Why Drop Tune?
Well, for one thing it makes life darn site easier.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could play guitar with just 1 finger ?
How fast would you have learned your first riff ?
Using power chords in drop tuning makes it almost as simple as that.
Drop tuning also speeds up your guitar playing as you do not need to move three or four fingers from one position to another.
Take A Look At The Standard Tuning & Drop C Tuning Examples Below
STANDARD TUNING_E A D G B E
DROP C_C G C F A D
Example #2
Do you see how we reduce the need for three fingers to just one?
You could actually play your riff using just one finger, but of course using the others will speed up your playing, and lets not forget we don’t want our admirers to think its that simple do we?
What is Drop D & How To Tune Using Drop C
When you use tab you will often see “tuning 1 step down from drop D”.
Drop D tuning is taking the thickest string (BOTTOM E) and tuning it down one step to D. So that your tuning is now D A D G B E
An easy way to do this is make the 7th fret of the bottom E string (which is B) sound the same as the second thickest (A) plucked open. Its as simple as that. Drop D is popular in Metal. But if you want to tune to Drop C, you will need to lower all the strings down another step.
Drop C tuning is lowering the top five strings one tone but the thickest bottom E string by two tones. This can all be done by tuning the guitar to itself, but I honestly feel that if you are into your guitar this much you should invest in a digital chromatic tuner.
i.e.
STANDARD TUNING_E A D G B E
DROP D_D A D G B E
DROP C_C G C F A D
So you can see that Drop D and Drop C tuning help make playing power chords easier. With traditional chord shapes you are often required to spread your fingers over two or more frets. this is often hard to do and slows down your playing. Tuning to Drop C or Drop D will allow you to play power chords on the thickest three strings by playing the same fret on all three strings.
There are many ways to tune your guitar, the two above are the most popular methods. You can also tune your guitar to a particular chord, so that when you play all the open strings you are already playing a chord. This method is sometimes favoured by players using a bottleneck slide.
To end just a couple of words of warning.
First if you re-tune you may have to re-learn, as you have moved the notes on the fret board. Second altering the tuning may affect the neck of your guitar so you will need to keep an eye on this and maybe make the occasional adjustment with the truss rod.
Your Friend in music
Teejay O’Neill
