Week 9- GAAAAH! How Do I Tune To Drop D?

At the end of the section in my book, I’ve run across two roadblocks that have completely messed me up- re-tuning the guitar to drop D tuning, and hammer-ons.

The tuning was a big problem because I spent a half hour trying to interpret my lesson books instructions, only to realize mid-way through that I was counting the strings from the wrong direction, and was tuning the wrong strings!  Then I started out again with the right direction, but was still very confused.

The other confusing lesson was hammer-ons, where the book told me that “Hammering-on is sounding a note with your left hand (instead of picking it with your right hand) by fretting it suddenly).”  This just doesn’t seem to be producing any sound for me.  Sooo…to the Internet and You Tube I go with my two problems.

The first video on You Tube seemed fairly helpful for the tuning.  I actually held my guitar and played along while the instructions were given.

This webpage has a nice description along with graphics as well.  What it says about being able to add bass notes to D chords is very true…they sound awesome!  I also like that it gives a few different chord modifications for drop D, and musical examples.

As for the hammer-ons, this helped greatly.

I also didn’t have an explanation of how a hammer-on was written in the tabbed music, however, I figured out that it is represented by a slur over top of the two notes.

Now, I can play the example piece in drop D with hammer-ons.  Yay!

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