Alternate Tuning Chord Charts and writing original music

[warmwhisky]

I have been using alternate tunings for years due to my fascination with Nick Drake from a young age. I have used CGCFCE mostly out of all of them.

What I find most interesting about them is how you are much more likely to come up with something original and exciting. This is mostly because not so many people use them. Which is not a surprise as there is very little documentation for some of the more obscure tunings.

Over the years I have been remembering (in my head) different chord shapes for CGCFCE. This works OK, but I can only play these remembered chord shapes. I could not play you a C Major etc.

I have been working on a MySQL database for this purpose for the last few months. I have created Major, Minor, Seven and Minor Seven chords, A through to G on over 90 guitar tunings. 28 chords per tuning. What I have found most surprising about these chord charts is I can actually visualise a tuning for the first time in my life! I can see just how obscure or within reach the tuning is. I think this could actually spawn some great music to the right people. check out any guitar tuning on http://www.gtdb.org/tuner/bddddd/#Guitar_Chords and scroll to the chord chart. There are also Major and Minor Pentatonic scales for every tuning.

I hope this can spawn some new & original music, raise awareness for alternate tunings and bring them within reach of more guitarists.  

[FC]

I like the alternate tuning idea but to be honest I don't understand your website. Would you care to elaborate how it works?

[warmwhisky]

Thanks for your feedback FC. Please could you let me know what parts you found to be confusing. I have been developing this website intensely over the last few months so I guess I know it pretty well which leads to me to believe I may be making it a little complex to understand the layout or structure??

Currently there are 92 tunings in the database. Each tuning has its own page for example DADGAD is here gtdb.org/tuner/dadgad. DADGAD  has 28 chord maps, 2 scales a handful of normal chords, a list of songs that use DADGAD, a diagram of where the DADGAD notes are in comparison to EADGBE (Tuning Map) and a reference tuner so you can tune by ear of listen to the tuning. All tunings are found in the left side bar and can be sorted by either the notes of the tuning or the tuning name.

I hope this makes sense.

[GPW]

WW, I find that Amazing and Most Informative   (THANKS !!!)   Quite a resource !!!  ...  and great for my lap steel too ... 

[warmwhisky]

Thanks a lot GPW!

It has taken a long time to work it out and I am pretty excited about the possibilities it has. I have also written it in such a way so that I can scale it up easily. I can easily add chords and scales to the array and even extend the fret board on the chords maps to show an entire fret-board of chords with a few lines of code.

Its been live now for a week or so. Once I have a better understanding how it performs and get enough feedback of what people expect or would like to see it do, I will scale it accordingly.

[GPW]

WW, I think anyone that wanted to explore the possibility of alternate tunings  , could spend several years just trying them all out ...   It’s very thorough !!!    Well Done !!!

[FC]

I see now, it wasn't loading correctly on my VM Ubuntu. This machine is very slow so I don't think it was your site.

[Sven]

I've been using "D-Standard" since I started playing, and always thought it was unique to me (who else turns everything a down whole step?). I just didn't like the feel of standard tuning (too rigid), and I played around with other tunings, but nothing sounded right. Another tuning I sometimes use is C^#, especially when I try to play Black Sabbath.

[darkside]

wow, this was always one of my problems with trying to use alot of chords in different tunings, especially DADGAD.

[son of gumby]

using opera, the ad that appears in the beginning never completely loads. the page goes dark, and you can't click on anything. it seems to work ok with ff though.

[sonofaglitch]

I've been using "D-Standard" since I started playing, and always thought it was unique to me (who else turns everything a down whole step?). I just didn't like the feel of standard tuning (too rigid), and I played around with other tunings, but nothing sounded right. Another tuning I sometimes use is C^#, especially when I try to play Black Sabbath.

Ive got a guitar on Cstd and an accoustic on Dstd. My main guitar is estd though. I do prefer tight strings.

[Gilks]

Wow man, this is actually a HUGE help. I never used alternate tunings except for things like Drop D, Drop C, etc. simply because I didn't want to waste time learning chords and scales all over again just to make things like slide guitar easier or play in a certain style that I wouldn't even use at a gig. This changes a lot! Thank you very much man.