Open
An open tuning allows a chord to be played by strumming the strings when "open", or while fretting no strings. The base chord consists of at least 3 notes and may include all the strings or a subset. The tuning is named for the base chord when played open, typically a major chord, and all similar chords in the chromatic scale can then be played by barring exactly one fret. Open tunings are common in blues and folk music, and they are used in the playing of slide and bottleneck guitars. Ry Cooder uses open tunings when he plays slide guitar.
Read more about this topic: Guitar Tunings
Famous quotes containing the word open:
“A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue. Then he is instructed in what is set above him. He learns that his being is without bound; that to the good, to the perfect, he is born, low as he now lies in evil and weakness.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Rain falls into the open eyes of the dead
Again again with its pointless sound
When the moon finds them they are the color of everything”
—William Stanley Merwin (b. 1927)
“Go forth under the open sky, and list
To Nature’s teachings,”
—William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878)