Re: Alternate Guitar Tunings (OT)

[Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com>]

My favorite altered tuning and a list of resources for many more down 
below:

I'm just in love with D A D E on a four string fretted or fretless bass.

This sus2 tuning gives beautiful Lydian bar chords and lends itself to 
really simple
sus chord diadic and triadic chord shapes.

I'm just over using the hell out of it in the last year.

I even tuned my twelve string steel acoustic to this tuning

D   A   D   E   D   D  

This gives a full   8 strings of D so the open tuning stuff just sounds 
like a shimmering
god.   It's just beautiful......................

I'm not a guitarist , but  I play one on stage occasionally, by the 
way........not in my brother, or Ted's league by any stretch
of the imagination,   but I love the though of using the guitar as 
almost an open tuned Zither.

I love that David Crosby once had a D D D D D D  open tuned guitar on a 
tune.

I even have two tribes at www.tribe.net called    Weird Guitar  (for 
people using guitars in unusual, exotic and creative
'out of the box' ways)   and Weird Zither  (for people doing the same 
thing..............I have a Guitar as Zither thread
on the Weird Zithers tribe you might want to check out.

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I was fortunate to record a few records and to tour with the wonderful 
Alternate Tuning guru,  Britain's Martin Simpson
for a while and he hipped me to a lot of cool things.    He has a theory 
that there are five basic simple chord shapes and that, once learned,
can be morphed around on any number of altered tunings for a guitar to 
produce really beautiful results.

I can highly recommend his book on Alternate Tunings
and this book/DVD package called
*MARTIN SIMPSON TEACHES ALTERNATE TUNINGS*
http://www.guitargallerymusic.com/shopping.php?do=display_product&item_number=AL20415

Additionally,  I've enjoyed these books excellent books by Mark Hanson
*THE ALTERNATE TUNINGS GUIDE FOR GUITARS  *(one of those cool ,  fit in 
the guitar case slender books)
and his larger
*THE COMPLETE BOOK OF ALTERNATE TUNINGS * by Mark Hanson
and a very cool picture chord book:
*ALTERNATE TUNINGS   PICTURE CHORDS*