The Open-D Tuning Guitar Spot

Yep, not quite back in the USSR, but definitely back - to the Greater Toronto Area, after a 10-year stretch in Windsor, ON.

Quite happy to be on home turf again.

I have begun advertising private lessons (in open-D tuning, of course), for those aspiring guitarists that feel the need the extra little help in getting going on Guitar.

From my commerical site, you know that my system is designed to be self-taught; it's simple, way easier than standard-tuned guitar, and very intuitive. Great especially for, say, singers who wish to accompany themselves, or frustrated novices looking for a simpler re-start on guitar, or for anyone interested in an easy alternate tuning. But, repeatedly I get requests for private lessons, so there must be a demand.

In response, I am offering in-your-home guitar lessons, in the Greater Toronto Area (I reside in the north GTA - York Region). Let me know if it's of interest.

Labels: learn guitar, lessons, open-d lessons, play guitar

Not that I had any idea when I developed Guitar-eze, but open-D tuning has been utilized to tremendous effect by Richie Havens.

His site reveals all his playing secrets, all in open-D tuning.

I had heard of Richie before Guitar-eze, even had the Woodstock album, and had seen him in the movie. I never made the connection, though, that he was playing in an alternate tuning - probably because of the mesmerizing performance itself. But Richie on his site demonstrates how easy guitar can be to learn in open-D, and he, like me, developed his own unique approach.

I could never play like Richie Havens. But Guitar-eze is another approach to the same tuning, just about as intuitive, but slightly more rooted in traditional guitar technique (although I am no technician as a player either!).

Richie Havens - one more reason why open-D tuning rocks.

That's a hot one.

How can they possibly do it - give away free lessons on guitar?

There are several answers, and none of them are particularly inspiring or refreshing to me:

1) Most "free" lesson sites are exceptionally limited in what they actually offer free. I've seen the most silly "lessons" out there, from holding the guitar, to listing off the parts of the guitar, and on and on. It's obvious why the lesson is "free" - it's virtually pointless and could be found anywhere free.

2) This makes their "free" offerings a teaser strategy to get you to sign up for - what else - paid online lessons. Let's face it - the "com" in .com stands for commercial. They all want to sell you something. Even if they are giving all their lessons away, they probably want you to buy something else of theirs on the same site.

3) In the rare instance where the lessons may all actually be free and comprehensive in scope, then the site it likely cluttered with all sorts of advertising and other offers - from Google AdWords to banner ads, to pop-ups, links and anything else trying to grab your attention away from what your were seeking - which was free guitar lessons.

4) The reason for all those banners, AdWords, and pop-ups is that the owners of the site get paid for displaying them. So their generous nature is actually a front for a money-making venture of another type, designed, really, to distract you away from their site so they get paid. Nice.

At Guitar-eze, at least I'm fairly direct at what the site wants you to do - which is buy Guitar-eze. I offer up a lot of information about what the method is all about, what you get when you buy, how open-D will help open up the world of guitar for you, but I don't hide behind a facade of "free" anything. I'm also happy to report that to date, I have resisted all forms of outside advertising on any of my pages (except a very limited links section at the bottom of my Testimonials page). I hate all that stuff when I'm surfing (as I'm sure you and everyone else does), but particularly on guitar sites.

Maybe in some future post I'll rant about how generally pointless it is to try and learn guitar while sitting in front of a computer screen...

So, to conclude, "free" anything online should be taken for what it generally is - nonsense - and nowhere is this more true than the wonderful world of guitar on the internet.

I have decided to show the world what I have done with open-D tuning, recording-wise. It occured to me that I have some remaining stock of recordings made with my two bands, the Highway Hepcats (1993-1999) and the JumpKatz (2003-2007) Both bands recorded original material, the vast majority of which was played, by me, in open-D tuning.

The recordings, I feel, chart both the versatility and fullness of sound when playing in open-D, as well as my personal growth and development as a guitar player (and vocalist).

I'll have them on offer on the site, until they're sold out.

The other way open-D tuning is superior for the ear player is in the area of experimentation.

Now, for the experienced (standard tuning) guitarist, experimentation may not be a big deal. After all, for those folks, with the background, the theoretical knowledge, the experience with chords, harmony, etc., experimentation is readily achievable, with all that you already know (surprisingly it does not apply to all experienced guitar players).

But for those inexperienced, novice, frustrated guitar types who feel like they have music in them, but just cannot get over the hump of priming needed in standard tuning, open-D tuning offers a nifty by-pass. The neat thing about a tuning such as open-D is that you need virtually no musical background out of the gate. Your guitar is tuned to such a user friendly starting point - a beautiful, common, usable D major chord - that the door is held wide open for you to get playing guitar, by ear, right away.

What do I mean by this?

Consider it - you strum your guitar, and you have a common major chord, with no fingers to fret. All it takes to create a second usable chord is to add one finger to one fret - and it matters not which - any string, any fret (heck, even any finger!). You have another new chord. An actual, playable, legitimate chord - and you really don't need to know the name of it (although Guitar-eze does get into a minimal amount of theory for those who may desire it).

Add to this the fact that a single finger can replicate that starting D major chord all the way up the neck of your guitar, creating Eb, E, F, F#, etc., and you have opened up a world of guitar, with an absolute minimum of technical or theoretical knowledge. For an ear player, or experimenter, or intuitive guitar player, it's heaven.

That's what open-D tuning is - heaven.

What does it mean to play guitar by ear? Different things to different people, I suppose. I apply the term differently, even to my own personal situation.

On the one side, I play guitar by ear. That means I don't need to read music notation (which I can, actually), or tab (which I can't for the life of me)to play my guitar(s). I can figure out chords, chord progressions, melody lines, solos, all without the aid of written music. I generally learn from recorded versions of the songs I like.

Open-D tuning has been a true door-opener for me in song learning, especially by ear. The versatility of this particular tuning is well documented (if greatly under-utilized) in the guitar playing world, but generally not for learning songs. But open-D tuning is a terrific way to unlock your favourite tunes. For example, just getting the basic "roadmap" of a song down - that general progression of chords, verses, choruses, codas, endings, etc. is achieved with relative ease in open-D, because at the start you can just use your lowest D string, or even the three low (D-A-D) strings, to parse out the basic chords. At first pass, you may not get all the nuances (majors, minors, sevenths, etc.), but you will be able to quickly pound out the basics of the song, and then go back and refine. During this refinement stage, open-D tuning once again shows its adaptability. In no other tuning can you "feel" the chords of a song out like open-D. If you've got a song in the key of G for example, and the the progression moves from a G to an A chord, it is quite simple to discern whether that A chord is a major or a minor, with a simple finger movement. Because the strings in open-D are tuned to a major triad, things like minors, etc. tend to jump right out at you.

So that's one side of ear playing that open-D can really help bring out. For a working musician, who learns songs to get paid with, or just to perform in general, it is a genuine guitar playing aid.

There's another type of ear playing that is just as exciting and perfectly suited for open-D tuning as well. I'll get into it next post.

I'm not an Eagles-ophile by any stretch of the imagination, but they wrote some terrific melodies and chord progressions, set to some pretty melancholy lyrics, that seemed to personify all the excesses of 1970s LA. One of my all time faves to play by them has to be Tequila Sunrise. It is a truly spectacular assemblage of chords, in any guitar tuning I suppose, but in open-D - wow!

Starting with the opening four-bar move from G to G6 (almost hinting at a Gmaj7?), which I play on the low A string (third finger, 7th fret, while barring on G) to give is a more bass-y feel, you really don't anything more than your acoustic guitar to set the feel for the whole tune.

Then for the verse, the progression moves from the G-G6 to D7, then to Am ("'cross the sky"), then back to D7 before landing back on that G-G6 pattern. The Am can be played to tremendous effect on the 7th fret position, with just the D-F#-A strings held down (A-C-E), allowing the open-D to occasionally ring (for and Am-add4).

This progression continues for another verse, before the first bridge comes in ("Every night when the sun goes down..."), which vamps on C to Em and returning on an Am-D7 and back to the verse projection. The C to Em progression can be played beautifully in the base position and both chords can also leave the high open D string ringing for effect (C add 2, and Em7 respectively).

Then comes another verse on the original progression (G-G6, etc.), and an instrumental on the same pattern (which the Eagles gave a mournful Tex-Mex treatment on guitars that might have been trumpets).

The climax of the tune comes after the instrumental, where a different bridge is introduced with the pattern of Am D Bm E Am B7 Em A ("Take another shot of courage..."), before returning to the original progression and verse ("It's another Tequila Sunrise...").

I like to vary up the second bridge part by playing the D and E chords way up high (12th and 14th fret), the B7 standard on fret 9, and then that last Em back on the bottom. The chords, melody line and lyrics all mesh amazingly throughout this section before returning home to the original progression and lyric, except at the end, "this old world still looks the same, another frame".

It's a wonderful composition (these guys were pros), but you can really give it a treatment, with just an acoustic guitar and your voice - in open-D tuning.