Open guitar tunings

(I’m starting a blog on this website, partly just as a bit of fun, but partly to discuss folk music and guitar-based stuff. My experience of folk and the tradition is pretty limited; every time I play at a folk club I’m struck by the sheer volume of songs and tunes out there, and the unbelievably extensive knowledge of those who sing them. But while I can’t pretend to have anything other than a very shallow grasp of what ‘folk’ is, I’d like to use the blog to share some of the interesting things I’ve come across in folk, including songs, tunes, and guitar-based curiosities. Hopefully it won’t be too technical and will provide something of interest for those with just a passing interest in folk. This is the 3rd blog I’ve had a go at: I did a philosophy-themed blog a few years back, and also occasionally update a cycling blog.)

It’s common in traditional folk to retune the guitar from ‘standard’ tuning (EADGBE) to various ‘open’ tunings. Of course, this isn’t the preserve of folk guitarists alone; it’s also common in blues, metal and lots of other genres. Open tunings in folk, popularised in folk after the ‘second folk revival’ of the 1960s in the UK and US, provide a new, less restrictive way of playing guitar than standard tuning. Playing in open tunings allows you to slip in little tunes and counter-melodies as well as playing the basic chords of a song; this is because in many cases, strumming the strings without any left hand fingering at all produces a nice-sounding chord. This is definitely not the case in standard tuning; strumming the strings without fingering in standard tuning produces the nasty-sounding ‘E7#9sus4’ chord! Whereas in standard tuning, you often need at least 3 fingers to make a simple chord shape, in many open tunings only 1 or 2 fingers are required. Nic Jones, famous for his complex-sounding folk guitar arrangements in the 70s, somewhat modestly describes his own playing in the open tuning CGCGCD as ‘a fake way of playing‘; it’s easy in these tunings to produce something that sounds complex, though is technically very easy to play. Which is why I love them.

In this post I’ll just give an overview of what I think are the best open tunings, and what makes each one distinctive. I might focus on specific ones in later blog posts.

– CGCGCD (‘C modal’). Widely used in popular folk music since the 60s, though strangely less well known than some other open tunings among the guitarists I’ve met. Used by Martin Simpson and Nic Jones, among others. It’s a really fluid and free tuning, mainly because it only contains 3 notes, C,G and D, and is ‘modal’ in the sense that its open chord is neither major or minor. Really versatile too, though it can sound a bit sparse unless extra effort is made to include more interesting notes and chords than C, F and G. Tuning the strings this low below their usual tension can result in a really nice, deep, rich sound, though also more string vibration. Here’s Simpson playing ‘Never any good’ in CGCGCD:

 

– DGDGCD (‘banjo tuning’ or ‘G modal’). So-called because it mirrors a popular way of tuning the banjo, it’s really easy to get a bluegrassy sound out this tuning, which is less ‘open’ than C modal, with the bottom two Cs simply tuned up to Ds. Whilst with C modal, you get a C chord by strumming all the open strings, here you need more fingers to do the job, with the bottom string D becoming the basis for the 5th chord of the G major scale (D), and the second-bottom string the basis for the ‘root’ chord of G major. Moving up the neck on this tuning opens up some really interesting possibilities for melody playing. ‘The Rain Song’ by Led Zep is a famous example of such tuning; as with most open tunings, you can move the same chord shape up and down the neck to get nice easy chord variations, like Jimmy Page does here:

 

– DGDGBD (‘Open G’) – a seemingly tiny variation on banjo tuning results in a completely different sounding tuning. This tuning is close to standard tuning in that the ‘DGB’ in the middle stay the same, but the bass notes drop, to allow for richer-sounding arrangements. Many of the chords in this tuning resemble standard tuning chords, but require less fingers; and it allows for a more major-sounding feel than, for example, C modal. For me, it’s the perfect balance of the versatility of open tuning with the complexity more associated with standard tuning; it’s somewhere between the two. John Renbourn has arranged many great tunes in this tuning, including the wonderful ‘English Dance’. I’m pretty sure there used to be a great video of this, but now I can’t find it. Here’s the recording:

 

DADGAD (‘D modal’) – Perhaps the best known and catchiest-named open tuning, DADGAD has a very distinctive ‘suspended’ sound, due to the fact that the open chord in DADGAD is Dsus4, used all over the place in folk, pop and rock. Popularised in the 60s by legendary folk guitarist Davy Graham, DADGAD doesn’t have much in common with the other tunings mentioned, but is the most commonly used after standard tuning. Here is the ‘king of DADGAD” Pierre Bensusan: