Comprehensive alternate tunings guide

I just found this comprehensive webpage (and companion “Alternate Tunings Guide” in PDF) by William A. Sethares.

Definitely worth a look: “Alternate Tuning Guide“.

By the way, I feel like I should organize a page with relevant links about alt. tunings.

String gauges and alternate tunings

I’ve never given much thoughts to fine tuning string gauges for different tunings. Admittedly, this aspect of alternate tunings has to be addressed sooner or later in order to keep the guitar in good shape.

I found this article which covers basic points in regards to string gauges in an alternate tuning context:

http://www.bansheewerks.com/frivolities/geetar/tech.shtml#gauges

Identifying a chord in a given tuning

I just found a nice online tool that gives possible names to a given chord. Of course we all know that without proper harmonic context, it can be difficult to properly identify any given chord. However, the tool provides a good starting point.

The tool is called “Chorderator Chord Generator“.

Just click on the button “More options” to access the alt. tuning field

Goodies from Gibson

All related to the release of the Dark Fire Les Paul:

A crash course in open and alternate tunings

The power and possibility of open and alternate tunings

Wikipedia

Wikipedia’s entry about alternate tunings:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_tuning#Open_tunings

An “encyclopedia” of alternate tunings

I found this interesting website about alternate tunings. It certainly seems to have some depth. I’ll investigate and get back.

WA’s Encyclopedia of Alternate Guitar Tunings

Alternate tuning web search

Google launched a few months ago a new feature allowing the construction of specialized search engines. That gave me the idea to launch an alternate tuning search engine.

Here’s the link for the search engine, titled Alternate tuning web search.