Once you get into guitars, you get to know that it’s an endless world to explore. Guitarists have been twisting and turning the tuners on the headstock to get awesome and unique sounds out of it. Once you get decent at playing, you get to know more and more ways to get creative.

For instance, just tuning down the Low E string to D can make a world of difference. That makes the guitar tuned to Drop D, which is a top favourite for many metal-heads. Oops, did we just ‘drop’ the first tuning for you? Haha, consider this one a bonus.

Well, Slipknot, Trivium, Avenged Sevenfold; you just name your favourite metal band, and they’d probably have tuned to Drop D for at least a couple of hit songs.

That’s the beauty of guitars. Just a little movement on those tuners can open a whole another music world for you. Here we bring you 5 guitar tunings other than the standard tuning for you to experiment:

DADGAD

This is one sweet-sounding exotic tuning that every guitarist should have up their sleeves. In this tuning, the 6^th and the 1^st strings are dropped to D from E, and the B string is tuned down to A. The result is a surreal combination of strings that produces ethereal sounds.

This tuning is commonly found in the Celtic genre but has been used by many famous musicians. For instance, the famous song Kashmir played by the all-time great Led Zeppelin has parts played in the DADGAD tuning.

There’s so much to explore once you have your guitar tuned to this.

CGCFCE

This is one way to inject an element of surprise into your playing. Here, you tune the upper four strings of the guitar down a whole step. Tune up the B to C and leave the high E as it is.

This tuning is known as the Nick Drake Tuning, named after the British folk artist Nick Drake. This Tuning produces an overall folksy sound but is often used in other genres, including Rock and Pop.

DGDGBD

This one is called Open G. Which means that if you play all the six strings open, you’ll have the G major chord. This tuning is a good choice to explore if you wish to explore the blues and rock genres.

This tuning is used in ‘Walking Blue,’ a famous song by Robert Johnson.

EBEG#BE

Like the Open G, this one’s called open E. Play all the strings without laying your finger on any fret, and you’ll get an E major chord. This tuning sounds awesome but comes with a few risks for the guitar.

Since many strings become tighter than usual, it puts a lot of stress on the neck. If you choose to explore this tuning, then do so with caution. Also, once you are done, please tune the guitar back to standard or some other lower tuning to avoid breaking the strings.

That said, this tuning gives amazing groves and has been used in famous music pieces like Little Martha by the Allman Brothers band.

Double drop D

This one’s just like DADGAD, with one slight variation, that the B string isn’t tuned down. This one has also been a favourite of Led Zeppelin and has been used in Going to California.

With this tuning, there’s so much to explore. Voicing's, riffing, phrasing, or any other flavour you’d want for a song can come out of this tuning.

Final Words

Standard tuning is great and can be used to produce flavourful music. But once you get to know and explore the alternate tunings, you’ll have so much more to spice up your playing and your music.

Check out Darryl's video below about to use open strings to write amazing guitar parts!