How To Tune Your Guitar To Open G

If you want to play a chord without pressing on any strings with your left hand, you will be needing to learn about open tunings. To get an open tuning, you change your guitar from the standard E A D G B E to notes matching your desired chord. Some open tunings are used more often than others, and Open G is one of the most common ones, so I thought we could look at what we have to do to retune to Open G. Once you know how to tune to Open G you will be able to use it in blues playing, plus it is very much used in slide playing. If you want to hear what Open G sounds like, Travelling Riverside Blues by Led Zeppelin and Walking Blues by Eric Clapton are two fine blues examples, plus Brown Sugar and Jumpin’ Jack Flash are two of many Open G songs by The Stones. This tuning is also used in folk playing by artists like Joni Mitchell on The Circle Game.

Now, let’s tune our strings to Open G. Start by tuning your sixth string down while striking the open fourth string, which is the note D. Your aim is to have the sixth string a whole octave lower than the fourth string. Once you have those two bad boys growling in unison, tune your E string down to D. Even though you are tuning it down, once it is chiming with the fourth string, it will be an octave HIGHER than the fourth D string. Now go to the fifth string which in standard tuning is the note A. Tune this string down while picking the G string, the third string. When you are finished, it will be playing G an octave lower than the third string.

So now your guitar is tuned to D G D G B D. Another way of tuning to Open G is to tune your sixth string to G instead of D. Dobro players have also been known to use G B D G B D as their Open G tuning. Or you could only use five strings tuned to G D D B D like Keith Richards used to do. This way you ignore the sixth string totally.

Once you have experimented with Open G you may want to play around with other open tunings or maybe some “alternate” tunings like Drop D which is D A D G B E. Only your E string changes pitch in that tuning but it a D chord in Drop D speaks to the devil (or angel) inside you. To check your strings’ pitches, a keyboard would do fine but an electronic tuner with a visual “meter” to check you tuning is much better if you are new to changing your tunings.

Here is a YouTube guitar lesson on tuning to Open G plus some songs you can play . . .