Blues guitar tunings?

Question

I've recently become interested in learning how to play blues guitar, having ignored it for years and years. Looking at tabs and stuff, I've come across several unconventional tunings. How widespread is this? Is there any one blues tuning method that is more commonly used than the others, or do most blues guitarists use standard (classical) tuning?

Answer 1

there are quite a few differant unconventional ways to tune a guitar. Open G, open D and lots and lots of diffferent ways. dude. stick with a standard tuning. changing it is something you can do when you get bored of knowing how to play everything else and want to try something new. when this happens you will know what notes to change it to. because you will be changing them to meet your requirements,.

Answer 2

Yeah , a lot of blues originated from the "play what you got" point of it since blues in general is more about feeling than tecnique and theory , hence the easier open chord tunings (easier to express that train whistle slide thing..). As far as how many actual alternate tunings the blues players use is anybodys guess . I play blues guitar as well , but i look back on where i got influence for that , and realize most of the players that i liked pretty much all played in standard E-A-D-G-B-E tuning so that's probably why i never switched , i even play slide that way.

Answer 3

Hi,

It's quite widespread but mostly amongst bottle neck (slide) players rather than standard blues pickers. The open D the other guy gave you was wrong it actually goes DADF#AD what he had was just drop D which is effective for folk songs and some blues but not for slide. Open G is lovely but I'd say it has more of a rock/ country sound as it's what a Dobro is tuned to.

My preference is for standard tuning for most blues, particularly as you'll know the scales for solos and fills but if I'm going to be using a slide I tend to tune to open D then capo into the key we're playing in. However, recently I've been doing single note slide stuff in standard tuning and it works well for country and blues.

Answer 4

Alot of the old Delta Guys didn't use standard tuning, and as aforementioned, used open tunings, most of the time tuning to whatever they pleased. I've always heard as a roady/harp player that you don't ever touch a Delta player's tunings because you'll mess it up. As for Mayer, I'd go with the Drop D tuning. Albert King used it alot as well as his protege Stevie Ray Vaughan, which John Mayer borrows heavily from on the "Continuum" album you speak of. I can name some instances where he directly borrows from SRV, but that's another topic.

Answer 5

ANY tuning which is not to convention means that the user is cheating ! Come on - if I tune a guitar to C - E - G - C+ - Bb and Eb I wouldn't need to LEARN how to PLAY a guitar - it would have all been done for me. With that combination you could play dozens and dozens of chords without any effort ! Without trying you've already got Cmaj, C7, Ebmaj, Cm, Cm7----- do you want me to go on??????????

Answer 6

Very. The most common blues tuning is open D. It looks like this DADGBD. Also used is open G tuning. DGDGBE or GBD. Very nice tunings. Used alot by Led Zepplin and Nick Drake! In fact, if you want to hear DGDGBE listen to the first track on my bands myspace. www.myspace.com/8ballmusic I've tuned my guitar to this tuning!

Answer 7

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Answer 8

D A D F# A D is great for slide and delta type blues riffage

Answer 9

standard tunning for most known artist

Answer 10

standard e or keef uses DADGAD