New Year And Alternate Tunings

First off,
Happy New Year! Although Rawk U has only been operational for a little over a month, we have already received a positive response and we are getting feedback about how to do it better. I wanted to take this space to also talk about Alternate Tunings. This is when the strings of the guitar are not tuned to the standard, E,A,D,G,B,E. Some common ones are Open E, Open A Open D Open G and Open C. They are called "Open", because when the open strings are strummed they make the sound that one of those chords would make in first position on the guitar. For instance, if the guitar was tuned to open G, the strings would be tuned low to high,"D,A,D,G,B,D". These are the notes of a G major triad, which are G,B,D. You may be asking yourself even if you know the notes that comprise any of these open chords, what note does each string get tuned to? It would be a good question. Answer: First figure out the notes of your tuning. If you are using, open C, the notes you need to worry about are C,E,G. Okay now take each string, we'll go through it one by one. The low E will stay E, because it is one of the notes in the open chord. The A string will be tuned down to G,(Now this is important! it gets tuned down because that note is closest to the G note.) You just take the string and go to the closest note that you need in the chord. The D string goes down to C. The G string will stay g. The B string will stay b. And the high E goes down to d. The reason to use alternate tunings, is 2 fold. When you have an alternate tuned guitar, different combinations of notes are unlocked that are not accessable in standard tuning. Also, if you are playing slide guitar, in most of the open tunings it is possible to play chords with just one finger. Some examples of songs that use alternate tunings are, "Black Mountainside",(D,A,D,G,B,E), "That's The Way" (Open G), "Friends"(C,A,C,G,C,E), "Bron-Y-Aur"(C,A,C,G,C,E). All of those songs are by Led Zeppelin. Another more current band that uses Alternate tunings to great affect is Sonic Youth. The really tricky thing about a lot of their tunings is that they make up their own, so it can be really hard to decipher. Those Zep songs are a good place to start. Good Luck Rawkers!
-Danielelectric