Did you know Dimebag Darrell used to tune his guitar a quarter of a step down?!
In: Pantera Thursday Sep 4,2008
This morning, GuitarMX blog features a video about how to play Pantera’s song Walk. While the video is great and you can actually learn the riffs there, the subject of this post is about what Dennis Hodges, the instructor teaching the song, said about the tuning Dimebag Darrell used for that song and for the whole album actually.
As Dennis Hodges says, Dimebag Darrell and the bass player started at one moment to tune the guitars down a quarter of a step! However, for this very song they are also tuned down a full step so in order to correctly play the song along with the tape, you need to tune your guitar down 1 step and a quarter! Damn!
While tuning it down one full step does not intrigue me, there are various reasons for which they would do it, from heavier sounds to putting less pressure on the lead singer, I am intrigued by that quarter of a step! Imagine you need to tune your guitar so your low E string is right between D# and E! Now, why would they do such thing?
What could be the reason for this? Somebody put some light on this for me, please!
By the way, I dare you tune your guitar this way without using an electronic guitar tuner! Ha!
Also, if you watch the video on GuitarMx site, pay attention at the end of it how the guy in the video uses his fingers to go from a G to a G#. I just noticed it because I didn’t understand at first why is he playing that way…He uses fingers 1 and 3 for the G chord and right next to it 2 and 4 for the G# chord. I would have gone forward half a step but his chords make an interesting moment to watch and talk about!
Buy from Amazon:
Razorback Dimebag Classic Black w/case
Cowboys from Hell
Vulgar Display of Power
Other people also liked these articles:
4 Responses to “Did you know Dimebag Darrell used to tune his guitar a quarter of a step down?!”
Leave a reply
Ovidiu OprescuRomania, 31 years
Playing the guitar since 17 and enjoying every moment of it!
Come meet me also on Mixx, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Digg, MySpace, MyBlogLog, Twitter, BlogCatalog
Also, why don't you add me to your blogroll? It's known to bring fortune and it will make you a better player! Honestly! ;-)
 |
 |
 |
Copyright © 2007 - GuitarFlame.com - is proudly powered by WordPress
Theme based on Christmas Days Theme, created by: Design Disease
Resources
Sans Direction
September 4th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
I’m blocked at work, so I can’t see the actual video. I don’t know if the rest of the band tuned a quarter down, too. It’s either a gift to Phil Anselmo or him knowing he has a heavy right hand and he’ll bend it up to tune just by that.
But if it’s the trick I think it is, it’s a fairly standard metal trick to do that between, say a G and a G#. The one example I can think of that does it is “Rainbow In The Dark” by Dio, where the riff is roughly A-F-E-F-G, all but the A being just root-five where the E is played by the middle finger and the F is index and ring. G is it slid up 2 frets. I think there’s a Metallica bit that does something similar, but I forget which.
Ovidiu
September 4th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
You may have a point with what you are saying about Dimebag Darrell pressing the chords too much to “tune” them, but than it doesn’t quite make sense if he plays open strings (even if he doesn’t do this very often). I guess that such a case would have been useful if the bass player would have been tuned in standard so when Darrell would press the strings too much to get on the same pitch. I don’t know.
About what you say, I don’t know, I use a lot of power chords but I have never used that, I mainly use my 2nd and 5th finger for it, but never done that switch 1-3 then 2-4.
russell
October 30th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
actually I believe the entire band is tuned down 1/4 and heres why
tuning down a quarter steps creates a natural phasing of the guitar sound. a perfect note (A=440) has a a perfect ring, whereas a note tuned in between notes is going to create a churning sound, which when coupled with a phaser or flanger creates a multi-dimensional sound. if youve ever tried to play along with a pantera song on CD, it doesnt sound right at all. this may have been done on purpose as part of the magic of the music that makes it impossible for anyone to sound JUST like pantera. if rex was standard and dime 1/4, it wouldnt sound right. pressing the strings isnt the issue: when you listen to the CD dime is actually sounding notes at 1/4 step down.
Ovidiu
October 30th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Hmm, I didn’t think of that, it makes sense that the whole band to be tunes the same, to not sound out of tune, but as for the reason, I didn’t know that