A most peculiar guitar tuning, the open Dmaj7sus2

The D F# C# E A E tuning - a starter kit.

As a young musician recovering from tendonitis, I devised a booklet which I noted alternate guitar tunings and their chord diagrams. This was to fight boredom while I couldn’t play guitar, and also to discover tunings with unusual chord voicings easier to play for my small hands.

When I moved to New Zealand twenty years ago, I lost that booklet, but I remembered that tuning. I was gifted a small classical guitar and kept it in the tuning. While I only played sporadically the last 20 years, I became so acclimated to the tuning that I stopped playing the regular tuning all together.

Its hard to say what drew me too it, or why I stayed with it so long. Was it the easy ability to use a major third between the two open bass strings? Was it the exotic chord voicings? Or was it something simpler - the slack strings made it easier to play?

One feature is that the major/minor chords are dead simple to play. Also, they can easily be augmented and embellished. Here are a few common chord patterns I use:

Major chord pattern:

This is a C Major. You can of course move this pattern anywhere up and down the guitar. Though the bass note might be stretched, you can skip the bass note and just play the barre to a get an inverted ‘major’ sound. It also makes for an easy chord to hold if you have a hand injury!

Use your index finger as a barre and your pinkie to play the bass note - no other fingers needed. If you just play the barre, you get a major chord inversion which is even simpler!

Minor chord pattern 1:

This is an E minor. Again, just move this pattern around to find other minor chords. The tight cluster makes it easier to hold for small hands.

This minor chord works a charm with progressions using the previous major barre chord.

Minor chord pattern 2:

An A minor; as before, just move the pattern up or down to find your chord. Similar to the major chord above, just use your index finger as a barre.

Again, a simple barre chord for a minor chord. This one is great because you can keep the index finger the same place to move to its relative major chord!

You can experiment with the chords by using open strings, or embellishing with simple hammer-ons or pull-offs. In short, you can do anything you usually do with the standard E A D G B E tuning. In addition, its sounds unusual - though to my ears its no longer exotic!

Give it a try, let me know what you think. If you are in a creative funk, this tuning might bring forth some creative and novel ideas for your songwriting.

Below is one of the first songs I wrote in this tuning. It’s a short instrumental, called Toccoa:

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All screenshots of chords are from the Oolimo app.