In my last column, I talked about how using open G tuning (low to high: D, G, D, G, B, D) has inspired me to find my own musical and compositional voice as a guitarist and craft some cool and unique chord riffs and slide parts. To illustrate, I detailed how I play the intro and the main riff from the Blackberry Smoke song Ain’t Much Left of Me.
This time, I’d like to provide some additional examples of the benefits of playing in open G tuning, by sharing how I play other sections of the tune, including the slide guitar solo.
The verse section is built from stop-time chord hits on G, followed by F/C to C and then G to F/G to C/E, accentuated by the band with big “crashes.” This is played twice and then leads us into the chorus section.
Figure 1 illustrates the chorus. Starting in bar 1, on the V (five) chord, D, which I embellish “Keith Richards” style, with accents on G/D, bar 2 moves to Am7. In order to play this voicing in open G tuning, one must fret the 5th string at the 2nd fret, to sound the low A root note. Bars 3 and 4 move from G to D, respectively.
Bars 5-9 wrap up the chorus section, starting this time with held C and D chords, after which we return to the intro figure: Fsus2/G - C/G - G, shown in bar 9.
In devising a solo section, I thought it would be cool to get away from the “home” key of G for a minute and bring in a repeating chordal figure of F7 to G7 to solo over, as tabbed in Figure 2.
Because of the open G tuning, the chord shapes are a little different than normal, but therein lies the beauty of an open tuning, as it avails you of all kinds of chord and riff choices that aren’t possible in standard tuning. In other words, the tuning encourages creativity in devising rhythm parts to solo over.
Figure 3 illustrates the slide solo: in bars 1-6, the chords alternate every bar from F7 to G7. After the F7 in bar 7, bar 8 moves to D.
The lines I play in the solo relate specifically to the alternating chords: over the initial F7, I slide into licks based around an F major triad (F, A, C), and over G7, the licks are based around a G major triad (G, B, D). This triad arpeggiation approach establishes a strong connection between the improvised solo and the supporting chords underneath.
Bar 8 depicts the end of the solo, played over D, and bar 9 brings us back to the arpeggiated figures from the intro. And then we do it all again, moving back through the verse, chorus and outro sections.
I find this song to be a great workout in open G tuning, for both chordal work and soloing. As always, there are lots of new things to discover when using any open tuning!
- This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.
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