Alternate & Drop Tunings
A tuning is just six choices — the pitches of the open strings — and standard is only one way to make them. Retune a string or two and chords you could never finger become one-finger shapes, open strings drone under everything, and the same fretboard turns into a different instrument.
The Core Idea
Alternate tunings come in three families. Dropped tunings lower just the bass string(s) so power chords flatten into one-finger barres. Open tunings make the open strings a full major chord, so one barre (or one slide) anywhere is a new chord. Modal tunings like DADGAD make a suspended sound that is neither major nor minor — all drone, all atmosphere. The trade is always the same: standard's even flexibility for one gesture made effortless.
Tuning Explorer
One string down a whole step, a whole new instrument: power chords become one-finger barres, riffs get faster and heavier, and the low D growls a 5th below standard’s lowest grip.
Open strings spell: the bottom three strings make a bare D5. Hear it in: Everlong — Foo Fighters · Killing in the Name — RATM · Heart-Shaped Box — Nirvana
The whole point in three shapes: every power chord is now one finger laid flat across the bottom three strings.
More Tunings Worth Knowing
| Tuning | Strings (low → high) | Why you'd use it |
|---|---|---|
| Double Drop D | D A D G B D | Drop D on both E strings — “Cinnamon Girl”, “Going to California”. |
| Drop B | B F# B E G# C# | Drop C’s heavier sibling for 6-string metal. |
| Open A | E A E A C# E | Open G’s shape a whole step up — Delta blues, “In My Time of Dying”. |
All of these (plus 7- and 8-string tunings) are available in the Fretboard Explorer and Scale Visualizer.
Before You Retune
Scale and chord shapes you memorized assume standard tuning — in a new tuning the notes under your fingers change, but intervals and keys work exactly the same. Theory transfers; grips don't.
A capo moves every string up the same amount — same shapes, new key. A tuning changes the relationships between strings — new shapes entirely. Different tools for different jobs (and they combine: Open D + capo 2 = Open E).
Tuning down makes strings looser and darker; heavier gauges restore the feel (metal players in Drop C rarely use standard 9s). Tuning UP (Open E, Open A) adds tension — many players prefer the open-D/G shapes with a capo instead.
Explore any tuning, note by note
The Fretboard Explorer maps all 14 tunings across the whole neck, and the Scale Visualizer builds scale patterns in any of them.