When writing a song, the knowledge of acoustic guitar tuning is very important as it has a very major impact on the sound of the song. Let's face it, in the music world, you only have 7 notes and semi-tones of those 7 notes to work with which give you a total of 12 notes, and to the untrained eye that number can seem very overwhelmingly small.
Considering the number of songs being produced every year and having been made since the beginning of time, you begin to wonder, with only 12 notes, why doesn't every song sound the same as the next one? The key factor to understand about the surprising originality coming from just 12 notes is the placement and order of the notes being put together. That placement is very essential to sounding new and different from everything else. Acoustic guitar tuning play a key role in that placement:
Types of acoustic guitar tuning!
There are many types of acoustic guitar tuning in the music world, ranging from orthodox standards to outrageous and visionary inventions of creative minds. The Standard acoustic guitar tuning is EADGBE (The notes each string is set to from the thickest string to the thinnest) which is the most popular kind of acoustic guitar tuning that can be heard in most of the songs we hear today. The name itself is self defining as it is the standard set for all instruments to be tuned in to be able to work together in an orchestra.
Other types of tunings include the Open Chord tuning in which you tune your acoustic guitar to an open chord, which is predominantly used in slide guitar music and classical acoustic pieces as it doesn't require a lot of chord formations and gives the player freedom while helping him/her to use the guitar like an orchestra with the lower bass strings working as the bass cleft and the upper treble strings working as the treble cleft.
There is the Drop D tuning which is mostly used in rock and metal music and helps the player play chords faster as it doesn't require a lot of difficult finger positions to form chords.
And there are many other acoustic guitar tunings like the ones mentioned above which borderline more on the unorthodox and aren't seen in a lot of commercial music but result in very original and fresh sounding songs and tunes.
What are the prospects and implementations of acoustic guitar tuning?
The prospects of the possibilities of sounds you can achieve in each acoustic guitar tuning is immense as the placement of the 12 notes in each acoustic guitar tuning can result in a lot of different kind of sounds.
Standard acoustic guitar tuning is the most common out of all the tunings and can be heard in all genres of music. Drop D as mentioned above is mostly used in rock and metal music but it is not limited to it as there have been many serene classical pieces of music with those tunings. The same goes for open chord and all other kinds of acoustic guitar tunings, they open a broader horizon for the player and the way to use it is completely dependant on the player.
Where to find out and learn about acoustic guitar tuning?
When learning how to play the acoustic guitar, one of the very basic teachings given to the student are on how to tune their guitar. As the music industry grows and ventures in the more uncharted territories, the budding musicians are becoming more aware of the sonic possibilities of their instruments. Because of that, teaching mediums have had to keep up with the growing demand of knowledge.
So you can learn more about alternate and standard acoustic guitar tuning and how to manipulate them from your local guitar teachers, online lessons, instructional videos and instructional books, the sources of information are limitless and so are the musical possibilities
