alternate tunings

apologies if this is in the wrong place (technical?) or has been done before

I've recently 'discovered' John Renbourn, Bert Jansch and am particularly enjoying Davey Graham

other than tuning down across the board when playing grind stuff (C ,F, A#, D#, G, C) I've always played in standard tuning, what different tuning have do you guys use and for what?

TB

It's something I never really got into playing wise but really love what it does to the guitar, but for open tuning excellence check out Dick Gaughan. The last time I looked at his site there was a lot of good stuff about open tunings. I like to think of him as Scotland's Billy Bragg.

michael hedges plays alternate tunings on pretty much everything he plays.
nomadland

here is an old performance....
Ritual Dance
in case you don't notice in the comments to the vid... Tuning: D2A2D3G3C4C4.
and a later one...
Baal T'shuvah

I've used G and variations of G, E, Em, D and D modal on normal guitars where a cover song has been played in that tuning, or when playing slide.
These days if a tune calls for a little slide, I use the D,G and B strings in standard tuning...
My lap steel is either tuned to G6 or E9, though for 'One of these days', I use Em.

I never use it. Too confusing. But I also like the rich sounding chords and voicings of it. I do remember a cover version of Michael Hedges Ritual dance by Sungha Jung at an amazing young age when I first discovered the kid years ago. And Ralph Towner uses alternate tunings a lot on 12 string. From the same ECM catalogue Steve tibbetts and Marc Anderson live, although I like the studio version of Walkin' better, still quite nice.
Thanks to your post I found this little gem 'children's dance' by Alex De Grassi who elsewhwere on youtube has a short lesson on alternate tunings!

other than the occasional "drop D" tuning, I very rarely use em....too much like relearning the guitar!
Josh Homme of Queens of the Stoneage uses some great tunings...too tricky formy meagre skills to emulate.

Sgt. Vimes wrote:other than the occasional "drop D" tuning, I very rarely use em....too much like relearning the guitar!...

Kind of my feeling too...although I have been experimenting lately with Kapo settings. Between the damn stroke and the arthritis, it's harder to hit barre chords reliably, but this seems to offer some interesting alternatives too.

Other than Eb, I don't use any. Drop D may be fun but it can be like cheating.

You say that like it's a bad thing Chad.
Anything that makes it easier on the finger joints is OK by me!

Lol, didn't mean it like a bad thing. And for some songs Drop D will be a lot better for. And for lazy people.

Open G and Open D for slide.

I sometimes use open Gm and open Dm. It just has a great haunting sound.

I often put my acoustic in DADGAD, which is a nice tuning. Not just for folky/celtic stuff either, Jimmy Page did a lot of the Zep acoustic stuff in this tuning.

I sometimes use Double Drop D as well, both Es down to D, then play stuff around D and A chord shapes.

Suddenly, half an hour or so has just.........Gone!!

In addition to Drop D and variations on tuning down to match the cover song, there's a neat one used on a few of Tool songs like 'Parabol/Parabola': B E D G B E.

It's like a 7 string but without the 'A'. So without that 'A' in the way, hammering on the D string at the 2nd fret gets you an 'E' one octave above the open 'E' that's right next to it. So you can hammer on from a minor 7th to an octave. That's fundamental to the main riff. Soloing is done on the D G B E as per normal tuning.

I want to do some open tuning slide stuff but haven't gotten there yet.

I rarely move out of standard on the electric, except for for "Keef" tuning. But I do like to fiddle with tunings on acoustic. I like open C,D and G. I also sometimes tune to E5 or DADGAD.

I mostly stick to the standard tuning but on occasion I use drop D or maybe an alternate tuning for the blues etc.

I learned a new one today..

DGDGAD

I was looking up a tab for Andy mcKee because I wanted to have a go at playing Africa the way Andy does it...I'm gonna have to work at it a bit, but if you haven't heard it....well here it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHLiVlR_n2k

In the largest font available "f**king astounding

I use drop D for some stuff, usually accompanying stuff my kids like. Sometimes play with D A D G C C - but it _is_ like learning a new instrument.

My son drops his tuning down to C, gets a great grind noise from that. NASTY in a good way. String tension goes to hell in a hand basket (forget using that with a Floyd bridge) but he don't care.

BTW

Michael Hedges is brilliant, and I like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFNa4SRZhIk&feature=relmfu