Quote:
Originally Posted by bubu
One suggestion I give you if you wish to learn how to play the guitar is:
No matter what kind of music you want to play, always play in standard tuning.
Unless you understand the shapes of variations on the guitar neck it's futile to learn songs in different tuning than standard.
If you just can't help yourself and have to do it try starting slow, by this I mean that you learn a song and then tune one string differently and you try playing it in that tuning. Then you tune the next string... etc
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sorry but i have to disagree with most of this.
there are some tunes that simply canNOT be played in standard tuning. my Soundgarden examples might be getting old but they're the simplest ones to use, they changed tunings to accommodate the riffs they intended to play. you can't change chords fast enough and with the proper dynamic to play Spoonman in standard tuning, you simply cannot hit notes low enough for the 2nd half of Rusty Cage if you don't drop your low E to B (yes it gets ridiculously floppy). same goes for the vast majority of slide blues guitar out there.
i do agree with the 2nd part a bit, it's easier to understand how alternative tunings work if you have a proper understanding of how the neck works in standard tuning BUT it has far less to do with the actual standard tuning, and far more to do with recognizing the intervals between strings, notes and chords. while songs in alternate tunings might not be the best to learn from a theoretical standpoint early on, they're normally easier to play from a technical standpoint (which is generally the entire point of using a non-standard tuning).
that last bit is just mind boggling. how would only changing the tuning of one string at a time work at all? it's like trying to change shirts while only undoing one button at a time then wondering why you can't pull it off your torso yet. either you tune to the chord or combination of notes necessary for the song or you don't. i really can't see how only going part way with alt-tunings is anything but foolish and counter productive.
always having to change tunings between songs is a hassle though, as a few others have said, multiple guitars are where it's at if you're going that route. they don't need to be fancy, my 'soundgarden' guitar was $120, always in some kind of weird D tuning, on one hand a complete and total piece of crap, on the other, the greatest effing thing in my possession when i wanted to play along to SG's music.