Hey all

This blog has been running in neutral for the past couple weeks, mainly because I wanted to really figure out what kinds of things that I want to talk about here. On one hand, I’ve been trying to inspire creativity in songwriting, but on the other hand, I’ve been trying (probably too hard) to write posts with the idea that 100% of what I write has to appeal to 100% of the musicians reading the blog.

I think I’ve come to the conclusion that that just can’t happen. Too many of us have too many different talents and different interests. So instead I’m going to write the posts trying to appeal to as many people as I can, but I’m going to realize if I do write some posts that specialize in a certain aspect of music every now and then, it’s not that big of a deal!

So, today I’m going to talk about guitar playing a bit.

This topic will come the easiest to me, because I’m a guitar player first when it comes to music. I like writing lyrics, I like playing the piano, drums, bass, and whatever else I can get my hands on, but guitar will always be my musical true love.

So for you guitarists out there, I’m going to give you a tip.

Around a year ago or so I found myself feeling that my songwriting, riff writing, and playing in general were getting a big stale. After playing guitar for 13 or so years by that point, I really felt like I was struggling to create songs that were new or inventive in any way.

I actually feel like I got over that hump by looking into alternate tunings and open tunings. I sat down in front of YouTube one day and just started searching for phrases like “alternate guitar tunings” “Open guitar tunings”.

I actually found some really interesting ones!

I thought about posting a YouTube video on that topic, but instead I think it’d be more beneficial for you readers to go search for your own… I don’t think you have to get inspired in the exact same way that I did. Find a creative avenue that interests you when it comes to guitar playing, and explore it on your own.

So instead of posting a specific video for you, I’ll just get you started on some YouTube searches:

Click here for a YouTube search for “Guitar Open Tuning”

Click here for a YouTube search for “Alternate Guitar Tunings”

Or maybe you want to search for a specific tuning, like:

Click here for a YouTube search for “Open G Guitar Lesson”

Click here for a YouTube search for “Open D minor tuning”

Finally, here’s a list of some more alternate guitar tunings you may want to look into

Wikipedia list of guitar tunings

This is definitely a topic I’ll come back to. I don’t want to turn this into a “guitar-only” blog, so I’ll probably limit how many guitar posts I make during the week, but if you enjoy exploring the creative aspects of guitar, please let me know.