Re: OT: Tuning guitar in fifths/ my rant defending alt. tunings :-)

[Marc Marshall <agentlesoul2004@yahoo.com>]

my friend, with all due respect to your post, why in God's holy name would you use youtube as your evidence of boring amateur alt. tuning solo guitarist's?  I assume you are NOT referring to John Fahey, Leo Kottke, Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Richard Thompson, Jimmy Page,John Renbourn, John Martyn, Chet Atkins, Sonic Youth, Swervedriver, THE GREAT KEITH RICHARDS WHO WROTE MORE 3 CHORD ROCK SONGS IN HISTORY IN OPEN G THAN ANYBODY HAS A RIGHT TO--how in the world can THAT be limiting??   Pierre Bensusan, Martin Carthy, Bruce Cockburn, Ry Cooder, David Crosby? Hell even boring ass Eric Clapton and even more boring Peter Frampton use alt. tunings!!!  Are you more creative than all these guitarist's both as a guitarist and more importantly a composer in altered tunings? I DON'T mean to be rude at all or disrespectful to you sir, but I propose there are only limited minds, NOT limited tunings!!   :-)    If you doubt my word on the above using them they are all documented in Mark Hanson's excellent book "The Complete Book of Alterate Tunings"   peace my friend  

 

marc

Marc Marshall

 

 

"I am human, I am large, I contradict myself"

 

.....and then some 

--- On Fri, 2/27/09, Daryl Shawn <highhorse@mhorse.com> wrote:

From: Daryl Shawn <highhorse@mhorse.com>
Subject: Re: OT: Tuning guitar in fifths for wider orchestration options
To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
Date: Friday, February 27, 2009, 3:17 PM

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
>