___ ALTERNATE TUNINGS ___ WHY BOTHER? ___

 WHY?

Rock like all that is literally a folk music is primarily played and learned by ear. In short a very limited amount of theory is learned in an academic way. This is both good and bad. 

If you play by ear you do not know when you are breaking the rules, lol. Even Classical music could only evolve by breaking the rules. Breaking the rules over time always means creating new rules to accommodate the broken ones that sounded cool, lol. I digress so I will leave it there. 

 

LISTEN UP  

My point is if you are a song writer playing by ear when you get

stuck for an idea you are often forced to stumble on one. With theory you know how to get out of painting yourself in a corner which does indeed help but nothing is faster then alternate

tunings to give you truckloads of new ideas overnight.

Many tunings can be really demanding but not ...

 

DROP D 

Dropped D is probably the easy winner for the best alternate tuning. You only have one string to deal with and even with only one guitar it is a quick to retune between songs live. Better still there are a few basic chord shapes that are near instantly learnable and dead easy to apply. Learning a new tune or two on day one is highly probable.