Guitar Chord - Alternate Tunings

Alternate Tunings

There are many alternate tunings. These change the way chords are played, making some chords easier to play and others harder.

• Open tunings each allow 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.
• Drop tunings are common in hard rock and heavy metal music. In drop-D tuning, the standard tuning's E-string is tuned down to a D note. With drop-D tuning, the bottom three strings are tuned to a root-fifth-octave (D-A-D) tuning, which simplifies the playing of power chords.
• Regular tunings allow chord note-forms to be shifted all around the fretboard, on all six strings (unlike standard or other non-regular tunings). Knowing a few note-patterns—for example of the C major, C minor, and C7 chords—enables a guitarist to play all such chords.