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version of 'Voodoo Chile', and it has also been used by Jeff Healey and many grunge bands. This detuning creates
some effective timbral changes in an acoustic guitar that complement a guitar in standard tuning. Let's say you are
recording a song in C major. Compare these two guitar parts, one with a capo at the eighth fret and the other
standard detuned by a tone:
Chords I II III IV V VI bVII
Actual pitch C Dm Em F G Am Bb
Tone-detune shape D Em F#m G A Bm C
Capo VIII shape E F#m G#m A B C#m DConversely, on the first album by The Smiths, Johnny Marr tuned a tone above standard pitch to get a brighter tone.
With regard to string tension, this is not a good idea – unless you can afford lots of strings and/or replacement
guitars.
Single-String Alterations
The easiest form of altered tuning involves retuning only one string. Even such a small change can produce effective
new chord shapes.
The most popular way to do this is to detune the low E to D, which is slightly misleadingly called "dropped D"
tuning. Fingerpickers like this because it provides an octave in the open bass strings (6 and 4) for an alternating-
thumb pattern, leaving the fingers free to play a melody. It gives you deeper-sounding D and Dm chords than in
standard tuning. It permits you to use the bottom D as a pedal note and move shapes over it, or play the bottom three
strings as a drone and move triad shapes on the top three [see diagrams]. This tuning is also favoured by writers who
want to play really low, heavy riffs. A power chord can be played on the bottom three strings with just a first-finger
barre, and the famous "boogie rock" rhythm figure is easier to finger than in standard tuning. Dylan's