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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on February 8, 2016 at 9:24am

On a fretted three or four string, G,D,G = 1,5,8

1,4,8

1,3,8

standard

On a slide only,

1,4,8,

1,4,6,

standard

Really I've played around with a lot of different tunings. These are just the ones I'm using the most right now. Sometimes I'll tune it up weird just to see what I can come up with. It really is a lot of fun. Each different tuning brings on new possibilities. 

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Permalink Reply by Dani Basaldua on February 8, 2016 at 12:36pm

indeed it does bring new possibilities. i was playing around with tuning and just got curious. ive tried open a and d. but still messing around. I aint no pro with it ya know? And what does those numbers mean? I.E. 1,4,8 or 1,3,8

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Permalink Reply by King Rubbish on February 8, 2016 at 1:20pm

The numbers are referring to the notes of the scale your guitar is tuned to. For example, if you're tuned to the key of G then the '148' mentioned above would be:

Low string - 1/G (root)
Middle string - 4/C (4th degree of the scale)
High string - 8/G (octave of root)

The common 'GDG' tuning would be called '158' using this method (root, fifth, octave).

Personally I'm a big fan of the 513 tuning as taught by Keni Lee Burgess. It really is a very flexible tuning and opens up a lot of options for chord playing. On a GDG guitar you would retune to ADF#, giving you an open D tuning.

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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on February 8, 2016 at 1:44pm

I"m really going to have to try the 5,1,3 tuning. 

King answered the question 'what does those numbers mean?" Thanks King. I'd also like to add I use major tunings. Not miner. 

If you have a fretted guitar a major scale is easy to find. It goes like this.

First note then. Whole step, whole step, half. Whole step, whole step, whole step half. Start on any note and go up. A whole step means to jump a space. Half a step means to play the next fret up. 

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Permalink Reply by Dani Basaldua on February 8, 2016 at 3:26pm

thanks king rubbish! I understand it now. Makes more sense now..and ive been messing around with that open d tuning. 

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Permalink Reply by turtlehead on February 8, 2016 at 3:33pm

Hey Dani, I love messing around with tunings.  I made this cheat sheet for some of the possible open tunings you can get from a standard set of strings.

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Permalink Reply by Dani Basaldua on February 8, 2016 at 3:36pm

hey turtlehead, this is very nice. I am going to save this picture :D much appreciated 

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Permalink Reply by King Rubbish on February 9, 2016 at 6:26am

Wow, that is a really helpful diagram from Turtlehead - it will save me a lot of head scratching when I'm figuring what strings to buy!  And good advice on working out the major scale intervals from Cause. 

Just to follow up on the 513 tuning, below is a sheet of basic chords - you just need to figure out where the root note is for the chord you want.  You can pretty much play in any key using this method just like a regular six string guitar.  Note that there are a lot more possibilities than these, if you start substituting notes or adding in open strings there are all sorts of interesting chords to find... 

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Permalink Reply by King Rubbish on February 9, 2016 at 6:26am

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Permalink Reply by Dani Basaldua on February 9, 2016 at 2:58pm

do yall make these diagrams or find them? because these are really good..lol. thanks king rubbish

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Permalink Reply by Moritz Voegeli on February 12, 2016 at 8:12am

Which tuning you prefer depends also from whether you are playing for yourself or with others, if so, there is a difference in which key you choose to play together: as an example, preferably GDG for keys in G, A, B, C, and DAD for keys in D, E, F, G, to stay for chords below the 15th fret.

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Permalink Reply by Del Puckett on February 28, 2016 at 12:54pm

https://youtu.be/C7zpmlDNQZ0 

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