Download the Roadie Music
Guide to Alternate Tunings
Harnessing alternate tunings can unlock a whole new world of potential for your guitar playing and songwriting. But, before you can do that, you need to understand what alternate tunings are, and how they work. That’s why we wrote this short guide: a comprehensive overview of alternate tunings for any aspiring guitarist.
With this guide you will learn all about:
- What “standard” guitar tuning is, and why it’s the standard.
- Why we use alternate tunings in the first place.
- The circle of notes, and how it relates to alternate tuning.
- The most important alternate tunings:
- - Step Down
- - Dropped Tunings
- - Open Tunings
- - Instrumental Tunings
- - Regular Tunings
- - Creating Your Own Tuning:
- What genre of music these tunings are mostly used for.
- How Roadie can help you experiment with alternate tunings and create your own.
If I didn't have all these tunings, my songwriting would have dried up years ago.
Mark Tremonti
When you're playing in standard tuning all the time, you're sounding pretty...standard.
Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth
Once I got the open tunings for some reason, I began to get the harmonic sophistication that
I heard that my musical fountain inside was excited by.
Joni Mitchell
Tunings are a strange thing. They take you to musical areas that are not supposed to exist.
Keith Richards
DADGAD is my CIA tuning.