Hey, I’m looking for NON-slide songs in open tunings. I’m mainly interested in electric, but acoustic is fine as well. I loves me some open tuned songs, but I don’t know that many.
I’ll start:
DADGAD
Kashmir, Led Zepplin
Black Mountain Side, ditto (yes, it’s an unattributed cover, that’s another thread)
Open E
Little Martha, Allman Brothers
Open G
Half the Stones catalog - Honky Tonk Woman, Brown Sugar, Start Me Up, yada.
Help, I need more!!
Pretty much Joni Mitchell’s entire oeuvre.
Mary Chapin Carpenter’s song “Come On Come On” in DADF#GD is wonderful as is her “This is Love” song in DADF#AD.
Nanci Griffith’s song "Love at the Five and Dime"is open G (DGDGBD) with a capo on the third and a fun song to fingerpick.
David Wilcox is insanely wonderful, I prefer his older stuff, but here’s a full list of all of his tunings (Warning: PDF) with the trickiest being:
Basically everything from Honky Tonk on, although I am sure there are plenty of exceptions if I took the time. But stuff like Happy, All Down the Line, Tumblin’ Dice (Happy and Dice are both capo’d up at the 4th fret) - pretty much all of the greats from their Perfect Run of Albums period - including my two personal favorite Stones songs, Gimme Shelter and Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’. For those who care - well you probably already know, but I will share it anyway - Keith got turned onto Open G by legendary SoCal slide guitar player Ry Cooder (who also inspired Duane Allman - dude gets around). This was during the Honky Tonk sessions. It opened a door for Keith, to the point where he plays a lot of his guitars with 5 strings - he drops the low E because Open G has the 1 note of the scale on the 5th string for the best chords. He has 5-string guitars made, too.
Led Zep’s Friends is in Open G (off LZIII). I am sure Page’s Bert Jansch-ian stuff is alt tunings of various sorts.
Two I didn’t know about until I had to figure them out were KISS’ Rock n’ Roll All Night - if it wasn’t originally done in Open G, it should be - stoopid easy that way. Also, **Lit Up by Buck Cherry **- a guilty pleasure of a Big Dumb Rock song if there ever was one.
As for DADGAD tuning - I think of it as for Kashmir, but as I dig into acoustic guitar playing more (been doing a lot more of it vs. electric for the past year) - there are whole worlds where this tuning is practically considered standard. A very highly regarded acoustic player named **Pierre Bensusan **only plays in DADGAD. Certain types of fingerstyle - some Gaelic/Irish fingerstyle; some of that tap-guitar open-tuning Andy McKee on youtube-type of technically impressive stunt guitar stuff.
I am sure I have plenty more…whole worlds out there, I tells ya!
Mark Knopfler likes to use open G when he fingerpicks on his National, which he frets. Romeo and Juliet and Heart Full of Holes are two examples off the top of my head.
Non-guitarist sneaking in the backdoor here, but I recall Richie Havens was another one for open tunings ( the mention of Joni Mitchell brought him to mind ).
I beleive Bob Dylan is in open D/E on most all of the songs on Blood on the Tracks.
I believe Suite Judy Blue Eyes by CSN is in Bruce Palmer Modal Tuning-EEEEBE.
Black Crowes’ She Talks To Angels is in open E-EBEG#BE; Jealous Again is in open G (and probably a lot more from the Crowes is in open G, too:cool:).
*Stay With Me * by the Faces is in open E.
Pink Floyd’s “Fearless” is in open G, I believe.
What the hell, that’s a tuning? Really? Huh, unison uber alles.
Oh my lord, guitar geekvana. Awesome, thanks for sharing this. I will so check out his stuff. And of course your other recommendations, but that one sentence stood out. Sweet.
Nice summary, thank you – I geek in your presence, sir.
I’d forgotten that one, and actually know how to play it; not challenging, but fun to play.
One I hadn’t heard, and sounds really fun to play, I am so checking this one out.
You guys rock, keep 'em coming!
According to Ian Anderson’s stage patter on Tull’s Bursting Out, “One Brown Mouse” (original on Heavy Horses, plus he recorded a nice new version a few years ago, after his classical flute training) is in “open E tuning”.
Moving into electric stuff, here’s a pagelisting Sonic Youth’s crazy tunings. (Did Yoko teach them that? ;))
Ther’s a Midwestern rock band called The Dactyls which is into this sort of thing, too. Not sure if they have a real CD out, though.
Another Page one, Bron-Yr-Aur is in a sort of open C. C-A-C-G-C-E. I first tried to work it out in “proper” open C with the A string tuned down to G and wondered why I couldn’t get it to sound right. The Rain Song is also in some funny turning and I figured the bloody thing out (more or less) in standard tuning argh!
I don’t know if this counts but the System of a Down guy uses dropped C, basically dropped D but with the whole guitar down a tone. Ricky Wilson (early B52s) used something similar but actually removed the middle two strings, which explains the rather unconventional riffs on their first albums.
Nashville tuning gets used a lot, I think our man David uses it somewhere on The Wall.
Here is a page giving a quick overview of some of the tunings used by Bruce Cockburn.
The last time I saw him live, he would never play more than three songs with any given guitar before he’d hand it off to the roadie for re-tuning. He had two electrics and four acoustics with him - the set list must have been meticulously planned out.
Most of Nick Drake’s material is in open tunings, including some unique ones. It’s also amazingly brilliant, in my opinion.
Jimmy Page, bless his thieving little heart, pinched all of his DADGAD material from Bert Jansch, except for the bits that Bert pinched from Davey Graham.
Three of my all-time favourite guitarists, right there. For an American take on alt-tuned guitar genius, I’d recommend John Fahey.
Are there other guitar players that change tunings within songs like Adrian Legg does in this video?
Skinny Love by Bon Iver uses an open C variant, CGEGCC.
The Velvet Underground had open tunings for at least some songs. I think ‘Venus in Furs’ was played on the Lou Reed’s “Ostrich guitar” tuned DDDDDD.
Simiarly, Soundgarden’s ‘Mind Riot’ is EEEEEE tuning.
Speaking of Led Zep, ‘The Rain Song’ tuning is DGCGCD in the studio version. I think the pitches were shifted upward on the live versions.
The Black Crowes’ ‘She Talks to Angels’ is open E major chord tuning, EBEGBE.
Pearl Jam’s ‘Daughter’ is open G major, GGDGBD.
I was going to also mention Sonic Youth and Nick Drake, but they’ve been covered all ready. You’d need to swap string gages for some of SY’s tunings like GGDDEbEb and CCEBGD.