Can someone explain open G tuning in layman's terms?
January 16, 2018 4:20 PM Subscribe
I'm less interested in musical theory than in practical, this-is-why explanations. Specifically, why does Keith Richards (who's #3 on my top 10 of list of guitarists to take to a desert island), and presumably other guitarists whose tuning preferences I'm unaware of, prefer open G tuning? What's the rationale for it? What does it do to, or what does it change about, the way music sounds? Thanks
In the words of the man himself: "The beauty, the majesty of the five-string open G tuning for an electric guitar is that you've only got three notes - the other two are repetitions of each other an octave apart. It's tuned GDGBD. Certain strings run through the whole song, so you get a drone going all the time, and because it's electric, they reverberate. Only three notes, but because of these different octaves, it fills the whole gap between bass and top notes with sound. It gives you this beautiful resonance and ring."
Have you read “Life”? He talks more about why he likes it there.
posted by doctord at 4:31 PM on January 16, 2018 [15 favorites]
Have you read “Life”? He talks more about why he likes it there.
posted by doctord at 4:31 PM on January 16, 2018 [15 favorites]
What they said above. Also, that's how a banjo is typically tuned, and I know a number of people who've transitioned between the two instruments, so I looked up any connection Richards has to the banjo, and found this quote right before what doctord quoted above from Life:
And then I found out all this stuff about banjos. A lot of five-string playing came from when Sears, Roebuck offered the Gibson guitar in the very early '20s, really cheap. Before that, the banjos were the biggest selling instrument. Gibson put out this cheap, really good guitar, and cats would tune it, since they were nearly all banjo players, to a five-string banjo tuning. Also, you didn't have to pay for the other string.posted by General Malaise at 4:39 PM on January 16, 2018 [3 favorites]
If you strum a guitar that's in standard tuning, without fretting anything--just strum all the strings without touching the neck of the guitar--you get sort of a dissonant sound. If you strum a guitar that's in open G tuning, you get a G major chord. You can lay one finger all the way across the neck at any fret, and get some other major chord. And you can also play slide guitar a lot easier--don't know whether he does that much, but you can.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 4:44 PM on January 16, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by Sing Or Swim at 4:44 PM on January 16, 2018 [7 favorites]
As much as I admire Richards, I fear that this was another "borrowing" from Ry Cooder.
I'm going to link to an Arlen Roth lesson on the Gibson website where he gives a beautiful example of the sonority of open G when used to play in the key of D here.
posted by Chitownfats at 5:54 PM on January 16, 2018 [2 favorites]
I'm going to link to an Arlen Roth lesson on the Gibson website where he gives a beautiful example of the sonority of open G when used to play in the key of D here.
posted by Chitownfats at 5:54 PM on January 16, 2018 [2 favorites]
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It also sounds chunky and satisfying with all the resonance of the repeated notes, and allows for cool hammer on / pull off riffs (e.g Honky Tonk Woman)
posted by Jellybean_Slybun at 4:27 PM on January 16, 2018 [4 favorites]