We’ll be exploring how to get around in open D tuning (D A D F# A D) with the strings raised up above the fingerboard, and a steel bar.
If you’re familiar with any other open tuning on guitar or banjo, you’ll discover how the D tuning fingerboard relates to the tuning you know and love. If you know your guitar fingerboard, you’ll discover how strings 2 3 4 on the guitar relate to strings 3 4 5 in D tuning. We’ll learn to play melodies of hopefully familiar songs, adding harmony and exploring chord accompaniment. We’ll have fun with improvising melodies over one, two, and three chords.
Bring a dobro or an acoustic guitar with a raised nut. I intend to have a few raised nuts for purchase, but I don’t necessarily recommend putting it on and off your only guitar every day. Best to bring an additional steel string guitar; it doesn’t have to have good action, since we’ll be raising it up in order to play it with a slide, or tone bar. I recommend the Shubb SP-2 that I helped design and that my late friend David Lindley used. Bullet bars are good, too, if you’re used to them.