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ALTERNATE TUNINGS: Open
D
by Wolf Marshall
Welcome, cyber pickers worldwide, Wolf Marshall,
here at Guitar Port central. In this series within
Essential Guitar we’ve been looking at alternate
tunings. We began with tuning down one string (Drop
D tuning) and progressed to a two-string alternative
(Double D tuning). This time we’ll begin
exploring the subject of chord-based open tunings.
Open tunings exploit a chord sound; that is the
main aim. As we have been in various lowered D
tunings thus far let’s make a natural segue
into the world of Open D.
Open D tuning makes the open strings of a guitar
sound like a D major chord. Let’s begin with
the basic mechanics. Click and open up your tuner
program in the home page. Start in standard tuning
by dropping your two E’s, both high and low,
a whole step to D. Next lower the second string
a whole step from B to A. Finally drop the third
string G a semi tone to F#. The open strings of
your guitar should now be spelled (from low to
high): D-A-D-F#-A-D.
Point Number One: The sound of Open D tuning has
long been a favorite among blues artists. To illustrate
let’s begin with an absolutely indispensable
blues phrase. If ever there was a must-know blues
lick, this is it. The riff has an extensive pedigree.
It was first heard in the play books of acoustic
country-blues artists like Robert Johnson and Charlie
Patton, adapted for electric guitar by Elmore James,
and was seized and passed down into blues-rock
and rock repertory by players like Eric Clapton
and Jeff Beck. The riff was re-invented by Stevie
Ray Vaughan in his composition “Slide Thing”—which
brings us to Point Number Two. This episode of
Essential Guitar combines two essential ideas that
work hand-in-glove: Open D tuning and slide guitar.
Example 1 is a familiar Elmore James-inspired
blues riff in Open D played with the slide. The
tuning naturally creates a D major triad on the
top three open strings (low to High), F#-A-D (3)
to (1), and that’s what you hear from the
get-go. Notice this triad is now played as a three-note
barred shape (at the twelfth position). In bar
3 we find another useful attribute of the open
tuning as a blues resource. The extended dominant
seventh-chord sound is expressed as A-C-A, also
played as a barre on the second and third strings
in the fifteenth position. The upper-register slide
riffs are counter-balanced by a typical low-register
blues comping figure in the first position. This
figure is a breeze to play in the tuning as a root-fifth
D5 chord is simply the lowest two strings, D and
A, and the D6 chord is a one-finger form.
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