Alternative Guitar Tunings For The Studio

Getting chordal guitar parts to work together in a track can be tricky, and if two players are working the same chord sequence, it helps if one player uses different chord inversions to the other. Depending on the musical style, this can work particularly well where the second part is played in a higher register. An easy way to experiment is to use a capo and then work out the chords in a new position further up the neck. Using a capo for rock music may not look cool... but this is the studio, so no-one's going to see you!

Another approach is to use a special tuning or alternative stringing option for the second guitar part. If your guitar happens to have a tremolo fitted, it helps to have this locked down solid against the body so you don't spend more time tuning than playing. Tuning the whole guitar down by a chosen number of steps is popular in a number of grunge‑related genres, but players such as Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan routinely tuned their guitars down half a step (one semitone) to get their sound. My guess is that this habit originally came about through playing with brass players, who seem to prefer non‑guitar‑friendly keys, but perhaps they just liked the sound. Tuning down a whole tone is more dramatic, and it certainly adds power to songs played in the key of D. If you're happy to fit proportionally thicker strings you can tune down even further, as long as your guitar's nut slots will accommodate the larger-gauge strings. This way you can get the general effect of a baritone guitar or a seven‑string without having to buy one.

Another favourite is the dropped-D tuning, where only the bottom string is tuned down a tone below its usual pitch. This necessitates working out different fingerings for some chords, and to my ears it sounds a bit 'folky', but it can be very effective, especially for songs in the key of D. Alternatively, you can get a really nice jangly effect on overdubs without changing your chord shapes by adopting so‑called 'Nashville' stringing, where the bottom three strings on the guitar are replaced using thinner strings that can be tuned an octave higher than normal. On a typical 9-42 or 10-46 gauge set, you could try 26, 16 and 12 for the bottom three strings. The sound you get is somewhat reminiscent of a 12‑string, but without any low end. As long as the first guitar part uses normal tuning, it should add the necessary weight, while the second 'Nashville' part adds the glitter. Apparently, this tuning was used for the rhythm guitar in the bridge section of Pink Floyd's original version of 'Comfortably Numb', and once you know it's there, it is very easy to pick out on the record. The beauty of the Nashville tuning concept is that as well as being able to play your usual chord shapes, you can also use a capo to produce a very high‑sounding part with no more difficulty than with regular tuning.

Some musical genres make extensive use of alternative tunings such as DADGAD, or Keith Richards' open-G, but these take time to master because you have to learn a whole new set of chord shapes and techniques. However, there's one very obvious tuning that was used on the old Canned Heat classic 'On the Road Again', where every string on the guitar was tuned to E. You can do this using standard strings with each tuned to the nearest E, but stringing the guitar with three pairs of same‑gauge strings (46, 26 and 10 would work) is a little kinder to your strings. This tuning produces doubled Es over three octaves and is played using a straight one-finger barre (or try a slide), the result being a wonderfully evocative drone. Later glam‑rock producers copied this trick to fatten some of their guitar parts, so it's well worth a try. Paul White