Should You Tune Down Your Guitar Video Lecture - The Ultimate Guitar Course

there are two things I have a hard time
tuning down my enthusiasm for dinosaur
documentaries and guitar strings but in
the spirit of wisdom and education we're
talking about down tuning guitars and
we're going to use an acoustic guitar as
an example because I think you get to
hear the total difference is easier but
all this information can also be used on
an electric guitar so basically a guitar
is tuned normally to standard tuning or
East and or tuning what that means is
the strings go EA D G B e now if you
tuned down all you're doing is sometimes
tuning all of them down relative to each
other so the example we're going to use
right now is going to be tuning down to
D standard so that means is my East
Wrangham has now been tuned down to a D
my a string has been tuned down to a G D
string has been tuned down to a see the
g string has been tuned down to an F the
B string has been tuned down to an A and
the E string the high E string has also
been tuned down to a d ok so everything
has moved down relative to each other
and there are a couple reasons we might
want to do this number one I think is if
you're trying to accommodate a singers
vocal range and maybe playing I just
kind of standard open chords like a C to
G a minor or something is a little too
high for them to sing with and they just
need to be down a little bit you can
kind of tune your guitar down without
having to change the chords now you can
also do that just kind of like to
accompany a guitar player like if you're
playing a C chord and it's too hard for
them you could be like ok I'm just gonna
play a tune to down from a C and make it
a b-flat and then just play a B flat
chord but you might have to play it in a
different part of the neck
so what down tuning allows us to do is
play the same open chords but just to
get a lower sound so for example if you
play E major Florida this is technically
now a D major chord played a G major
chord
technically now an F major chord so on
and so forth okay now there are a lot of
different reasons besides just trying to
fit a vocal range into an accompaniment
type setting it actually drastically
well sometimes it can be dressy
depending the guitar affects the tone of
the guitar itself because if you think
about it once you slack in the strings
like all the strings are going to be
loosened it's going to lose some of the
tension so what it also could do is if
you have like a guitar that has a really
high action and it's kind of whole hard
to hold the strings down down tuning can
really help with that some guitar
players who have famously tuned down and
be like Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray
Vaughan a lot of times they would tune
down a half step so they would play in
what c-flat standard again we kind of
skip that we just went from e all the
way down to D another thing is you might
notice that you have and a more
aggressive heavier sound a lot of metal
guys love to down tune right we're gonna
do some audio examples in a second but
basically on an acoustic guitar you're
gonna hear that there is definitely a
tonal difference some metal players and
even in other genres will tune down to C
standard which is really really I'm
pretty far down pretty dress ly far down
and if you do that you might actually
need to get the set up of your guitar
adjusted I would say most guitars can
handle tuning down a full step but if
you tune down to full steps you might
actually need to compensate for from
just the amount of select that's going
on now another thing that you can do is
if you're down tuning you release some
of that tension you can actually use
thicker strings like right now these are
just twelve on an acoustic guitar but
like if you were to play like tens on an
electric guitar and you like the feel of
tens but you want something like super
down tune you could tune down to see it
and then get your guitar set up for
twelve and a lot of people would say
that that feels like a set of tens even
though the strings are thicker there's a
lot of kind of different points of view
on that but this is something that you
want to try out for yourself a lot of
guitar players like the feel of heavier
strings they kind of feel like they can
bend easier also to again if you think
of like a slackened guitar string with
the release of some of the tension from
standard tuning
you will notice that you can kind of
bend strings maybe farther than you
normally otherwise could have so it
almost does feel like a lighter gauge of
strings even if you still have heavier
set strings so accompanying a vocal
range just getting a different timbre of
the sound of the instrument it kind of
the the downside is sometimes especially
on a cushy tire it can make it seem a
little fuzzier if you really drive the
strings some people kind of like the
sound of that some people don't like the
sound of that it's really just up to you
that's like to taste for sure but yeah
just a company vocal range getting a
different tone out of your instrument
being able to bend strings easier and
actually kind of having more options for
different thicknesses in gauges of
strings are all just different reasons
to down tuna so with all that being said
we're gonna kind of just hear the
difference of the exact same chords one
in standard one down tuned now for the
down tuned sound examples I'm gonna have
a capo on the 2nd fret because what
that's doing if I'm playing a capo on
the 2nd fret E major chord with a tune
down a full step that's giving me an E
major right so if you see a capo on it
you're gonna know that it's going to be
the down conversion no Capo's is gonna
be e standard supposed to get to it
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so definitely what I noticed was
action-wise it is considerably easier to
play if it's tuned down a step even with
the capo on but there is kind of like
what I would consider an acceptable
level of buzz enos that kind of gets
added to some of the chords but anyways
if you have any questions please hit me
up on Instagram Twitter or the comment
section or website and I will talk to
you guys as soon as I can thanks a lot