'weird' tunings
 

any other bands using scordatura?
i know there are a few heavy rock bands who pull the whole thing 2 or 3 notes down... but thats nothing radical...
my bloody valentines got a couple of good ones

and is there any fav. tuning you use a lot? :D

D D D# E G G

Tuned down very fucking low. The first D is an octave and a whole note down from E.

I don't play unfortunetly ...

I wrote a few riffs in open c (CGCGCE) recently and then made them into a song. It had been a little while since I played in anything but standard or standard flat. Sounds very cool...play a little slide in parts on it at frets 2, 3 and 5. Has a folk blues part, a few unison pair parts and so on. Everyone knows Open C though. Try it with E flat instead on the first string (CGCGCEb) for some cool chording possibilities.

i use non-tuning. i love the spontaneity that can be produced by playing a guitar with no regards to tuning and structure. so for me, its either standard tuning, or no tuning.

I have been playing in open C recently, just making up fahey style fingerpicking stuff. I like open G too (DGDGBD)

scissor shock, polvo, thinking fellers union local # 282. Hah.

Any slide guitarist or fingerstyle guitarist is probably playing open strings which are my favorite tunings.. open g and open c rule.

My Bloody Valentine uses weird tunings? I thought everything was in standard.

I dunno, most bands use different tunings at some point.........

I probably go to Open G the most (& it's probably the best for capo and/or slide), but really like Open C and D (DADF#AD) as well. Fahey, perhaps most notably, did "Sunflower River Blues" in Open D.

Bear in mind, however...

I think that open tunings are a trap really because it's really hard not to sound like an open tuning when your using one and that gets old as well as what you learn in one open tuning is going to stay there.
- Leo Kottke

^what adam said.

I dunno why he said MBV... they don't use standard ALL THE TIME but they don't play any 'weird' tunings. It's usually something like the high E is put down a step or something.

Maybe he just thinks their riffs sound weird? (they don't at all; in fact, MBV has some of the simplest riffs I've ever heard)

yeah, 'sometimes' is super easy to play, chords wise. not easy to get that same beautiful feedback though. but their riffs are usually really simple chords played through an amazing setup. i mean, shields's setup is so nuts he could pluck the same string throughout an entire set and still leave an audience mesmerized.

I noticed on the fahey website the tuning for sunflower river blues is CGCGCE and on the tab it is open D yet i figured it out in open C and it sounds right to me.

I think Leo has a point but i find it easy to create weird riffs/songs that dont sound open

Any tuning can become a trap. I think he's mainly referring to the fact that you can only play major chords in open g and such.

Slide guitar in open tuning is probably the most limited thing you can play... but there's still infinite possibilities to what you can do with it.. it'll certainly all sound very similiar at the least...

That's essentially what I do too. I pound the hell out of my guitar as a percussion instrument. If I stopped to worry about tuning after doing that, our twenty minute sets would take several hours.

Since this may be the only time I can say this on this board.

Leo Kottke - Cripple Creek is one of my all time favorite songs.

For one of my songs I recorded I tuned my guitar to FACACF and then bowed it to get a sort of droning sound. I also like C6 tuning used by Jimmy Page which is CACGCE.

I really like the song he did, I think it's called Vaseline Machine Gun, or something to that effect.

yeah it's crazy.

my bloody valentine
'you never should' = D#G#C#F#G#d# (quite easy one)
'when you wake' = EAEA#Bf#
'moon song' = E A#A#A#A#a#
'can i touch you' = EEEEAe

etc
thats what i was talking about ;)


i personally like the 'trilogy' tuning..and the pavement :P