Drop tuning your guitar is one of the best ways to mix things up and get a drastically different sound out of your instrument. Drop tuning is easy to do, and although you’ll have to compensate with different fingerings on your chords and scales, the sounds you can achieve make it well worth the effort.
To understand drop tuning, you must first know that standard tuning on a guitar is EADGBE. Drop tuning simply refers to “dropping” one or more of those strings to a lower tuning.
Of course, in some cases you might end up raising the tuning as well; there are after all hundreds of alternate tuning combinations that you can play with.
There are many more, and if you take the time to browse around on this site, you’ll find videos describing many of the tunings. Keep in mind though, that although there are a few drop tunings that are used very often, there are technically hundreds of drop tunings, so we definitely won’t have all of them listed on this site.
That said, I bet there is more than enough to keep you busy for a very long time! Grab your guitar, and get started drop tuning!
Using standard D tuning on your guitar is pretty simple, as far as alternate tunings go.
All you’re doing there is dropping each string by a whole tone down from standard E. D tuning is a favorite in a lot of different musical genres, and it really does sound great, both for electric guitar and acoustic guitar.
Standard D Tuning:
Here are the actual notes you need to tune to for standard D tuning: D G C F A D
This is also a starting point for other alternate tunings, such as drop C tuning.
So, without further ado, watch the RiffNinja explain how to tune your guitar to standard D!
The following lesson will show you how to play Drop D Tuning on your guitar. Drop D Tuning is really one of the simplest alternate tunings that you can do on the guitar, because you’re only changing a single note!
The string you need to change is the 6th string, the E string, and you’re dropping it a whole tone down to D.
That D bass note makes a sweet sounding drone if you’re playing in the key of D; there are many different things you can do with the drop D tuning.
Take a close look at how your chord fingerings change whenever you’re changing your tuning, because you can’t just use the same fingerings as before!
One of the simplest things you can do with the Drop D tuning is play power chords (which is just the I and the V) by just doing a mini-bar on the 5th and 6th strings anywhere. With the E dropped to D, this mini-bar creates a natural perfect fifth, which is a power chord.
Drop C Tuning on your guitar is a really cool drop tuning that works well for many genres of music including metal, blues and country. Drop C tuning is related to drop D tuning, but it is a full tone lower.
You end up with a really rich, low tone that sounds awesome.
If you want to tune your guitar to drop C tuning, here it is:
6 – 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1
C – G – C – F – A – D
If you’re getting a little bored of the same old sound of standard tuning, then why not try dropping your guitar down to C and check out this tuning?
Here’s a guitar lesson on Drop C Tuning:
There are many different bands that use Drop C Tuning on their guitars, and although we can’t list out everyone who has ever used that specific tuning, here’s a very short list of a few bands that are well known for using Drop C.
Dream Theatre
Mudvayne
System of a Down (SOAD)
Killswitch Engage
Breaking Benjamin
Metallica
Led Zeppelin
Steve Vai
Atreyu
John Mayer
Avenged Sevenfold
And many many more..!
Once you start looking for it, you’ll find groups using Drop C Tuning all over the place, it really is quite common!
