E-A-E-A-C^#-E

• OVERVIEW •

Matches the structure of a Standard-tuned Amaj shape (‘0-0-2-2-2-0’). Open A is like Open G’s ‘electric counterpart’ – it has the same interval sequence, but everything is raised up a whole tone (electric strings are thinner, so can go higher). Also popular amongst acoustic bluesmen of the pre-amplified era, who often wound their strings as tight as possible to maximise volume amidst the noise and chaos of late-night juke joints.

 

The Open A/G shape presents a more ambiguous resonance than the other ‘main’ maj-chord tuning pattern (‘Vestapol’ = Open D/E) – as its major triad is arranged in ‘inverted’ fashion, with the 5th (D) in the bass rather than the A root (which is on 5str). The 6-5-4-3str bring droning depth and power, while the more clustered 3-2-1str allow for close-voiced chords. The general ‘5>7>5>4>3’ pattern is sometimes known as ‘Spanish’ tuning in North America (but not Spain) – while Hawaiian kī hō’alu (‘slack-key’) artists call the Open G transposition ‘Taro Patch’.

 

Also: Try adding some microtonal spice to the sound by slightly flattening the 2str C#: drop it 14 cents to match the pure-tuned major 3rd of the harmonic series (something many guitarists seem to do subconsciously – similar to how choirs that sing with no 12-tet pitch reference tone tend to drift towards ‘Pythagorean’ intonation). See more in my Open G writeup.

Pattern: 5>7>5>4>3

Harmony: Amaj | 5-1-5-1-3-5

• TUNING TONES •

• SOUNDS •

Countless uses throughout blues history, covering a range of nearby transpositions – e.g. John Lee Hooker (Boogie Chillen’, Down Child, Bottle Up and Go, Leave My Wife Alone), Howlin’ Wolf (Little Red Rooster), Johnny Winter (Mean Town Blues), and Eric Clapton with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers (Lonely Years).

 

Robert Johnson turned to the Open A interval pattern for several songs, although we still aren’t sure of his exact capos vs. transpositions: e.g. Cross Road Blues, Come On in My Kitchen, Stop Breaking Down Blues, Traveling Riverside Blues, and Stones in My Passway – as well as Terraplane Blues & Milkcow’s Calf Blues (both of which just copy the Passway guitar part with minor tweaks…or vice versa: we don’t know which of these tracks came first). Read more about Johnson’s graveyard practice sessions in my Open G writeup.

 

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• Little Red Rooster – Howlin’ Wolf (1961):

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“They used to tell me stories about the wolves and the animals in the forest, see. The way they told it, I thought the wolf was about the baddest one out there…I’d keep up a lot of devilment, and they’d say, ‘I’m going to put that wolf on you’…Every night, when I get ready to go to sleep, I’d worry them to tell me the story about the wolf. They just kept calling me ‘wolf‘, and it’d make me mad, you know what I mean?” (Chester Arthur Burnett, a.k.a. Howlin’ Wolf)

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Also adopted in heavier rock – most famously to provide the iconic riff for The White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army (Jack White uses it a semitone lower on their cover of Son House’s Death Letter too). Also Jimmy Page’s slide part on Led Zeppelin’s In My Time of Dying, Lowell George on Little Feat’s A Apolitical Blues, and many more through the decades.

 

Writing for HSGA, Lorene Ruymar outlines the tuning’s role in the birth of the steel guitar: “Joseph Kekuku invented it around 1889…When mainlanders first saw it, they didn’t know what to call it, so they reported that it was held on the lap and played with a steel bar. That’s how it got stuck with ‘lap-steel’…But if you want to go first class, you’ll call it a ‘steel guitar’. It was originally a 6-string…’Spanish’ guitar, but converted [by] inserting a metal converter nut [at] the headstock to raise the strings about a half-inch off the fretboard. It was originally tuned to A Major…”.

 

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• Seven Nation Army @ Glastonbury – White Stripes (2005):

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“Seven Nation Army…was me trying to write a song without a chorus and still get people’s attention…I thought it was just a little experiment that not many people would care about. It was just a challenge to myself: ‘I’m not gonna have a chorus in this song. See if I can get away with it.’ And on that one, we really did!…Other times, it’s harder.” (Jack White)

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• NUMBERS •

	6str	5str	4str	3str	2str	1str
Note	E	A	E	A	Db	E
Alteration	0	0	+2	+2	+2	0
Tension (%)	0	0	+26	+26	+26	0
Freq. (Hz)	82	110	165	220	277	330
Pattern (>)	5	7	5	4	3	–
Semitones	0	5	12	17	21	24
Intervals	5	1	5	1	3	5

• 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…

• Open G (this -2): lower, looser ‘acoustic’ transposition
• Open F (this -4): all the way down to buzzing territory
• Open E: another classic electric open arrangement

• MORE INFO •

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

• Delta blues roots: learn more about the lives of these foundational innovators in my tuning pages for Open G, Open D, and Open Dm, as well as in an artist rundown from NPR – and listen to a great selection of early acoustic blues styles via NTS Radio’s wide-ranging Early Delta Blues Special (featuring Charley Patton, Furry Lewis, Bukka White, Tommy Johnson, Alonzo Boone, Miss Rosie May Moore, Leadbelly, and more)
• Seven Nation Army: I’ll never forget the power of seeing The White Stripes play it live, aged 13, at the first properly large-crowd show I ever attended – delve deeper into this all-time-great guitar riff via an American Songwriter overview (“…it started out about two specific people I knew in Detroit. It was about gossip, the spreading of lies…[the] frustration of watching my friends do this to each other. In the end, it started to become a metaphor for things I was going through…To me, the song was a blues at the beginning of the 21st-century”), as well as live performances from 2005 (Glastonbury Festival) and 2008 (from It Might Get Loud: with The Edge & Jimmy Page), plus an NPR overview of why it enjoys such wild popularity at political rallies and in sports stadiums (“…fans of the Belgian soccer team Club Brugge KV traveled to Italy for a UEFA Champions League match against one of the giants of European football, AC Milan…the Belgians sang the riff as their team eked out a 1-0 victory, then brought it home as an unofficial club anthem. Three years later, Club Brugge played host to another Italian team, AS Roma, and the tables turned the other way: The Romans headed home with a 2-1 victory: and a brand-new stadium anthem that they’d learned from the Belgians…”)

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Header image: John Lee Hooker’s Blues Magician album art (1992)