Drop D Tuning Acoustic Guitar Lesson - Alternate Tunings For Guitar

Hey, guitar enthusiast Lauren Bateman here. In this lesson video, we're going to go over something really cool. It's an alternate tuning. It's called drop D tuning. Has a very cool sound to it. Let's get into the lesson video.

Real quick. Before we get into the lesson, I just want to say thank you to some of my YouTube supporters, Joan Milligan, Lawrence Walsh, thank you guys so much for your donations. Really appreciate you supporting me here on YouTube and on my website. Thanks so much. Let's get into the lesson video. So we're going to talk about drop D tuning. So standard tuning is what we usually tune our guitar to. So we have E, A, I forget D, G, B and E again. So this is what we would call standard tuning and what we're going to typically tune our guitar to. Now there are what we call alternate tunings and some of them have really unique sounds. And the one we're going to do in this video is called drop detuning. And it's really. Most of it is the same except the top note is going to be tuned down to a D. Now the cool thing is you have a D note here.

So you would just tune down.

There it is. Hear that? Two Ds. Now if you can't do that by ear, I have a built in tuner here. I'm even just a little here, sharp here, you can check with the tuner. But it's basically you have D on the top. So instead of E on the top we have D, A.

D, G, B, E. So what this allows you to do, we're going to go over chords in a little bit, but what this allows you to do is play a D chord and have this really warm bass note come through on the top.

So really, really cool sound. Some songs that would use this would be like Foo Fighters, Everlong, Dear Prudence by the Beatles or even I think Ohio by Neil Young is another song that uses drop D. It's very, very common, has a great sound to it. But there's one little caveat. While we can play a lot of our chords the same, some will need to change. So for D chords, so the D and the D minor, you can now strum all six strings instead of just four strings, which is great. Like I said, you get this really rich tone to it. Now our C chord's the same. Any of our five string bar chords, those are the same. And any like A chord, A minor, those are the same. Where things we're going to have to make some adjustments is on the top. String, String. So, for example, this top string is no longer E, right? So we've changed the note by one tone or two semitones. So two notes. Okay. Hey, guys, I hope you're enjoying this lesson video so far. Don't forget to subscribe to my channel. This way you'll know when I release more cool lesson videos just like this. So let's get into the chords for drop D tuning. So we have to adjust our top string on our chord. So if you were going to play a G chord, usually you would play a G chord like this. Right.

If we play the G chord like that in drop D, it's not going to sound good. So the common solution is what we do is we move our first finger down to where our third finger was and we use our third finger on the top string. And oftentimes we will mute. You could leave the fifth string open, but a lot of times we will mute the fifth string. But if you want to leave it open, you can. So now we have a G chord, and it actually sounds like a G chord. So we have to make that adjustment because this note here. So when we play a normal G chord, this top note is usually G, but it's not G now. Now it's F. So we have to make an adjustment. So the G now sits here. So this is how you would play a G chord. Very cool. Now something like E minor, E minor, we usually have the open string on the top. So E minor is different. You just put the first finger on the top string. So now that's how you're going to play an E minor chord. We've had to adjust a couple strings. The E major chord, we're going to have to use our second, second, third, and fourth fingers. And we're going to have our first. So we're going to use four fingers instead of three. So that will be your E major chord. Okay. And if you wanted to do like an E major 7, you'd lift up your pinky.

So that's another one here. Now another cool thing with these types, this type of tuning is for power chords. Makes power chords really simple. So usually when you play power chords, you typically have this shape here where you have the first finger and then the. The third and fourth fingers. Or if you do a bar, you have your other finger here. The great thing about power chords now is you just need one finger.

Great. A lot. I mean, you'll see this probably more in an electric guitar in kind of metal music, but a lot of them.

But it makes playing power chords really easy. So particularly on this, if you're just using this top string. So that's another. Drop D is used a lot in kind of like heavy rock music. But those are some of the adjustments that you can make for chords like G or E or E minor, which are pretty popular chords that are going to pop up. So if you were going to play a chord progression, you'd have D.

You could have your C. Then if I was going to go to E minor.

And then we have our G.

And then back to D. You can hear that beautiful sound, that D note on the bass. Another cool thing about drop D tuning for picking, because now you're hitting 2D strings. Sounds super cool if you think of a song like Treetop Flyer. But I think that's in double drop D. But if you hear that, you almost think of Treetop Flyer. But that is. That is a cool song that kind of has that feel and that's that sound to it. So play around with this drop D tuning. Go check out maybe some of those songs that I mentioned earlier. Make sure to, like, comment and subscribe to the channel here. This way you guys can see, when I release new videos just like this, YouTube's gonna pop up a couple more videos over here. Go and check those out. I hope to see you guys in another lesson video.