Don't Be Afraid of Retuning Your Guitar!

Alterate Tunings on the guitar are very inspiring. And it's easy enough for advancing beginners. :)

This lesson will give you a comprehensive introduction to alternate tunings on the guitar. We'll learn how to get to and use the 4 most common altered tunings you'll encounter in your guitar journey. They are:

Drop D Tuning
Double Drop D Tuning
Open G Tuning
Open D Tuning

When I started playing the guitar, I was scared to explore open tunings. I thought it was something really difficult, and I had heard rumors that my guitar neck would move if I changed the tuning of my instrument. They'd say I'd break strings, that exploring new tunings was hard, but most of that is just… unfounded.

💡 If you re-tune your guitar, the neck might move slightly. But that doesn't matter!

Occasionally, you might break a string if tuning it up a lot, but the open tunings we'll learn today only require that you tune strings down. So, breaking strings is unlikely to be a problem when you try the tunings you're about to learn.

Getting Creative With Open Tunings

First, I'd encourage you to try some of these alternate tunings by playing songs you like! By the end of this lesson, you'll get a list of five songs that use each of these alternate tunings. I've got song lessons for most of them! :) I hope this lesson removes any fear of retuning your guitar you might have, so let's get stuck in.

Drop D Tuning

To get to Drop D Tuning, all you have to do is drop the low E down to a D. Here's a diagram to help you get to Drop D Tuning:

Diagram shows notes and strings to tune your guitar to Drop D Tuning.

We've got an open D string on the fourth string, so just play the fourth string and tune the thicker string until they sound the same. If you find that difficult, you can also use a harmonic at the 12th fret for the exact pitch. Check out the video tutorial for more details!

Now, go ahead and strum your guitar. How big does that sound, eh? Drop D Tuning is amazing. Don't worry too much about having to play a particular chord or a particular shape. Explore it, and you'll discover super cool sounds.

💡 Drop D tuning is also great for Rock because we can play Power Chords with one finger. :) But before we get there, let me explain what we just did!

When you retune your guitar to Drop D, you only touch the thickest string, so you can play all of the chords that don't use the thickest string the same way as you would play in regular tuning. Some examples are the regular C chord, the D chord, the Mini F, the A Minor chord, and any A Shape Barre Chord that doesn't use the thickest string.

💡 In this lesson, I'm possibly using some unusual fingerings because I've got a fractured little finger. :( I've only just taken the splint off because I wanted to get my little finger working again, but I shouldn't use it too much!

In Drop D, we detuned the thickest string by one tone, which means two frets on the guitar. So, we have to move any chords that use the thickest string up two frets. For example, if we have a G Power Chord, you've got to remember that we're down a tone on that thicker string, so your G5 would be an F Power Chord, and your F Power Chord would be a D Power Chord.

Many Neil Young songs use Drop D Tuning, and he always plays the open G chord - a very common trick in Rock! You should get familiar with those, including how you play the F chord in Drop D. Check out the video lesson for more information about fingerings.

5 Songs in Drop D Tuning

Here are some great songs in Drop D tuning that I'd recommend you check out:

Killing in the Name by Rage Against the Machine
Harvest Moon by Neil Young
Everlong by Foo Fighters
The Chain by Fleetwood Mac
Hold On by Tom Waits

Double Drop D Tuning

To get to Double Drop D tuning, we tune the thinnest and the thickest strings down a tone. In Double Drop D, the thinnest and thickest strings become a D! We've got the fourth string as a reference. ;) Here's your Double Drop D Tuning diagram:

Diagram shows notes and strings to tune your guitar to Double Drop D Tuning.

Double Drop D introduces a whole heap of cool things! In regular Drop D, all you get is that lower sound, but when you're in Double Drop D, part of the beauty is this extra note, which you can use to embellish regular open chords.

💡 Experiment with standard chords and see what changes. C, A, and Am are great chords to explore. Try it!

To play a D chord in Double Drop D, you'll generally want to lift off your second finger. If you leave your second finger down, you'd be playing the same as a Dsus2 chord.

💡 When tuning your guitar, don't be afraid to double-check the notes. Keep your ears on it! You can even use a tuner to perfect it.

Double Drop D tuning got loads of interesting things you can use as a creative tool. It's a super-effective tuning for the G chords, but the F chord becomes trickier. Check out the video lesson for more information about chords you can try and details about fingerings.

5 Songs in Double Drop D Tuning

You'll find great songs in Double Drop D - my favorite one is Cortez The Killer by Neil Young! Check out my top 5 recommendations for you:

Cortez The Killer by Neil Young
Going to California by Led Zeppelin
Devils & Dust by Bruce Springsteen (lesson coming soon!)
Your Body Is A Wonderland by John Mayer
Song For George by Eric Johnson

These are mostly acoustic songs, but they work great on electric guitar. I'm using an acoustic guitar today because it's a little simpler to tune them - we don't have to worry about the bridge of the electric guitars. We'll talk more about that later on!

💡 Explore my Song lessons! You can filter songs by tuning, artists, genre, chords, etc. Super handy - and it's free! If you'd like to get the most out of my tutorials, consider JustinGuitarTABS; it'll save you loads of time learning new songs.

When you're in Double Drop D, you're just one string away from getting to the most classic open tunings ever, a proper open chord tuning, Open G. Let's take a look at it!

Open G Tuning

If you're in Double Drop D and want to get to the Open G tuning, all you have to do is tune your A string down one tone. Use the third string as a reference! So, in Open G, we have the following strings: D G D G B D. Check out this diagram to help you tune your guitar to Open G:

Diagram shows notes and strings to tune your guitar to Open G Tuning.

You'll notice that all we have in Open G tuning are G, B, and D notes. In Open G, the root note is on the fifth string, not on the thickest string. That's why Keith Richards played a five-string guitar - that lower string, the D string, just gets in the way, and it's not used that much in Open G tuning.

Open G is great if you're playing standard Blues and other things that don't require the thicker string. So, if you have a barre chord in open tuning, you want the tip of your finger to mute the thickest string. In Open G, you're just playing the thinnest strings! The root note here is one tone above.

💡 The trick with open tunings is realizing that if you put your first finger down in the first fret of the second string and your second finger down in the second fret of the fourth string, you end up with this nice movement, great for Blues. It's common in The Rolling Stones' songs and other tunes that Open G. Experiment!

Open G tuning is also great if you dig slide guitar! One of the beautiful things with slides is having these open tunings where you can play a whole chord just in the one fret! Check out the video lesson for more information and see me playing a bit with slide guitar. :)

5 Songs in Open G Tuning

Time to explore Open G tuning in real songs! Here's my top 5 list:

Some of these songs use trickier chords and are more advanced, but you can still explore them. Use my song tutorials for extra help, and remember: you should always have some Dreamers in your Songlist! :) If you want to get into slide guitar, A Little Red Rooster by The Rolling Stones is a great one to try out; classic Blues things going on there!

Open A Tuning

Have you heard of Open A tuning as well? So here's some extra information for you! Open A is not the focus of this lesson because it involves tuning strings up, making them more likely to break! But if you're in Open G and want to get to Open A, just get strings 2, 3, and 4 up a tone.

Open G and Open A tunings have the same intervallic relationship! That means you can get to Open A by doing Open G and putting a capo on the second fret. Easier than breaking strings! :)

Open D Tuning

Open D tuning has the notes D, A, D, F#, A, and D. Check the diagram:

Diagram shows notes and strings to tune your guitar to Open D Tuning.

Open D is a common tuning for slide guitar, particularly older school slide guitar. Join my video tutorial to explore some chords and fingerings with me. :)

Open E Tuning

Open D and Open E tuning are the same, just like Open A and Open G. I always prefer getting to Open D than Open E because we're tuning strings down instead of up. To get to Open E, tune to Open D and put your capo on the second fret. :) In case you'd like to try Open E Tuning, get this diagram:

Diagram shows notes and strings to tune your guitar to Open E Tuning.

5 Songs in Open D Tuning

There are some killer songs to try out in Open D! Here are my favorite ones:

She Talks to Angels by The Black Crows
Even Flow by Pearl Jam
Give Me Shelter by The Rolling Stones
Love The One You're With by Stephen Stills
The Tallest Man On Earth by The Gardener

You'll encounter many The Rolling Stone songs that use Open E! Street Fighting Man and Wild Horses are great examples. Explore them to grow your Blues chord vocabulary and get creative with altered tunings!

What Next?

It's time to muck around and explore the joy of altered tunings! These tunings we just learned are the ones I'd recommend you get started with. Still, the D-A-D-G-A-D is also interesting and very common for acoustic guitar! This tuning is not one that I explored a lot other than for specific songs, but it's super creative, so I'd recommend you do! :)

You can also use these foundation tunings and tweak them to see what happens! Loads of great songs do that - Daugther by Pearl Jam is a great example. Its base is Open G tuning, but we've got the lowest string (the thickest one) up to a G. Great trick.

Again - Don't Be Afraid of Alternative Tunings!

Please, don't make the same mistake I made when I started my guitar journey, which was being afraid to move my guitar neck or break some strings. Retuning a floating bridge guitar might be trickier, but it's not a big problem if you've set your guitar properly.

But if you've got a Floyd Rose style tremolo, you don't want to try mucking around with open tunings because that can be very complicated! So, you might want to save your open tunings to fixed bridges guitar. :)

Open tunings are amazing to experiment with. I hope my advancing beginner students get into them as soon as possible.

This lesson is part of my Beginner Grade 3 course. Check out and full program (it's free!) to unleash your guitar skills. Happy trails!