Learning the guitar can be great fun. Once you know a few chords and can play a few tunes you feel a great sense of satisfaction. You may also wish to experiment with alternate tunings for the guitar – i.e. not the usual EADGBE standard tuning. For those of you who wish to try some of these out, here are some to start you off. Don’t be scared of trying these out. Just make sure you have a tuner handy to get you back “home” to the standard tuning.

IMPORTANT: If you need to tune a string down to a note you must tune it down BELOW the note you actually want and then tune UP to the required note – e.g. if you want to tune the E string down to a D, first tune it down to around a C note, then tune it UP to a D. This stops the string becoming slack and going out of tune.

The first one is the “dropped D” tuning DADGBE (low to high) Simply tune the low E string down to a D, using your open D as a guide.

The second one is the “Double dropped D” DADGBD which is the dropped D tuning with the high E string tuned down to a D as well

The third one is “Open G tuning” DGDGBD. This is the Double dropped D tuning with the A string tuned down to a G, using the already open G as a guide. This tuning was made famous by Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones who went 1 step further and took off the low D completely from his guitar, leaving him with only 5 strings! GDGBD.

The last one for now is DADGAD. This is the Double dropped D tuning with the B string tuned down to an A. Use your open A string as a guide.

With these alternate tunings you can create some beautiful sounding chord progressions, plus by using open strings you can make more use of harmonics. The key thing is to experiment. Try using a capo with these tunings or why not play along with a friend? You could both play the same song with one guitar tuned to a standard tuning and one to an alternate tuning. The possibilities are endless, just use your imagination. Most of all, remember this is supposed to be FUN! If you enjoyed learning these tunings, why not search the internet for more alternate ones? There are many more. Thanks for reading, have fun!

Chris.

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