Saturday, February 14, 2009
Vocalists and Open-D Guitar
There are some amazing singers out there, who should be playing guitar. I know many would love to do just that - sing and play guitar at the same time. But the guitar playing part of the equation, too often, is elusive.
You've got a great set of pipes. You deserve to be able to sing and play guitar at the same time.
Vocalists like you should give open-D tuning a try. Open-D and singing go together like a hand and a glove. Th reason is that, if you haven't quite got the manual dexterity standard guitar tuning requires, open-D is a terrific (and terrific sounding) substitute: Your starting point requires no fingers on the fretboard, basic major chords require just one finger on the fretboard, and many, if not most other chords can be formed off that one-finger starting point.
It doesn't get any easier than this.
On top of it all, open-D tuning provides an excellent visual aid for composition, if that's your bag (and it seems to be for many a vocalist). The basic triads are right at your finger tips; the modulations and passing chords a finger or two away.
Open-D tuning also happens to be very friendly to both acoustic and electric guitar, too. Stylistically, you go where you want with open-D as well, from folk to country to rock to blues and probably every other genre in between.
We're not talking about just a substitute simple strumming thing here, either. Open-D allows faster progress in all aspects of playing, I've found. Right hand (or strumming hand) progress actually can be faster because of the simplification of the left hand work. In my case, leads were absolutely out of the question until I made the flip to open-D.
For vocalists, then, who aspire to be singing guitar players, the advantages are many; I've mentioned just a few here. For a vocalist who has always wanted to play guitar at the same time, and perhaps experienced difficulty, I would urge them to consider reading up on open-D tuning to see if it might be an angle to pursue.
You've got a great set of pipes. You deserve to be able to sing and play guitar at the same time.
Vocalists like you should give open-D tuning a try. Open-D and singing go together like a hand and a glove. Th reason is that, if you haven't quite got the manual dexterity standard guitar tuning requires, open-D is a terrific (and terrific sounding) substitute: Your starting point requires no fingers on the fretboard, basic major chords require just one finger on the fretboard, and many, if not most other chords can be formed off that one-finger starting point.
It doesn't get any easier than this.
On top of it all, open-D tuning provides an excellent visual aid for composition, if that's your bag (and it seems to be for many a vocalist). The basic triads are right at your finger tips; the modulations and passing chords a finger or two away.
Open-D tuning also happens to be very friendly to both acoustic and electric guitar, too. Stylistically, you go where you want with open-D as well, from folk to country to rock to blues and probably every other genre in between.
We're not talking about just a substitute simple strumming thing here, either. Open-D allows faster progress in all aspects of playing, I've found. Right hand (or strumming hand) progress actually can be faster because of the simplification of the left hand work. In my case, leads were absolutely out of the question until I made the flip to open-D.
For vocalists, then, who aspire to be singing guitar players, the advantages are many; I've mentioned just a few here. For a vocalist who has always wanted to play guitar at the same time, and perhaps experienced difficulty, I would urge them to consider reading up on open-D tuning to see if it might be an angle to pursue.
