How to Tune Your Guitar to Drop D

Video Transcript

"Hi this is Sandy Poltarack and I'm here on behalf of gladesguitars.com. Hi in this clip we're going to work on learning to tune in what we call drop D tuning. Remember the normal tuning, standard tuning is E, A, D, G, B, and E and you can remember elephants and dogs get big ears. The only thing you really need to do to get to drop D tuning is to lower this low sounding string down a whole step so normally it's an E and I'm going to detune it until you get to the D note which is actually a matching pitch to the fourth string which is also a D. So listen to this. I went a little below and I'm going to come back up until I hear the vibrations disappear and I also have a tuner here which is going to help me visually see whether it's in tune or not and that's all it really takes. Everything else is staying the same. The only thing that's changing is the lowest sound string is going down even further to a D and that's it. Drop D tuning is great for when you're playing in the key of D because normally when you play the D major chord you can play the highest sounding strings without any problem. Sometimes we play the fifth string but normally the low E is not really part of the chord but now when you drop the D it gives you an extra octave, a lower down and it makes the chord a lot warmer and bigger sounding and whether you are playing D major or D minor, seventh, whatever you are doing it gives you a bigger sound and the guitar kind of opens up. It is also kind of fun to be able to play and that's it, that's drop D tuning. Thanks for tuning in today. I'm Sandy Poltarack. Thank you."