Non Western Guitar Tunings

The guitar has the ability to change its tuning to whatever you want, and not enough players take advantage of this. One thing especially ignored is that you can experiment around with a lot of non western tunings.

One of the easiest ways to get out of 12 tone standard temperament is to tune every other string to intervals that are misaligned by a quarter tone. What this will do is give you a way to play a 24 tone scale that includes the 12 normal intervals and 12 new quarter tone intervals between strings. This can help you explore some new sounds that may inspire some new music and playing techniques.

But this is just the start. There are an infinite number of possibilities. You could tune the strings to random intervals and see what happens, though the result may or may not work. A more planned response could be to tune to perfect intervals between the strings instead of the compromised intervals in equal temperament. You could also try tuning the strings to very close intervals to get some really tense and dense chords.

The guitar has a lot of flexibility because of its retuning abilities. If you want to experience the instrument to its fullest, try some of these out and see what you can come up with.