string) – forming an augmented triad (1-3-#5) from any of its three notes, regardless of which string you start on. These symmetrical properties arise because our 12-semitone octave divides neatly into 4*3 with no remainder – meaning that sequences of […]
• Open Csus (‘C Modal’) tuning •
C-G-C-G-C-F • OVERVIEW • Csus4 tuning, also known as C ‘Modal’, is the ‘suspended’ variant of the Open C family, with a perfect 4th at the top. This gives each side of the guitar a very different physical feel – unless you re-string, the high end gets tight and loud, while the low end falls looser […]
• Open Cm (‘Wide Minor’) tuning •
C-G-C-G-C-E • OVERVIEW • Open Cm (unlike Open Dm, Gm, and Em) doesn’t really match with any of our familiar Standard-tuned minor shapes (it’s closest to the ‘x-x-0-2-3-1’ Dm chord – or more precisely, it’s a ‘Dm shape in Drop D, then dropping everything 2 semitones’). Another ‘cross-note’ tuning – as you can easily ‘cross-over’ […]
