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:
“I have passed down the river before sunrise on a summer morning, between fields of lilies still shut in sleep; and when, at length, the flakes of sunlight from over the bank fell on the surface of the water, whole fields of white blossoms seemed to flash open before me, as I floated along, like the unfolding of a banner, so sensible is this flower to the influence of the sun’s rays.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Why make so much of fragmentary blue
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Thank God we’re living in a country where the sky’s the limit, the stores are open late and you can shop in bed thanks to television.”
—Joan Rivers (b. 1935)