Archive for July, 2007

I recently re-strung my baritone acoustic guitar with a Nashville tuning. Imagine taking a regular guitar tuning, and raising the E, A, D and G strings up by one octave. It’s effectively using the “higher” strings in each pair of a 12-string guitar’s 6 courses.

Thanks to DR Strings, my guitar now has a beautiful high-end shimmer that works well for chords. I plan to use it (at jam sessions with friends) and see how it works with other (normally-tuned) guitars.

I have more fun playing the guitar in a complementary role, by using altered tunings, different chords or different approaches. When you have a bunch of guitarists all playing the same chord in the same way, there’s nothing original. And where’s the fun in that? But if you listen to music that has more than a few layers of acoustic guitar, you’ll usually find that the guitarist(s) will play each track in a different way, to avoid the dreaded “sameness” and give the whole piece a richer tone. Sometimes it means using a different chord (barred rather than open), a different tuning (Nashville versus standard), or simply a different strumming/picking approach.

This is why I still play acoustic guitar, even though bass is my “main” instrument. Acoustic guitar is in my roots - my dad used to play years ago, and I myself learned guitar before I became a bassist.