Standard tuning is a compromise. It’s a tuning designed to make the guitar as versatile as possible across as many musical contexts as possible — and it does that job well. But versatility comes at a cost. Certain voicings, intervals and resonances that are perfectly accessible on the guitar simply don’t exist in standard tuning. To find them, you have to retune.
Alternate tunings have been part of the guitar’s DNA since the beginning. Open G gave us the Rolling Stones. DADGAD gave us Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir and an entire tradition of Celtic and fingerstyle guitar. New Standard Tuning was Robert Fripp’s attempt to redesign the instrument from scratch. Each tuning opens a different door — a different set of sonic possibilities that standard tuning keeps firmly shut.
I was lucky enough to be taught by the late Eric Roche, who was one of the most highly regarded DADGAD players of his generation. As he told us, DADGAD was his standard tuning — he knew it so deeply that the concept of it being an “alternate” tuning had become meaningless. He also told us about going to Pierre Bensusan’s house in France for guitar lessons — and Pierre’s insistence on moving past the “jangly everything in D” stage to actually playing in other keys in DADGAD. That transition, from novelty to fluency, is what alternate tunings are really about.
Here are seven worth your time.
1. DADGAD
The most approachable alternate tuning for most guitarists, and a natural starting point. Tune your low E down to D, your G string down to an F#… wait, no — DADGAD leaves strings 2, 3 and 4 untouched (B, G, D) and retunes strings 1, 6 and 5 to create a Dsus4 open chord. The result is a tuning that sounds instantly musical in the key of D — almost anything you play resonates — while also being deep enough to spend years exploring.
Pierre Bensusan has spent a career proving that DADGAD is far more than a one-key novelty. The open strings create a shimmer that standard tuning simply can’t replicate, and the chord voicings available — particularly sus2 and sus4 shapes — have a harp-like quality unique to this tuning.
DADGAD Tuning Guide — PDF →
2. Open G — DGDGBD
The tuning of choice for slide guitar and one of the most historically significant in rock and blues. Open G gives you a G major chord across all six strings with no fretting — every open string resonates as part of the chord. Keith Richards famously removed his low E string and played in Open G with just five strings; Joni Mitchell used it as a launching pad for some of her most inventive chord work.
The voicings available in Open G have a fullness and resonance that standard tuning can’t match, particularly in the key of G. Slide players favour it because the consistent intervallic layout makes position shifts intuitive once the tuning is internalised.
Open G Tuning Guide — PDF →
3. Open E — EBEG#BE
Tune everything up to an open E major chord and you have one of the most powerful-sounding tunings on the guitar. Open E is the tuning behind some of the most iconic slide guitar recordings ever made — Derek Trucks plays almost exclusively in Open E, as did Duane Allman. The tuning has a bright, resonant quality that suits both slide and fingerpicking, and the open strings ring with a natural sustain that’s difficult to replicate elsewhere.
A word of caution: raising three strings by a full or half step puts additional tension on the neck. If you plan to use Open E regularly, a dedicated guitar or a setup check is worth considering.
Open E Tuning Guide — PDF →
4. Open C — CGCGCE
One of the richest, most resonant alternate tunings available — drop everything down and the guitar takes on an almost orchestral quality. Open C is associated with fingerstyle players and singer-songwriters who want maximum resonance and drone possibilities. Nick Drake used a variant of it; contemporary fingerstyle players like Tommy Emmanuel and Don Ross have explored its possibilities extensively.
The low C on the bottom string gives bass notes a depth that standard tuning can’t approach, and the open chord voicings — particularly major 7 and add9 shapes — have a lush, enveloping quality that’s unique to this tuning.
Open C Tuning Guide — PDF →
5. All Fourths — EADGCF
Most guitarists don’t realise that standard tuning is almost in all fourths — except for the B string, which sits a major third above the G rather than a fourth. All Fourths tuning corrects that anomaly by raising the B string to C and the high E to F. The result is a completely consistent intervallic layout across all six strings.
This matters practically: any scale, chord or arpeggio pattern you learn in one position works identically in every other position, with no adjustment needed for the B string. It’s the tuning favoured by jazz players who want maximum theoretical consistency — Stanley Jordan and Lenny Breau both explored variants of it. The tradeoff is that all your existing chord shapes change, which is disorienting at first and liberating once you adjust.
All Fourths Tuning Guide — PDF →
6. New Standard Tuning — CGDAEG
Robert Fripp’s redesign of the guitar from first principles. New Standard Tuning replaces the standard intervals with a system based largely on fifths — the same logic that underlies violin, viola and cello tuning — with a major third between the top two strings. The result is a tuning with a wider range than standard, a more consistent intervallic logic, and a completely different sonic character.
NST is not for the faint-hearted. Every chord shape, scale pattern and arpeggio you know is gone. You’re starting from scratch. But the payoff — a tuning designed around musical logic rather than historical accident — is significant for players willing to put in the time. Fripp used it as the foundation of his solo work and his Guitar Craft teaching for decades.
New Standard Tuning Guide — PDF →
7. Dobro — GBDGBD
The standard tuning for resonator guitar, and one of the most overtly bluesy-sounding of all alternate tunings. An open G chord without the low bass note, Dobro tuning sits at the heart of country, bluegrass and delta blues. If you have a resonator guitar or a slide setup, this is the natural starting point — the intervals are designed around the physical requirements of playing with a slide bar across all six strings.
Dobro Tuning Guide — PDF →
How to actually get the most out of them
The temptation with any alternate tuning is to search for chord boxes and scale patterns and start memorising them. In my experience this is the fastest route to putting the guitar back in standard tuning within the hour.
The approach that actually works — the one Eric Roche embodied and Pierre Bensusan insists on — is discovery. Use the raw reference material to find your own shapes, rather than learning shapes someone else defined. What you discover yourself becomes yours. What you memorise from a chart rarely sticks, and rarely sounds personal.
Each of the PDF guides above is built around this principle. You get the fretboard diagrams — around 40 chord and arpeggio types and 16 scales per tuning — but no pre-defined shapes to memorise. The discovering is up to you.
Read more about the discovery approach →
Get all six in one:
The Complete Alternate Tunings Reference Guide collects over 100 pages of diagrams for six of the above tunings (everything except Dobro) into a single PDF for $5.
Complete Alternate Tunings Reference Guide — $5 →