I’ve been fiddling around with a guitar for a few years now, trying to occasionally produce a few notes that sound mildly musical. Since I don’t usually get anything done unless I put immense pressure on myself, I decided to record myself playing and singing a song ("Daaru Desi" from the Bollywood movie Cocktail) that would force me to actually learn some chords.
There was only one minor hitch: the song is in G♯m.
The opening riff involves the chords G♯m and D♯, which have to be played with barre chords on the 4th and 6th frets of the guitar. This raised two issues:
I realized I had almost cracked the puzzle of the song. All that needed to be done was … what? Retuning the guitar so that the Am open position on the regular tuning became a G♯m instead, and the E open position on regular tuning became a D♯ instead. All I had to do was to tune every string a semitone flat. (This is apparently called the E♭ tuning.)
With this new tuning in place, I was able to play the song in the same key as the original—and was able to play it using mostly open position chords.
Now, if this were all, it wouldn’t make for a great story. What got me excited, though, was the fact that I had realized a deep truth about tuning and music:
In plain English, it sounds commonsensical: if you lower the tuning of a string, you’ll have to play at a correspondingly higher position on the string to produce the same frequency earlier. Hmm, now it doesn’t sound that exciting at all. Oh well.
There was only one minor hitch: the song is in G♯m.
The opening riff involves the chords G♯m and D♯, which have to be played with barre chords on the 4th and 6th frets of the guitar. This raised two issues:
- My barre chords are atrocious
- Whereas in the opening riff the D♯ is clearly lower than the G♯m, playing them on the 6th and 4th frets means the D♯ sounds higher than the G♯m.
I realized I had almost cracked the puzzle of the song. All that needed to be done was … what? Retuning the guitar so that the Am open position on the regular tuning became a G♯m instead, and the E open position on regular tuning became a D♯ instead. All I had to do was to tune every string a semitone flat. (This is apparently called the E♭ tuning.)
With this new tuning in place, I was able to play the song in the same key as the original—and was able to play it using mostly open position chords.
Now, if this were all, it wouldn’t make for a great story. What got me excited, though, was the fact that I had realized a deep truth about tuning and music:
an instrument’s finger positions contravary with its tuning
In plain English, it sounds commonsensical: if you lower the tuning of a string, you’ll have to play at a correspondingly higher position on the string to produce the same frequency earlier. Hmm, now it doesn’t sound that exciting at all. Oh well.
I'm excited! I realized the same today and found your post. It's quite logic if you think of the tuning as the base and the fret as the coordinate of a vector. Retuning the guitar corresponds simply to a change of base. Intriguing indeed!
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