Among

alternative tunings Guitar tunings are the assignment of pitches to the open strings of guitars, including acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and classical guitars. Tunings are described by the particular pitches that are made by notes in Western music. B ...

for the guitar, an open G tuning is an

open tuning Guitar tunings are the assignment of pitch (music), pitches to the open string (music), open strings of guitars, including acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and classical guitars. Musical tuning, Tunings are described by the particular pitc ...

that features the G-major

chord Chord may refer to: * Chord (music), an aggregate of musical pitches sounded simultaneously ** Guitar chord a chord played on a guitar, which has a particular tuning * Chord (geometry), a line segment joining two points on a curve * Chord ( ...

; its open notes are selected from the notes of a G-major chord, such as the G- major triad (G,B,D). For example, a popular open-G tuning is :D–G–D–G–B–D (low to high). An open-G tuning allows a G-major chord to be strummed on all six strings with neither fretting of the left hand nor a capo. Like other open tunings, it allows the eleven major chords besides G major each to be strummed by

barring Barring may refer to: * Barring (music), a guitar playing technique * Barring engine, forms part of the installation of a large stationary steam engine * Barring order, an order used by a court to protect a person, object, business, company, sta ...

at most one finger on exactly one fret. Open tunings are common in

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

and folk music, and they are used in the playing of

slide Slide or Slides may refer to: Places * Slide, California, former name of Fortuna, California Arts, entertainment, and media Music Albums * ''Slide'' (Lisa Germano album), 1998 * ''Slide'' (George Clanton album), 2018 *''Slide'', by Patrick Glees ...

and bottleneck guitars. RussianSevenStringTuning

Repetitive open-G tunings are used by Russian guitars,

Dobro guitar Dobro is an American brand of resonator guitars, currently owned by Gibson and manufactured by its subsidiary Epiphone. The term "dobro" is also used as a generic term for any wood-bodied, single-cone resonator guitar. The Dobro was originally ...

s, and

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

s. They repeat three open-string notes. The repetitive open-G tuning :D–''G''–B–D–''G''–B–D : is used by the Russian guitar, which has seven strings tuned mostly in triads, in contrast to other guitars, which are tuned mostly in fourths.

Dobro Dobro is an American brand of resonator guitars, currently owned by Gibson and manufactured by its subsidiary Epiphone. The term "dobro" is also used as a generic term for any wood-bodied, single-cone resonator guitar. The Dobro was originally ...

s use a full six-string tuning with a bottom G: G–B–D–G–B–D, low to high. The two lowest strings are, accordingly, tuned three semitones higher for the lowest string (from E up to G) and two semitones higher for the second-lowest string (from A up to B) while the highest string is tuned two semitones lower (from E down to D), relative to standard tuning. Five-string

's standard tuning is also an Open G: g–D–G–B–D, where the lower case "g" denotes the highest-pitched "

drone string In music, a drone is a harmonic or monophonic effect or accompaniment where a note or chord is continuously sounded throughout most or all of a piece. A drone may also be any part of a musical instrument used to produce this effect; an archai ...

", physically located next to (above) the lowest-pitched string, the first upper case "D".

Overtones of the fundamental note G

Bad Company guitarist

Mick Ralphs Michael Geoffrey Ralphs (born 31 March 1944, Herefordshire) is an English musician, vocalist and songwriter, who was a founding member of rock bands Mott the Hoople and Bad Company. Career Ralphs began his career as a teenager, playing with b ...

has used another open-G tuning, which listed the initial six overtones of the G note, :G–G–D–G–B–D : for "Hey Hey" and while writing the demo of "Can't Get Enough". The overtones tuning G–G–D–G–B–D was used by

Joni Mitchell Roberta Joan "Joni" Mitchell ( Anderson; born November 7, 1943) is a Canadian-American musician, producer, and painter. Among the most influential singer-songwriters to emerge from the 1960s folk music circuit, Mitchell became known for her sta ...

for "Electricity", "For the Roses", and "Hunter (The Good Samaritan)". Truncating this tuning to G-D-G-B-D for his five-string guitar, Keith Richards plays this overtones-tuning on The Rolling Stones' "

Honky Tonk Women "Honky Tonk Women" is a song by the English rock band the Rolling Stones. It was released as a non-album single on 4 July 1969 in the United Kingdom, and a week later in the United States (although a country version called "Country Honk" was ...

", " Brown Sugar" and "

Start Me Up "Start Me Up" is a song by the English rock band the Rolling Stones from their 1981 album ''Tattoo You''. Released as the album's lead single, it reached number one on Australian Kent Music Report, number two in Canada, number two on the ''Bi ...

". American rock band Eagles of Death Metal, uses this tuning for the majority of their songs.

Notes

References

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PDF

Overtones of the fundamental note G

See also

Notes

References

Further reading