My first altered (down)tuning experience

[Alvaro Martín Gómez A.]

Hi everybody.

I've just got home after a short gig with my rock band. When we were getting ready, our singer said "Hey, my voice isn't in good shape today. Why don't you tune a half step down?" The guitar player and me looked at each other and said "Why not?" The thing is: In twenty years of playing, I've NEVER played my bass tuned other than standard. I felt a bit nervous about it because I have absolute pitch and I thought it could give me problems, but also sounded as a good challenge (and I like them), so I proceeded to downtune my bass.

It was really weird at first. The strings felt so flabby and it made me feel even more nervous, but when we kicked off the gig with "Purple Haze"... wow! what a great sound for that kind of stuff! The song sounded really ominous and the whole band shared a smile. The only thing during the gig that made me feel really uncomfortable was hearing the intro from "YYZ" one half step lower, but the most important thing is that the gig went really fine and I didn't get confused because of the new tuning. Just wanted to share this, a brand-new experience for me.

Edit: Hmm... maybe this should be in the "gig stories" forum? Mods, please move this thread if necessary. Thank you!

[Matt Till]

I always wondered what the point of tuning all the strings down (ie not to make certain chord shapes easier), then I played my first LOUD practice with a band (in my sig) down a step, and in another band down 2 steps. Wow, it makes a difference. Ominous is a good way to describe it.

[JNBlack]

My band tunes down 1/2 a step. I refused to tune down with the gu1tar1sts at first and just transpose (or whatever that would be called) the fingerings to standard tuning. (BTW, I learned their songs on a detuned gu1tar while waiting on my bass's arrival).

But lately I've been tuning down as well; it sure makes writing music easier when trying to explain your ideas to the other guys.