This a thread for alternative tunings chat, because they’re the magical thing about guitar, right?
Today I’ve just written a song in DFCFAF and as far as I can work out, there’s no internet evidence of other songs in such a tuning, which amuses me a lot.
What alternate tunings are you using??
Also I love this Adrianne Lenker video about her tuning stuff -
If I’m having a moment of pretending to be Alan Sparhawk, I’ll mess around in open G (DGDGBD). Not particularly good at it but it’s fun to play around.
Also these are the Nick Drake tunings:
SUMMARY OF NICK DRAKE TUNINGS
Lowest string first. Suggested tuning includes
equivalents (i.e. cgcfce includes eg dadgdf#).
Standard: time has told me
river man
day is done
poor boy
things behind the sun
joey
mayfair
strange meeting II
bird flew by
leaving me behind
rain
blossom
BEBEBE: man in a shed
at the chime of a city clock
fly
northern sky
sunday
harvest breed
from the morning
time of no reply
CGCFCE: introduction
hazey jane I
hazey jane II
pink moon
which will
parasite
hanging on a star
BBDGBE: three hours
fruit tree
EADF#BE: cello song
thoughts of mary jane
EADEBE: road
voice from the mountain
GGDGBD: rider on the wheel
black eyed dog
tow the line
DADGBD: bryter layter
DADF#AD: one of these things first
EADGAE: clothes of sand
AADEBE: free ride
CGCFGE: place to be
xGDGBbD: made to love magic
DADGAD: far leys
I like to do a lazy version of open G by just going EGDGBE and keeping the Es muted, though I’ll usually end up going DGDGBE just to reduce any bad sounding accidents.
I get very nervous playing with the tuning of the high E as I used to break so many of them tuning it back up so I just try to keep that muted, although I’ve written some bits and pieces incorporating the (non open) high E string as it turns out.
Current tuning is EGDF#BD.
I’m too lazy to use unambiguous tunings as I just end up in all the nice places, but stuff like that is non-comital enough that you still have to play the tuning, rather than being played by the tuning.
EADF#C#E is lovely
I only played in altered tunings for about 10 years and tbh I sounded way better then 
The rain song was where it all started. Then nick drake. Need to buy a new acoustic.
I think I play in alternate tunings more than standard or drop D these days!
Recently been playing a lot in DADABE, which was used in lots of Pavement songs I think.
Also been enjoying Eb Bb Db F Bb Db and F# A# C# F A# C# which are tunings that GY!BE use all the time.
The Chord! app is really great for this kind of thing. Gives you loads of different tunings, chords, fingerings, scales etc and the ability to add your own, then enables you to do reverse chord searches with your weird tunings and store the chords as collections/songs for later reference. Highly recommended if - like me - you write something then immediately forget what tuning it was in or whatever.
Saw this recently as well, and some of the tunings this composer guy uses are really cool
That app looks great… But can’t seem to find it for Android, grrr!
Drop B
Says it’s on Google Play here, https://getchord.com/ but when I click the link to it it says URL not found. Not sure if that’s because I’m on iOS or not…
Nice forums
Have songs in CGCEGC (plus capo’d variations), CGCGGD, DADDAD and detuned versions of DADGAD. Strings are 52-10.
DADF#AD (often + a capo on the 5th fret, leaning slightly on the vibrato, old dead strings) is my main one currently, sometimes DADGAD.
Good for very for repetitive modal pseudo-american primitivism and - without the extra frets to get the scales right - not quite managing to imitate Mauritanian guitar playing (as refracted through Che Chen)
Love this.
Ive had my 12 string in FACGCE for a year because I can’t be bothered to tune it
fun innit. I’m definitely a ‘let the tuning play me’ type tho
Used to love alternate tunings because I learnt guitar with a tablature book of superunknown by soundgarden and there are a few songs on that with different tunings so I assumed that it was fairly normal to experiment with stuff like that.
I haven’t for years and years because it all got a bit of a faff but I have spare guitars that would mean it was a lot easier.
not played ‘Road’ for ages <3 fiddly, but you feel very proud of your fingers for doing it
thought ‘River Man’ was something other than standard? can’t remember tho
Joni
https://jonimitchell.com/music/tuningpatterns.cfm
hers are all written out with the top/lowest string’s note given, and then the fretting position to tune each other string
so for ‘Amelia’, it’s:
C75435, or CGCEGC
(altho these people use ‘x’ instead of the note itself, because these are patterns that can be applied to any root note)