i know that this was used alot for delta blues by folks like skip james..... well did it originate then??? (by originate i mean, popular use for a style..... or were they making heavy use of it back in 1848 or something??)

it is so amazing that todays heavey metalers or using drop d to make some wicked sounding music... and the delta men were doing the same thing.. making wicked sounding music with d minor.... i guess if it sounds dark it just is!!!

I love Open-D and Open-Dm; the beauty there is, you can quickly and easily switch from one to the other with a quick half-step retuning of the 3rd-string, as they're otherwise the same.

And you can go up another half-step on the 3rd-string for THE exotic modal-sounding "DADGAD" tuning, too!

This is a tuning I never tried.. gotta give it a whirl next chance I get!

My instrumental on my Flagshipmile link called 'Unfinished Business' I believe is either in Dminor tuning or Dm7 if you want to hear what it sounds like.

Man I love your playing Bruce!

I believe that is the open D tuning that is used on my VG Strat. I haven't played around with it much. I would prefer it had a regular open D but it just takes a little twist of the tuning maching to get regular open D which makes for great overdriven blues.

Thanks Craig I like what I have heard from you as well. Loved the Biglove rendition.

Open tunings are a great way to get out of a rut. Sometimes alot of the same patterns work in an open tuning, but sound completely different.

It takes alot of time for me to adapt. I leave it in that tuning for months.

I'm pretty sure that the only D tuning (besides "dropped D") that the VG Strats simulate is "DADGAD", a D modal tuning (neither minor nor Major, but a "suspended 4th" tuning). That is, unless there've been some changes, different versions or something.

It does do a simulation of Open-G (DGDGBD, lo-to-hi), though.

Is it really that amazing?

wouldn't the progression be:

Delta Blues -> Jimmy Page -> today's Heavy Metalers

?

what's surprising to me is that I play in a Monkees cover band sometimes and there's a few of their songs from the '60s in drop D...

(Chris Cornell could make this one sound like his own... drop D and 7/8 verses)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkC3xVgrOs4

So Barry Man, the songwriter, and Louis Shelton or Glen Campbell or Jimmy LeVang or Tommy Tedesco or whoever played guitar on the track invented the Seattle sound...

actually, looking it up the only guitarist credited is Michael Nesmith himself, and he can play... but I know a lot of the time the session guitarists were anonymous (though Chip Taylor is credited for playing the bass)...

You are correct. I WISH that the open D on the VG was "normal". I've taken to just de-tuning the third string a half step to get it back to a "normal open D.

Except that your JP-era blues/classic rockers and the blues and folk players before that used full open tunings and played real chord fingerings, voice-leading, open-strings mixed with fretted notes, fingerstyle slide, etc. etc. etc.; while more often than not, most of the nu metal/whatever guys just use dropped-D (detuning only the 6th string) as a crutch- ehr, easy way to play slapped-on one-finger root-5th-root8va "power-chords".

yep, Caevan... exactly, but they're all influenced by the grunge era guys who were influenced by the classic rock era guys, who were influenced by the blues and folk guys...

It just gets reduced in every generation... as we talked about a while back here, I think: when people try to imitate AC/DC they crank up the distortion, which AC/DC doesn't do... when people play Stones songs they crank up the heavy distortion, even though the original versions were only acoustic guitars sometimes. People's impressions don't relate to what's actually going on a lot of the time. Nu-metal guys always namecheck Jimmy Page as a big influence, but yeah... they seem to only hear Page's low E and A string or something

Many guys only tune down the low E to D, but it is also cool for rock/metal to tune the high E to D too.

I like it, I have evolved some really cool outside sounding licks this way between the d and b strings.

Many guys only tune down the low E to D, but it is also cool for rock/metal to tune the high E to D too.

I like it, I have evolved some really cool outside sounding licks this way between the d and b strings.

Double Double Dropped D Posts! Twice the rockin', twice the postin'!

OP asked about the origins, they're pretty cloudy, cuz it's ancient history; you find it in the folk styles of eastern Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa and throughout Asia, but possibly not Australia. In Western culture, the notes themselves had already been around for a few eons before Pythagoras (c. 570-c. 495 BC) named the pitches and laid out the scales.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_tuning

Pythagoras is also the reason your guitar is out of tune, according to Buzz Feiten.

Wasn't the Wrecking Crew the actual musicians behind the Monkees music?

Yeah, in the early going, up to "Headquarters", or thereabouts; the Monkees pretty much sang on all their recordings prior to that record, but had little instrumental nor songwriting input.

.. and after fighting to play on Headquarters they went back to using studio guys from there on out (or just using leftover tracks).

I loved the songs since childhood, it's cool and fun to play them. When people start on the Jan Wenner "the Monkees were a fraud boy band" thing I just say "well, the Four Tops didn't write or play instruments on their recordings, either... but that doesn't stop the majority of the music in the world from seeming pale in comparison. The whole auteur/authenticity thing... it's pop music, man, there's always a man behind the curtain, even if you invent him in your head when you elevate musicians to God-like status.