Wondering if anybody uses open tunings for a significant portion of their playing, so that if somebody chucks you a chord sequence you can just play it like most people could in standard, or at least an approximation. I'm thinking of picking a tuning and perhaps learning a set of songs using that tuning so I can incorporate more slide and have one guitar set up top that tuning exclusively.
Just after experiences really, I think open E might be the most obvious, I have dabbled in open E and it's variants (C, D) and also G, DADGAD and DADDAD. Somehow I think E might transfer the easiest. I can already play reasonable slide (example below), but want to learn non blues and more chords. I guess the question is a bit like what language is good to learn, so just wondering if anybody has gone far beyond the usual Keef / Elmore stuff in open tuning so that you have a full arsenal of tools at your disposal.
Comments
Doesn’t really answer your question though...
I guess the alternative is to explore slide in standard tuning a bit more. IIRC Mick Taylor of the Stones and Warren Haynes play primarily standard tuning slide as does Will Ray of The Hellecasters so it's not all blues. When I saw Greg Koch the other week he was talking about his forthcoming standard tuning slide book.
I used a variety of different tunings to utilise the open ringing thinnest 2 strings.
I used
B F# B E B E for 2 songs
B F# B E B D for 1 song (in minor key)
B F# B D# A# D# for 1 song (in major key to give a 7th chord impression)
It sounded very ringey and powerful, really nice.
In that case I'd recommend buying a VG strat or a VG99 / VG88. You can switch to open tunings and back to normal whilst playing.
For permanently-tuned open and alternative tunings, I keep a guitar for each tuning
I believe that each tuning offers a mood, and a natural steer towards the modes that work around that tuning.
I've seen people play who can overcome this for a different scale during a set, but in reality it's second-best to having an instrument tuned for each set of pieces
Aside from the normal major-chord open tunings, Try E minor, check out some of David Gilmour's work
DADGAD is my favourite fingerstyle alternate tuning
Remember that Kashmir is played in this tuning
One interesting trick is to use the 3-string partial capo, so that the guitar plays in DADGAD with no frets touched (capo provides ADG at the second fret), but allowing some DADGAD and some conventional tuning playing, all without using a second guitar
But I also have a guitar permanently tuned in "Rainsong" tuning DGCGCD
This tuning allows some unusually wide range of moods - the light Rainsong sound all the way to some quite Arabic-sounding riffs