For the past several months, I’ve been playing slide guitar in standard tuning. I knew about open tuning, and had seen my friend Howard Hall play that way, but I didn’t want to haul an extra guitar to gigs or retune mid-show. Standard tuning worked okay, but it was clunky. It meant careful muting and fingerpicking.
The real problem showed up in a song I recently wrote with slide. Every time I moved from the chords to the slide, the song lost its momentum.
My guitar instructor suggested open tuning, in this case open E. Wow. What an improvement!
I haven’t mastered it by any stretch, but slide is so much easier this way. I can use a pick, the sound is much fuller, and the song keeps its energy from start to finish.
Yes, I may need to bring an extra guitar or retune during a break. To me, that’s a small price for such a big improvement. And I certainly have enough guitars to make it work. 😄
I’ll keep you posted on how it goes!