Why are there different tunings on the guitar

Hey everyone! So today, I’m going to share with you all why there are different tunings on the guitar. 

Before we get into it, let’s have our moment of silence. 

At this time, I would like all of us to take a moment of silence and pray to God to help us to follow him throughout all of our lives. Take a minimum of 5 minutes and pray for this. 

Now back to the show

Different tunings

So originally, there was one tuning on the guitar. Which is the standard, E,A,D,G,B,E.

But what happened was that in the 60s there was a guitarist named Tommy Iommi who had cut off the tips of his fingers on accident. 

What happens is that he was at work and he had an accident with his hands. 

However, he refused to give up on the guitar. 

And the guitar actually hurt him so much to play in standard tuning. However, he made a theory that if he loosened the tension of the guitar strings, then it would hurt his fingers less. 

So, he dropped tuned his guitars. 

And till this day, he still plays with drop strings. 

Tommy Iommi is the guitarist for Black Sabbath. 

I know that’s not a Christian band, but that’s the story behind drop tuning guitars. 

Now flash forward to today, drop tuning serves in a similar function as changing keys for a vocalist. 

What happens is that if we were to drop tune our guitars, it could actually fit a song better for a vocalist than if we were to stay in standard. 

I’ll give an example. 

Everyone knows that if you put a Capo on the 2nd fret, and you play G chords, you’re in the key of A.

However, that high tonality and those high pitched chords don’t always sound the best especially when the artist already has a high pitched voice. 

When you’re playing a song, there needs to be a contrast in the instruments and the voice. Otherwise, it will sound good, but it will sound too much like the voice and the instruments are crowding the same space. 

I know that doesn’t make sense to non-mixing engineers but it makes sense when you study music. 

And if you have a really high voice, try and do this, Find a key that is comfortable and just play really high on the guitar and sing at the same time, you’ll find that your voice and your guitar are competing for the spotlight.

If you have a low voice, do the other way around, play the guitar and sing at the lower registers, you’ll find that you’ll be competing for the spotlight as well. That’s why we need to sing higher when the guitar is lower and lower when the guitar is higher.

That’s not a hard and fast rule, but it helps to carve out the space, especially in an acoustic setting. 

Now, with all these different tunings that there are: Drop D, Eb, A, DADGAD, you know that you’re supposed to learn different finger patterns as well. 

You choose which one you want to roll with, but remember that standard tuning works fine in a lot of situations. 

Broadcast

I sure hope that I have been an inspiration and a hope to you all. Please remember to pray, read your bible, go to church, and love God above all else. Like, comment, share, subscribe, and I will see you all next time.

If you want to go to heaven, then believe in Jesus and you will go to heaven. (John 3:16)

Thank you all for listening in on this blog post. 

German Gonzalez, signing out!