How To Effectively Tune Your Guitar Higher

There's this song I've been listening to for a long time called "Grand Canyon" and I finally decided I had to learn it.

A very different song. I could tell by listening to the chords on the recording, there was a G riff going on & I knew I had to combine 2 - 3 guitar parts together to get all the cool little leads that made the song recognizeable. I tried to find the chords/tab on the internet and they all said to use weird chords like Eb & stuff. Couldn't figure it out. I needed to play this G riff but couldn't play it while holding the Bass E string to G all the time. I finally figured I needed to tune my Bass E string to G. Hmmm...couldn't do that, it might break the string or hurt the neck or something. Okay...I remembered my C# tuning - C# F# B E G# C# low to high, (Guitar Tip 1), then I put my capo on the 3rd fret, tuned the bass E string up to G (which was actually E with the capo off) and almost had it. Still couldn't figure out what to do with the A string. It seemed no matter what I tuned it to, it didn't sound right. I knew one other song that tuned two strings to the same note so I tried it here. Yep, I tuned my A string down to G (with capo on). Yeah, it's okay to tune 2 strings to the same note! I tuned both E & A bass strings to G and I had it! G G D G B E low to high tuning with the capo at the 3rd fret. Sounded great. I learned the song very easily then and the guitar didn't suffer.

You can listen to the riff HERE. In case you have perfect pitch or something, this clip is in F#. I lowered the capo to the 2nd fret so we could sing it a little lower.

Remember the old guitarist saying - and I'm OLD : ) "For every musical problem, there's a mechanical solution!"

Gman ( o )==#