How to Drop Low E String: Guitar Harmonics

Video Transcript

"CASEY CORMIER: We can use certain harmonics to take us out of our typical standard tuning and give us something different. So, let's try it just a really simple one. This is drop D tuning. This is very popular and lots of rock and roll genres but also, you know just-just in general for some people. If you have a song that it's in the key of D major and you want to lower D on top but you don't have a bassist. This is a good way of getting it done. So, play open D, okay, and then you play the 12th fret harmonic. There is a 12th harmonic too of the E string, remember barely touching right on top. Now, you hear those aren't the same note at all. [HUMMING] We want them to sound the same so we're going to play D on the 12th fret harmonic here on E, go to the knob immediately. Okay, now we have a D as a bass string, okay. If we play D major cord now remember when we played D major before, we used the D as our bass to open D, well now, you can have the low D as a bass. See how much thicker that cord is but this also changes our other cords so we can't play a G major like this anymore, see, it doesn't work. What you have to do now is play with our third finger, the 5th fret of the A string is now-this is a G, see, D, F-D, E, F, G. [GUITAR PLAYING] Okay, so try experimenting with drop D tuning."