Open tunings? Is there a best place to start?

chromatuna

So after forty of years of fairly lazily progressing with standard tunings to a point where I am pretty much at ease with most kinds of tunes I am now at the beginning of exploring open tunings. This has been prompted by stepping back from bands, for the time being at least, and wanting to be able to perform in a solo fashion. I am also quite keen to incorporate slide. The thing is though that when I try to explore an open tuning, say D or G, I find that playing minor chords and sevenths is so much more hassle than in standard tuning. This may be just laziness and middle age on my part but I was wondering if anyone with relevant experience here would recommend a best place, i.e. a tuning to start in and why? Thanks

Winny_Pooh

The point of them is not really 7th or such, its getting the best out of an acoustic where open strings create a fuller sound and the open tunings widen the musical range, especially the C tunings . Try some Joni tunes plus DADF#AD (Minor) & DADGAD (4ths 5ths) & open G (major) as an intro.

If you are looking at the more progressive solo pieces then Pierre Bensusan (DADGAG) is a good place to start as he's more traditional compared with Michael Hedges who invented the more percussive style you see being murdered on youtube by imitators.

Lewy

Given that you want to play solo and incorporate slide, I'd strongly recommend you look at open G and open D in parallel as they each offer something unique. For example:

Open G - down in the bass, your root is on the 5th string and your 5 is on the 6 the string - so that can be very impactful when going to the V chord of a progression having that big open bass note down there. On the top, you've got a nice slide up to the root st the 5th fret on the top string, or the bluesy flat 7 at the third. There a wicked sounding IV7 chord to be had just by playing your normal standard tuning open C shape as well. These are just a few of the things that Open G has going for it for solo slide performance.

Open D - bass-wise, you've got your root on the 6th and 4th strings so you can set up some nice alternating thumb bass on the I chord. Up top, you've got the root on the open top string, and the minor and major 3rd is available to you at frets 3 and 4 respectively. So it's awesome for using a slide to play around with major/minor ambiguity.

There's a tonne more to each tuning obviously, this is just to illustrate why you might not want to just learn one initially.

BigLicks67

Winny_Pooh said:

The point of them is not really 7th or such, its getting the best out of an acoustic where open strings create a fuller sound and the open tunings widen the musical range, especially the C tunings . Try some Joni tunes plus DADF#AD (Minor) & DADGAD (4ths 5ths) & open G (major) as an intro.

If you are looking at the more progressive solo pieces then Pierre Bensusan (DADGAG) is a good place to start as he's more traditional compared with Michael Hedges who invented the more percussive style you see being murdered on youtube by imitators.

I assume that is a typo and you meant DADGAD for Pierre Bensusan?

Also, open D with an Fsharp would that not be major not minor?

chromatuna

Thanks guys. I have been experimenting with open D but I think I'll spend a little time with open G now too

Lewy

BigLicks67 said:

Also, open D with an Fsharp would that not be major not minor?

It would indeed.

KDS

Really like open G on a tele

Winny_Pooh

BigLicks67 said:

I assume that is a typo and you meant DADGAD for Pierre Bensusan?

Also, open D with an Fsharp would that not be major not minor?

Correct yeah !