Learn a rare secret that will boost your guitar learning speed
A simple adjustment can change the way you play and understand guitar music forever.
Isn’t it true that great principles are often simple and overlooked? It often requires much time and someone with vision and determination to make the general public accept a better way of doing something. For instance, the suitcase industry had flat sales for many years until someone creative decided to put wheels on the suitcase, instantly sales soared and now it is difficult to find a suitcase without wheels. The same goes for learning the guitar. A simple change in the way you tune your guitar will cause you to have a paradigm shift which will kindle or rekindle your desire to learn to play the guitar by making it easier and more fun to play.
Standard Tuning is Simply not the Best
For hundreds of years the standard tuning for a guitar has been EADGBE from low to high. There are advantages and disadvantages to this type of tuning. The most obvious advantage to standard tuning is that the majority of guitar tablature has been written for it. Some serious disadvantages include difficult fingering for many chords, and even many simple chords require at least three fingers. Another disadvantage is that strumming the open strings produces an uncommon chord that is very difficult to use in songs. Don’t worry, there is a better way.
Open D Tuning (DA DF#AD)
When you tune your guitar to Open D, it is almost like transforming your guitar into a different instrument, one that is easier to play and one that helps you visualize the chords you’re playing. An immediate advantage of the Open D tuning is the ability to play a D chord without having any fingers on the frets; just strum the open strings. Another advantage is being able to create permutations of chords with as little as one finger on the fret board. If you want to create a major chord besides D, simply bar across the second fret for E, bar the third fret for F, the fifth fret for G and so on. Open D facilitates playing the melody on a single string going up and down the frets while using the open strings to produce the harmony.
One of the reasons Open D tuning came into use was a famous 19th century piece called "Sebastapol" composed by Henry Worrall. Because the piece was written in the key of D major musicians found it easier to play if they tuned their instruments to Open D. You may want to try tuning your guitar to Open D for a song written in the D major key and see how easy it is.