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Page 142

Section 12—

Guitar Resources Part 2:

Altered Tunings

ABBREVIATIONSRoman numerals I VII

indicate chordrelationships within a key.

m maj minormajor

Song sectionsbr bridge :

c ch codachorus

hk i introhook

pch v versepre-chorus

Most of the chord-sequence examplesare standardized for comparison

intoFamous songs referred to in C or A minor. C major

orthe key of the original recordings A minor are not necessarily in.

ALTERED TUNINGS
Sometimes it seems as if the people who write songs on the piano have all the advantages. Just think: no barre
chords; the ability to play chords with 10 notes; perfectly ordered ninths, 11ths and 13ths; easy inversions; melody in
one hand, chords and bass in the other; weird chord changes at the slip of a finger; a seven-octave range... and so
on.
Well, there is one big exception, and that's the wonderful world of altered and open tunings. Many guitarists have
written a couple of songs in a tuning that is not E A D G B E; others have done almost nothing else but play in
altered tunings. For some, this was a case of necessity being the mother of invention: no one showed them how to
tune the guitar, so they tuned it themselves until it sounded "right" – which usually meant, had a musical sound –
and what they ended up with was an open chord, the simplest altered tuning.
Purists say the guitar has only one "proper" tuning. Ignore them. I once took a guitar into a shop for repair, and that
guitar happened to be in an open tuning. I was told by the ignoramus behind the counter that guitars were meant to
be played only in one tuning. Wrong! What matters is the music you make, not how you make it. When Moses came
down from the mountain with the stone tablets, there wasn't an eleventh commandment that said, "Thou shalt tune E
A D G B E."
Originally, altered tunings were used mostly by folk and blues players, but they are now deployed by guitarists in
almost all genres. Well-known players who have made altered tunings integral to their style include Joni Mitchell,
Nick Drake, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Jimmy Page, CSN&Y, Sonic Youth and Soundgarden. In connection with
songwriting, the appeal is not hard to fathom:

• Songwriting is driven by inspiration. If you get tired of E A D G B E, an altered tuning can motivate you because
  of the way it changes the sound of your guitar. It takes only a couple of superb chord shapes to set off a song.


• Commonplace chord sequences can sound fresh in an altered tuning. Sometimes you will write a song and only
  later realise what a common sequence it would be in standard tuning.


• Altered tunings facilitate fingerpicking.


• For solo singer-songwriters, altered tunings help create a fuller sound.