Open tunings change the pitch of your open strings so they form a chord (or a suspended, ambiguous voicing) without fretting anything. This opens up droning, resonant playing styles that standard tuning makes difficult, and it’s central to blues slide guitar, Celtic fingerstyle, and a significant strand of folk and rock songwriting.
Standard guitar tuning (E A D G B E) is a compromise, it’s not based on any single chord, but arranged to make a wide range of chord shapes accessible with reasonable left-hand stretches. Open tunings take a different approach: tune the open strings to form a chord directly, and suddenly droning, slide playing, and certain chord voicings become dramatically easier, while others become harder or impossible without relearning shapes.
Players from Joni Mitchell to Keith Richards to Nick Drake to the Celtic fingerstyle tradition have built entire bodies of work around alternate tunings. An introduction to the most useful ones.
Why Use an Open Tuning
Droning and resonance. With an open tuning, you can fret a single note or simple shape while open strings ring as a sustained drone underneath, a texture that’s difficult to achieve in standard tuning without specific fingerstyle technique.
Slide guitar. Most blues and Americana slide playing uses open tunings (Open D, Open G, Open E) because a straight slide bar across all strings produces a clean, in-tune major chord. In standard tuning, a straight slide produces a dissonant cluster of notes.
New chord voicings. Alternate tunings put familiar intervals in unfamiliar places on the fretboard, often producing chord voicings and melodic ideas that wouldn’t occur to you in standard tuning. Many songwriters use open tunings specifically to escape habitual chord progressions.
Simplified chord shapes for certain styles. Some chords that require complex fingering in standard tuning become a simple one-finger barre in an open tuning.
The Most Useful Open Tunings
DADGAD
Tuning: D A D G A D (from low to high) From standard: Lower the 6th string (low E) to D, lower the 2nd string (B) to A, lower the 1st string (high E) to D. The 5th, 4th, and 3rd strings stay the same.
The open strings form a Dsus4 chord, suspended, neither major nor minor, giving an open, ambiguous, atmospheric quality. This is the tuning most associated with Celtic and folk fingerstyle guitar (Pierre Bensusan, Dáithà Sproule, and the broader Celtic guitar tradition). It’s also used in some Led Zeppelin material (Jimmy Page used DADGAD on “Kashmir” and other tracks) and contemporary fingerstyle players generally.
Why it’s useful: The suspended quality means it doesn’t commit to major or minor, making it flexible across modal and Celtic music. Melody lines fretted over the droning open strings produce the atmospheric, layered sound central to Celtic guitar.
Open D
Tuning: D A D F# A D From standard: Lower the 6th string to D, lower the 2nd string to A, lower the 1st string to D, lower the 3rd string (G) to F#.
The open strings form a full D major chord. This is one of the most common blues slide tunings: Bonnie Raitt, Keith Richards (in his alternate 5-string Open G context, see below), and countless blues and Americana slide players use Open D or its close relative Open E for slide work.
Why it’s useful: A slide laid flat across all six strings at any fret produces a clean major chord. Moving the slide up and down the neck produces chord changes without any left-hand fretting complexity, pure slide technique.
Open G
Tuning: D G D G B D From standard: Lower the 6th string to D, lower the 5th string (A) to G, lower the 1st string to D. The 4th, 3rd, and 2nd strings stay the same.
The open strings form a G major chord. This is Keith Richards’ signature tuning, usually played on a 5-string guitar with the low D string removed entirely (a Richards trademark), producing the loose, percussive rhythm guitar sound of classic Rolling Stones recordings. It’s also a standard blues and bottleneck slide tuning.
Why it’s useful: Like Open D, it’s built for slide playing. The specific voicing of Open G (with the octave G on top) produces a slightly different chord color than Open D, and many players prefer its particular resonance for blues and rock rhythm work.
Drop D
Tuning: D A D G B E From standard: Lower only the 6th string (low E) to D. Every other string stays standard.
Technically not a true “open” tuning (the open strings don’t form a complete chord), but it’s the most commonly used alternate tuning in rock and metal because it’s the simplest change, one string, and it enables power chords to be played with a single finger barre across the bottom three strings. This makes fast, heavy riffing significantly easier and adds a lower, heavier root note option.
Why it’s useful: Single-finger power chords speed up riffing significantly. The lower D root note adds weight to heavy rock and metal riffs without requiring a full tuning overhaul or a baritone guitar.
How to Change Tuning Safely
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Tune down gradually and recheck. Dropping string tension changes the overall tension balance on the neck slightly. After retuning, give the guitar a few minutes and recheck, strings often drift slightly as they settle into new tension.
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Use a tuner, not your ear, especially the first several times. Until you’re familiar with how an open tuning sounds, a clip-on or pedal tuner prevents errors that are harder to hear when you’re not used to the new pitches.
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Consider a dedicated guitar for frequent open tuning use. Constantly retuning between standard and an alternate tuning stresses strings and can affect intonation over time. Players who use alternate tunings regularly often keep a second guitar permanently tuned to their preferred alternate tuning.
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Lighter strings help with lower tunings. Tunings that lower overall pitch (Open D, DADGAD on the bass strings) reduce string tension, which can make strings feel slightly looser or buzzier. Some players compensate with a slightly heavier string gauge for guitars kept primarily in lower tunings.
Getting Started
The easiest entry point for most players is Drop D, only one string changes, and the payoff (easy power chords) is immediate and useful for rock and metal playing. From there, DADGAD is the natural next step for fingerstyle, folk, and Celtic-influenced playing, and Open D or Open G for blues slide work.
Don’t feel obligated to memorize new chord shapes immediately. Start by playing simple melodies and drones over the open strings, get a feel for how the tuning sounds and resonates, and chord shapes will follow naturally with exploration.
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