Open D Tuning for Slide Guitar

Video Transcript

"Hi! My name is John Armstrong with expertvillage.com. I am a professional guitar instructor and today we will be discussing slide guitar and slide guitar techniques. Another type of open tuning that we commonly use is an open D tuning. Once again we are tuning the six strings of the guitar to the notes of the D chord, the D’s, F sharps and A’s. So we will start off by starting with our low E string and tuning it down to a D. I typically use the open D strings as a reference to do that with. We’re tuning it an octave lower. The A string, we can leave it alone, it is our fifth, it is one of the notes of the D triad. The D string obviously we can leave it alone, it is our tonic, it is our root note. For G we are going to have to change that one, we have to tune it down a half step to step to an F sharp note. Numerous ways you could do that, I could may be use the ninth fret of the A string, trying to get the sound in unison and then just kind of adjusting it with my ear. The B string, we are going to tune down a whole step to an A. I am going to use the open A string and tune it a couple of octaves low and last but not the least the high E string we can tune down the whole step to D and that is your open D tuning. It is again real nice and when you are playing slide guitar when in the key of D obviously."