?

barcelona Wrote:
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> ?
It's Keith's main tuning when he plays most of his Teles.

G
D
G
B
D

you need five strings
three notes
two fingers
and Keith Richards to play it :E

It's just a way of tuning the strings differently so the guitar plays a G chord when strummed openly (no strings mashed down).

Guitars can be tuned many ways other than standard tuning- some of the most common are: Open G, Open E, and Open A.

I see.
Thank you.

Then am I right if I think that Keith chooses the "easiest" way to play guitar?

A guitar is usually tuned so that you need to place your fingers on the fret board in certain combinations to get a 'chord'. This is called 'standard' tuning. If you strum it 'open', ie without placing your fingers anywhere, it doesn't sound too good.

You can, however, tune the guitar so that if you do strum it open, without fretting it, a nice sounding chord is produced. The 2 main open tunings are 'g' & 'd'. In the first, strumming the guitar without touching the frets produces a 'g' chord, & in the second, a 'd' chord. You can produce other chords on an open strung guitar, but the combinations of fingers you use are different to what you would use in standard tuning.

I believe open tunings were used with the early lutes, but the use of contemporary open tunings stem from the blues guitarists of the early 1900s. They would often use a 'slide' or 'bottleneck' on their fretting hand to produce a sliding sort of sound. Good Stones examples of slide include I Wanna Be Your Man, Can't Be Satisfied, Little Red Rooster, No Expectations.

Keith doesn't use slide much but he's certainly mastered playing in open g. IMO the powerhouse trio is, Honky Tonk Women, Brown Sugar & Start Me Up, there's tons more.

barcelona Wrote:
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> Then am I right if I think that Keith chooses the
> "easiest" way to play guitar?
Not really. It's about the sound he gets by using that tuning.
Songs like SFM or JJF wouldn't sound the same in standard tuning.
Open G's got that extra punch that makes Keith's sound so special and raw.

The first reason KR, or any guitarist chooses to use open-G or any other open tuning is not because it's easier to play the instrument. A guitarist uses an open tuning to get certain ringing qualities to the chords... "overtones".

Often, another reason to play in an open tuning is when using a slide.

barcelona Wrote:
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> I see.
> Thank you.
>
> Then am I right if I think that Keith chooses the
> "easiest" way to play guitar?


"easiest" may not be exactly right.

While it's less difficult to play the notes of a chord in open g, it's also a rather different sound than you can get from standard tuning. I think the sound is much more important than the ease; I'd even say you can't really play many Stones songs in standard tuning--that may be going a bit far, but HTW, BS, and SMU or CYHMK (among others) just don't sound the same played any other way.

Moreover, given the generally greater emphasis on riffs and rhythm in Keith's playing (over leads and solos), "easy" isn't really an issue in playing chords; standard tuning chords (like twelve bar blues or Chuck Berry RnR, for example) aren't hard to play, but the rhythm or groove is critical, and that's what (in my mind) Keith does so well, so well in fact that he makes it look easy.

schillid Wrote:
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> The first reason KR, or any guitarist chooses to
> use open-G or any other open tuning is not because
> it's easier to play the instrument. A guitarist
> uses an open tuning to get certain ringing
> qualities to the chords... "overtones".
>
> Often, another reason to play in an open tuning is
> when using a slide.


One of the main reasons that the Stones use open tunings in my opinion is that when played alongside a guitar in standard tuning, the song takes on a whole new dimension.

That 'dimension' is an important part of the Stones' sound. JMHO

Rolling Stones Tribute

Play Rolling Stones

Well said by all. It's all about "feel" with Keith, not technical wizardry.

Hmmmm...I wonder what tuning Frank Zappa used?

NumberOneStonesFan Wrote:
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> Hmmmm...I wonder what tuning Frank Zappa used?


Open PG

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