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 DADGAD lying only one twist away (2str -2). As per Acoustic Guitarist, the tuning “is used across a number of genres, but tends to find its home in…fingerstyle, folk-rock, and Celtic music”.

 

Excellent for adding power and volume to winding, weaving melodic lines (e.g. try rooting your scale shapes at 5str 5fr, and swapping out whichever tones you can for the corresponding open string notes: particularly effective in the D Ionian, Dorian, and Mixolydian modes, all three of which contain the tuning’s four open tones) – and for giving a new shuffle to familiar keys (e.g. ‘rootless C’: all its tones are in the C Major scale, but C itself is not present).

Pattern: 7>5>5>4>3

Harmony: D6(sus4) | 1-5-1-4-6-1

• TUNING TONES •

• SOUNDS •

Many guitarists have double-dropped over time: classic examples of ‘DDD’ in action include Lindsey Buckingham/Fleetwood Mac (The Chain), Jimmy Page/Led Zeppelin (Going to California), Doobie Brothers (Black Water), Ramblin’ Jack Elliot (If I Were a Carpenter), and Robbie Krieger/The Doors (The End: nudged about a quarter-tone flat) – as well as many Neil Young tracks (e.g. Cinnamon Girl, Cortez the Killer, & Don’t Let it Bring You Down: see a more extensive list from HyperRust).

 

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• The End (Apocalypse Now) – The Doors (1979):

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“The killer awoke before dawn,
He put his boots on,
He took a face from the ancient gallery,
And he walked on down the hall…“

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It has long enjoyed popularity amongst acoustic fingerpickers – steel-string users include Nick Drake (Bryter Layter), Michael Hedges (Running Blind), John Renbourn (Rosslyn), and Eric Johnson (Song for George). And, in the nylon-string world, composer Andrew York (Sunburst Jubilation). Other modern-era explorers include Radiohead (Jigsaw Falling Into Place), Elliott Smith (Roman Candle, Satellite, No Name #5 -2), Luke Brindley (Improv), and The Tea Party (The Messenger: on 12-string).

 

Double Drop D’s distinctive high-end also hints at another captivating layout: E-A-D-G-B-D (i.e. just drop the high E1str down to D) – sometimes known as ‘Zulu tuning‘. As highlighted by reader Daniel Maistrow in Nov 2024, “Zulu tuning, used by Maskandi musicians and the late Johnny Clegg, would be a great addition to the list. Here’s a good example [Inkunzi Ayihlabi Ngokumisa]: guitarist Sipho Mchunu is just vamping on Dmaj and Cmaj. And here it is again [at the start of a Johnny Clegg documentary]”.

 

n.b. Also see my Menu writeups for other ‘triple-D’ tunings (e.g. Dmaj, Dmin, Dsus, Gmaj, Gmin, Gsus, and Zen Drone) – as well as two ‘quadruple-D’ layouts (Papa-Papa and Wind of Change), one ‘quintuple-D’ (Iris), and one with nothing but six D tones (Ostrich).

 

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• Song for George – Eric Johnson (2018):

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“Any time I can get away with an open string, it affords me a couple of things: It keeps the glissando of the lick going, and it gives you a chance to get to another part of the fretboard – and it also has a cool sound! [It] gives you a totally different freedom to create the voicing you want…” (Eric Johnson)

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• NUMBERS •

	6str	5str	4str	3str	2str	1str
Note	D	A	D	G	B	D
Alteration	-2	0	0	0	0	-2
Tension (%)	-21	0	0	0	0	-21
Freq. (Hz)	73	110	147	196	247	294
Pattern (>)	7	5	5	4	3	–
Semitones	0	7	12	17	21	26
Intervals	1	5	1	4	6	1

• See my Tunings Megatable for further such nerdery: more numbers, intervallic relations, comparative methods, etc. And to any genuine vibratory scientists reading: please critique my DIY analysis!

• RELATED •

—Associated tunings: proximities of shape, concept, context, etc…

• Drop D (this with 1str +2): only one string slackened
• Icarus (this with 1str -2): another ‘double drop’ layout
• Open Dsus (this with 2str -2): the classic DADGAD

• MORE INFO •

—Further learnings: sources, readings, lessons, other onward links…

• Edge-drop tunings: as well as ‘doubling’ the 6str D-drop onto 1str, why not experiment by ‘flipping’ it to 1str only (e.g. EADGBD)? Try out the ‘double-drop’ and ‘high-drop’ version of the other lowered-6str tunings – such as ‘Neon’ Drop C and ‘Slack Thwack’ Drop A (also see Ali Farka Touré’s ‘raised-G’ arrangement, and the meta-titled ‘Sharp-Edge C’ tuning [C#-E-D-G-E-C#] from my Alpha-melodic word games article)
• The End: fittingly, this is the very last paragraph I have left to complete before all 100 Menu tunings go live…so why not delve further into an absolute DDD classic – The Doors’ The End – via Tom Taylor’s Far Out feature (explaining how it ended up in the opening of Apocalypse Now: “Then, as if by magic, some mystic figures of fate had left a pile of records on the bin adjacent to the scrapped footage. One album was The Doors’ classic 1967 self-titled record. Perhaps most bizarrely of all, the introduction…was borne from a flippant [Coppola] remark: ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if we took a song called ‘The End’ and put it at the beginning’?), and also a Daily Beast article from drummer John Densmore on why he still refuses all ad-music requests (“To me, rock’n’roll is sacred…I said no to Cadillac, by vetoing the idea of a Doors song becoming the soundtrack to encourage folks to buy cruisemobiles [n.b. also see Pink Moon]. For all those years a tradition has been building…the idea that this music means something. And if compromised, its power could be lessened. We need to keep the flame burning…“)

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Header image: Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now’s opening scene