New Year's Musing

Happy New Year!

Been toying with alternate tunings lately, and came up with one that is working for me and my songs. I tuned the high E string down to a D and coverted my tunes to the key of D (instead of G). This gives me some very interesting dynamics.

First off, it brought my voice down a few registers. This is a good thing for my voice as it lowers the strain on the vocal cords. My voice needs work in the lower registers though, but I think with some continued practice I'll be ok.

The second thing is that I seem to be much stronger guitar-wise playing in this key. I am free to play more lead-type licks in this configuration - generally involving the D, C and G chords and the variations that exist with those chordings such as the add9, etc.

The third (and IMO, the most important) thing is I'm keeping my ring finger pinned on the 3rd fret of the B string, which is a D note. This, coupled with the open D tuning on the high E string gives me a interesting dynamic with the open chiming dual Ds going. I'm getting a good chiming D at the high end of the sonic spectrum that's sounding pretty sweet on the Hummingbird.

So I'm toying with a new sound that's pretty cool. This is just another page in my ongoing music education, but I'm pretty excited with what I can do with this configuration. One of my songs, "MikeLewisMusic" (which happens to be, obviously, my theme song) has been vastly improved with this key change / alternate tuning, as I able to wail away on a lead lick throughout the song, and actually engage in an acoustic solo that sounds like a solo with rhythm guitar, all on one guitar. It needs to be cleaned up, and of course I don't consider my playing to be even close to perfect, but my foundation is getting firmer by the day, and the framework has been built. Just need to fill in the gaps.

Did I say Happy New Year?