Mixed Tunings

Great Big Metaphor Alert

A thought dropped into my brain yesterday and won’t go away so I’m going to type it down so I can get it out of my head and get on with something else. I’ll keep it brief.

Warning: It’s a bit nerdy.

As some of you will know, for the vast majority of the time, guitars are played in what’s known as “Standard Tuning” — with the strings tuned (from lowest to highest) to: E A D G B E. All the normal chord shapes you learn are predicated on the strings being at these pitches. But here’s two examples of well-known songs where that’s not the case — and in a surprisingly interesting way.

Bad Moon Rising — CCR

This is, on its face, a simple three-chord song in the key of D major. That at least is what you’ll assume if you try to learn it by ear off the record. It sounds like it’s in D. But actually there’s something else going on, and it’s not just the alarming hairstyles.

If you watch closely you’ll see that instead of playing a D shape at the root, John Fogerty (brown-haired guitarist on the right, who wrote the song) is playing an E shape — though his brother Tom (blond) is meanwhile playing the expected D shape.

This video isn’t a great rendition, but it gives you a clearer look:

How is this possible without the song not sounding a horrendous discordant mess? Because John has tuned his guitar down a whole step, to D G C F A D, while Tom is playing the same progression in Standard Tuning.

Now why would the crazy bastards do this?

Probably partly because the jangly little riff John plays is the kind of thing that’s normally played in E, and so falls more easily under his fingers that way. But a great side-effect of playing the song on two guitars tuned to different pitches — meaning they use different chord shapes to play the same thing — is it gives a very simple chord progression a lot more depth and richness: the guitars resonate differently because of this alteration in tuning, with a noticeable improving effect.

Honky Tonk Women — The Rolling Stones

Another great example. As noted elsewhere, a lot of the classic Keith riffs are written and played in Open G, where instead of E A D G B E, the guitar is tuned to D G D G B D (though Keith often takes the low E/D string off the guitar, to avoid accidentally clanging out a low fifth when he’s drunk or jumping about). Open G gives a guitar a lovely open resonance and a country blues twang, which is why he uses it.

But check this video to see what’s happening in the second guitar…

Here you can see that Keith (the top part) is playing in Open G, but Mick Taylor in this 1973 performance (and then Ronnie, in all the later years) is playing in Standard Tuning. As with bad Moon Rising, this will at least partly be because for both guitarists, the notes simply fall under their hands more easily that way — that’s how they’re used to expressing themselves. Think of that as their personal history.

But the combination of those different tunings gives the song a unique tone, as two differently-constructed voices sing the same song at the same time.

My point?

This is what society should be like.

Celebrating a plurality of voices, not merely ones that are saying or singing the same thing, and instead throwing differences in histories and experience and tonality (like the two parts of Honky Tonk Woman) into a complex stew of cultural and societal expression — in the process creating something much bigger and far more interesting than the sum of its parts. It may take a minute, and require patience: any cook knows a stew tastes better next day, after flavors have time to meld. But it’s better.

A song sung by one person sounds lonely and isolated, however good they are. At very least you need a marriage, two voices working against each other in polyphony. Homogenous societies can sing loudly, but it’s a unison that’s rather obvious (as if the Fogertys were playing the exact same chords) — and one that will lack the depth and richness and possibilities of music in which people with different cultures and voices elect to all try to sing the same song, toward a shared goal and common good.

A grown-up country should be a symphony, not a solo.

Okay, carry on.