Thursday, February 17, 2011

Drop D Tuning Down 1 and 1/2 Steps

I've always loved guitar magazines. I've kept almost every one I've ever bought with the exception of a few that I gave to friends or students. I love going back through old issues of Guitar World, Guitar Player, Guitar School and Guitar for the Practicing Musician. They are a great source of inspiration and a fun way to come up with new musical ideas. I was  checking out an old issue of Guitar World with Zakk Wylde's boot camp in it July 2004. There is a song in this issue by Drowning Pool called "Step Up". I was playing around with the song. It is in a drop D version of a tuning made famous by Black Sabbath's  Tony Iommi. Basically you tune down one and a half steps and then drop the low E to match the D string which are both now tuned down to B. The tuning from low to high is B, F#, B, E, G#, C#. Anyway I was messing around with this and came up with a simple but I think cool sounding guitar lick. So here is the guitar tab and video to check out: