Many guitarists are using alternate tunings these days; indeed, they perhaps are more popular now than they've ever been. But recording artist and Taylor clinician Pat Kirtley has successfully written and arranged in alternate tunings for almost 30 years, and today they are integral to his craft. All of the tunes on Kirtley's excellent CD, Irish Guitar, are played in alternate tunings; he demonstrates alternate tunings in his Taylor workshops; and recently he released a well-regarded instructional video, Introduction to Alternate Tunings, on the Stefan Grossman Guitar Workshop imprint.
- John D'Agostino, Editor, Wood&Steel
 

For many guitarists, the thought of plunging into alternate tunings is scary. Most people think it's enough of a challenge learning to play in "regular" tuning, thank you. And, they're right, of course. This is a trip into uncharted territory, requiring some new thinking and an open mind. But no one will deny the richness of sound and compositional advantages made possible by alternate tunings on the guitar. This article will look at ways to begin exploring this interesting realm without fear.

I began using alternate tunings a long time ago, when I was a teenager. At the time, I didn't think too much about a possible downside. The first time I tuned my guitar away from standard, it was admittedly out of boredom. Instead of doing what I was supposed to be doing (practicing!), I rearranged the pitches of some of my strings. I had no idea what I was doing, but it was fun, and I was excited by the new sounds I heard.

In my first few attempts, I just twisted the tuners to see what would happen. Almost immediately, I began writing new music. The first day, I wrote a tune that I liked so much I spent the rest of the day committing it to memory. A week later, I remembered how to play the tune, but I had no idea how to tune the guitar to play it! I knew I needed a system.

MAKING IT MAKE SENSE
After flirting with unnamed and unaccountable tunings for awhile, I began exploring one of the essential alternate tunings - Open G. This tuning has been used since at least 1880, and there are good reasons why it has stayed with us so long. Besides being a good tuning for Dobro and slide-guitar work, it is a derivative of the tuning used on 5-string banjo. A number of tunes for guitar have been written and arranged in Open G. When Leo Kottke was first becoming known, it was one of his favorite tunings. That's where I first picked it up.

Open G kind of grew on me, and for the next five years or so, I devoted a lot of time to it. It gave me a great approach to arranging traditional and bluegrass music for fingerstyle guitar. Also, the experience taught me that you could accomplish a lot by sticking with a particular tuning, exploring it at length.

At some point, Open G's hold on me began to loosen, and I began listening to the guitar work of David Crosby and Joni Mitchell, both of whom I greatly admired. It's been said that Crosby never used the same tuning twice, which no doubt is an exaggeration, but he did gain a well-deserved reputation for using a lot of alternate tunings. I kept exploring various tunings on my own, and one day I began to realize that my hard-won knowledge of standard tuning was starting to dribble away. I had to come up with a system for working with tunings, as well as a way to continue progressing in standard tuning, and make it all work together.

First, I realized that I would need more practice time, to devote adequate attention to each of the tunings I wanted to explore. I realized that time itself would be the biggest limitation, and that the number of tunings in which I could become adept would be limited. So, I made the decision to work on a given tuning for about an hour a day, and not to dwell on any one of them. I did that for a long time, but because of my fascination with the sometimes exotic sounds and patterns of the various tunings, good old standard tuning continued to take a beating, getting the least of my attention.

I also decided that, since it is problematic to keep changing tunings (especially in public performance), I would concentrate on the few tunings I really liked. My criterion would be whether or not a tuning was productive for me. A useful tuning, I decided, is one where I could play a number of tunes, with unique and interesting arrangements. An especially good one, like Open G, might yield a repertoire of 10 or 15 tunes, meaning that I could enter that tuning and stay a while. I always have been blessed with having a number of guitars around, and I would tune each to a desired tuning and leave it there. That helped both with practicing, and with keeping new tunes straight in my memory.

I did begin to wonder whether I was cluttering up my head with too much conflicting information - all those different ways to play the same chord names on the same neck. I decided that learning to play the guitar in many tunings was not much different than learning to play several different instruments. There always have been multi-instrumentalists, players who can play, say, guitar, fiddle, banjo, and mandolin, and do a credible job on all of them. To me, learning alternate tunings is like that, only much simpler; for one thing, the right hand always uses the same set of techniques.

I realized that using a number of alternate tunings would be a compromise, that I would be dividing my attention among four or five compartments in the brain. But, I rationalized, I could accumulate an inventory of tunes just as vast as if I would in standard tuning, and maybe greater (happily, this turned out to be true).

MAKING A SYSTEM, BY DEGREES
I mentally organized the tunings into categories according to degree of difficulty, with standard being the baseline, or easy one (ha!). The Level 1 alternate tunings included Drop D (DADGBE); one called G-Sixth (DGDGBE); and the low-C slack key tunings (CGDGBE). Those are easier to comprehend than many other tunings because only the bass strings are changed from standard; the upper strings, where one accumulates knowledge of chords and scales, are untouched. These tunings require a minimum of re-thinking.

Next in difficulty, Level 2, is Open G (DGDGBD). It is similar to G-Sixth, but with a definite degree of difference, because tuning down the high-E string requires re-thinking chords and scales. Also in this category is another tuning I like to use, Double Drop D (DADGBD).

One of my favorite tunings, DADGAD, is a Level 3 tuning. It requires changing three strings from standard (1st, 2nd, and 6th), which basically throws all of your hard-earned chord and scale knowledge out the window.

Level 4 tunings result in the total brain-death of your accumulated chord and scale knowledge. My very favorite tuning, EADEAE, is one of these. Only two strings are changed from standard, but they are the 2nd and 3rd strings, and they are changed by 1- and 1-1/2-steps down, respectively. Ironically, although this is the hardest tuning of the bunch to comprehend, it is where I've had the greatest productivity as a composer and arranger; I have written or arranged about 40 tunes in EADEAE.

In addition to the concept of degree of tuning, I pay attention to what keys work well in a tuning. In standard tuning, we all eventually come to the conclusion that E, A, C, and G (and minor keys Am, Bm, Em) are the friendly keys; consequently, a lot of guitar music is written in these keys. But every alternate tuning has its friendly keys, and it helps to become aware of them.

Drop D and DADGAD definitely are D keys, with added possibilities in G and A minor. Open G and G-Sixth, not surprisingly, hold their greatest offerings in G major. My signature tuning, EADEAE, is at its best in the key of A, and contrary to expectations, is just about useless in E! Understanding the strengths of each tuning in terms of friendly keys helps a lot.

TUNINGS AND YOUR GUITAR
Many people have misconceptions about how alternate tunings affect one's guitar. The truth is, in most cases, the popular tunings have little or no effect on your guitar. The only possible danger is in using tunings that raise the overall tension of the strings, and even then you have to deviate significantly to cause a problem. There is a simple rule to follow that explains how tension changes with tunings: tuning up or down one whole step is the equivalent of using the next higher or lower string gauge.

In other words, if you have light-gauge strings on your guitar, and you tune all the strings up one whole step (i.e. the equivalent of two frets), it would create about the same tension as stringing your guitar with medium-gauge strings at standard pitch. Similarly, when you tune strings down a whole step, it feels, tension-wise, as if you had replaced them with extra-lights. In terms of the effect on your guitar, a moderate change in tension upward or downward - as typically required for most of the popular tunings - is easily tolerated by most guitars. Nevertheless, even Leo Kottke travels with a truss wrench to accommodate any changes.

It follows that you cannot change the pitch of a string too much without noticing some effect from it; a guitar can become a bit buzzy with an overall lower tuning, and the action can raise slightly from an overall higher tuning. To keep the tension in a reasonable range, I would recommend tuning upward no more than one step and downward no more than two steps. If you deviate from standard tension much more than that, it is advisable to change the strings to an appropriate gauge to accommodate the pitches. For example, because Low-C tunings require that you drop the low-E string two whole steps lower than normal, some people like to use a big .058- or .060-gauge string. At normal pitch, those gauges would qualify as heavy, but at Low-C, they feel like lights.

As you explore new tunings, one unavoidable fact of guitar life you will encounter is string breakage. Tuning a string back and forth between tunings creates stresses that eventually will cause the string to break. The farther away the string is tuned from its normal pitch, the more likely it is to break. For performers, this is a troublesome problem, because it is always inconvenient, to say the least, for a string to break onstage (having multiple guitars for practicing at home is great, but the limitations of road travel usually limit you to just one).

Usually, strings break while you are making tuning changes, and they break near the tuning post, where the stresses of bending are concentrated. The only way around this problem is to change strings often. Also, make sure the string channels through the nut are very smooth (a ticking or racheting sound while tuning is an indication of slight roughness at the nut).

Some tunings are relatively trouble-free, and don't seem to accelerate string breakage. Most of the tunings that involve changing the 5th and 6th strings fall into that category - those strings rarely break from being re-tuned. The most problematic strings for breakage are the top three, G, B, and E.

GO FOR IT
Exploring alternate tunings can be a real adventure. You can invent your own tunings and create new music, or stick with proven tunings, and learn tunes that others have created or arranged. Either way, you will find a cure for the six-string doldrums that affect all guitarists now and then, and open up an exciting guitar world you might not have known existed.