Page 143- Open strings provide for drone effects, consecutive octaves or playing the melody while you're singing.
- Unison voicings give a "12-string" quality to some chords.
- Altered tunings allow you to play chords that are impossible in standard tuning.
- Open tunings are better for slide-guitar playing in blues songs.
- To the more devious and image-conscious, altered tunings offer an opportunity to puzzle the hell out of other
guitarists, who may not be able to figure out what you're doing from the shapes.
Alas, altered tunings also have some drawbacks: - There's more danger of breaking strings.
You must re-tune in live performance (unless you have several guitars). - Chord shapes can be hard to remember. Write them down. (They are hard to transcribe, even from your own
demos, once a few years have passed.) - Key changing is more difficult, and you may find yourself trapped in one key.
- Sometimes the open top strings dominate the chord shapes, giving a certain sameness to the overall sound.
Types of Altered Tunings
Altered tunings can be divided into the following groups:
Detuned Standard
This is not much of an altered tuning, per se, but it is worth mentioning. It is common for guitarists to tune down a
semitone (half-step), especially in hard rock/blues and HM. The lower pitch can make it easier for the singer to pitch
a melody and the lead guitarist to bend strings. It's popular with heavy bands because of the lower frequencies. If
you are writing a song pitched in Eb, Bb or Ab, it can make sense because you get fuller open-string chord shapes,
especially if you're working with another guitar part. Also, it is not uncommon to find 12-string acoustic guitar
recordings that are detuned a semitone to ease tension on the guitar's neck. 'The Boxer' is down a semitone so B
major can be played as if it were C major and matched with a standard-tuning guitar capoed at the fourth fret, where
B is a G shape:
Chord I II III IV V VI bVII
Actual pitch B C#m D#m E F# G#m A
Semi-detune shape C Dm Em F G Am Bb
Capo IV shape G Am Bm C D Em F'Blackberry Way' and 'Yellow Submarine' are also down a semitone (half-step). Sometimes guitars are detuned by a
tone (full step). Paul McCartney did this for 'Yesterday', All About Eve on 'Martha's Harbour' and Hendrix for the
longer