Re: OT: Tuning guitar in fifths for wider orchestration options

[Daryl Shawn <highhorse@mhorse.com>]

With a heaping helpful of due respect to all those whose alt-tuned 
playing I enjoy - and the distinct feeling that I'm a lone fuddy-duddy 
here - I'm one of those resisters, though I did play in nothing but 
altered tuning for a long time. For me, the advantage was the mental 
breaking of ruts, but I found it was the wrong approach - treating the 
symptoms, not the cause of the rut. I'd found myself always playing the 
same things, but came to see that I was simply limited in the technique 
and knowledge I had. Altered tuning threw away the experience I'd 
already gained, so I ended up even quicker in a new rut - I was tuned 
DADGCF, so suddenly I started writing everything in D minor. After five 
years, I switched back to standard, and practice as often as I can in 
it, and haven't found myself in a rut (by my own subjective analysis, of 
course...) since. The solution was increasing my knowledge of the 
guitar, getting closer to the goal of making seamless the division 
between self and instrument, able to play what I heard in mind, not 
putting fingers down and finding new sounds by chance.

I dunno...if a sax player gets in a rut, do they quickly switch to 
clarinet? Or do they practice different things, seek out new music to 
listen to, find new playing opportunities to challenge the rut, which is 
a mental construct anyway?

Honestly, I don't see a world of possibilities in switching tunings. 
Sure, there's a big ringing resonance that one can get with unisons or 
open octaves, but that already sounds played out to my ears unless the 
composition is a good one. If you go on YouTube and watch the scores of 
open-tuned solo guitar players, you'll see the easy temptations they 
fall into - basing everything on a pedal note on the lowest open string, 
sliding around the same chord position on the low strings with the high 
ones ringing out, hitting the 12th and 5th fret harmonics compulsively 
in every damn tune - because those tricks sound good, at an average and 
tired level of good.

Just my experience...YMMV (and probably already has, I'm gathering!).

Daryl Shawn
www.swanwelder.com
www.chinapaintingmusic.com

> I know many guitarists that resist open tunings and I honestly don’t 
> know why. They really open up another world of possibilities and are a 
> great way to take a break from standard tuning, if for no other reason 
> than to provide fresh perspective and break out of playing ruts.
>
> Bill
>