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:
“Go forth under the open sky, and list
To Nature’s teachings,”
—William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878)
“Thoroughly to unfold the labyrinths of the human mind is an arduous task.... In order to dive into those recesses and lay them open to the reader in a striking and intelligible manner, ‘tis necessary to assume a certain freedom in writing, not strictly perhaps within the limits prescribed by rules.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)