Observations & Opinions on Alternate Tunings

[john grey]

I'm very interested in alternate tunings and individual opinions and observations. Those who have especially worked w/ 4 string basses w/ raised C or dropped D would be especially appreciated.
Those who had worked w/ 5 string w/ raised C as well.
1.) Initially what were your challenges?
2.) What were the payoffs; particularly from a previously well rehearsed piece?
3.) would you or did you - stay with the alternate tuning?

Thanks.

[VincentSalizeri]

Well, I more or less lived in Drop-D for about 2 years, which was nice after I got used to it. It was a bit tough to skip strings for the lower intervals, but most of the time I was either playing a fifth or an octave between the D and A. Playing anything by Tool was much more doable, compared to camping on the 3rd fret of my B string for most of the song. I decided not to stay with it, mainly because I started playing more things in standard, which meant I had to stretch any time I wanted to hit a low E. It is a handy tuning though, I'd say mostly for progressive rock.

[fretlessguy]

I have used dropped D and also D tuning (DGCF) with varying degrees of success. The Dropped d worked well, but playing in 5ths instead of 4ths was and still is somewhat confusing to me, even though I play octave madolin. I usually used a Hip Shot D-Tuner with it to expediate a quicker retuning since anything played other in D confused me when playing in just about any other key.
I also Experimented in DGCF, which really made more sense to me. But, after playing in EADG for almost 34 years I decided to stick with standard tuning since changing basses in the set would confuse me, and I didn't want to totally change all my fours to this tuning. Over all, I would say both are good alternatives to normal tuning if you can get acclimated to it. Low D always seemed to be the one note I thought standard tuning was missing.

[john grey]

Thank you both for insightful observations.
Superficially it seems that the lengthy period of time that a person puts [into a standard tuning] isn't outweighed by the usefulness of a different tuning. It does seem like it's not a walk in the park however.

The one thing I am very interested in is an open tuning. I had played slide (bottle-neck) guitar for some time and got very used to open tunings. I ha d always wondered about it's utility in Bass.