HEVYDEVY FORUMS

Anyone else who plays in tunings different from the standard E tuning and stuff like drop d/drop c?

For the last couple of months my guitars are tuned very different, most of them being sonic youth tunings:

GGDDD#D#
F#F#F#F#EB
GGCGCD
EGDGED
EEBEBE
AEADF#B

Alot of those tunings use inusion strings, wich gives the guitar a really unique and different sound.

I've tried to learn Aerial Boundaries by Michael Hedges, tuning for that is CCDGAD. I managed to learn quite a bit, but at some point it just gets too crazy for me to move my left and right completely independently from one another.

Other than that the craziest I do is open C and drop C.

I love open tunings :

a# f a# d# f a#
a# f a# d# b a#
a# f a# d# f c

love those bad boys

-Brent

My acoustic's always in standard, but I always play my electrics in open tunings-- one in open E major (E B E G# B E) and one in an open B variant (B F# B F# B B, last two strings the same note).

~Josiah

Hmm, do you guys change the string sets for these weird tunings? I haven't tried it, but it seems to me you would get tension issues if you use any normal set (especially with different gauge strings in unison).

For most of the tunings i adjust my strings aswell, for example:

G-G-D-D-D#-D# will be strung(in string thickness) 46-46-26-26-17-17

with most of my tunings the E-A-D strings wil be tuned up instead of down, so i prefer lighter gauge strings.
with the exeption of the drop A tuning, for which i use a 013 set of strings instead of my usual 09 or 010

I use regular 9s for open E and light top heavy bottom 10s for open B. Pretty loose but I'm used to it.

~Josiah

swervedriver wrote:I've tried to learn Aerial Boundaries by Michael Hedges, tuning for that is CCDGAD. I managed to learn quite a bit, but at some point it just gets too crazy for me to move my left and right completely independently from one another.

Other than that the craziest I do is open C and drop C.

Hedges is the man. Touch style playing is hard to learn. But learning hand independence on guitar is amazing. I've been working on pieces of my own (not in tunings like his) that are 2 hand tapped, and I already have a few recorded.