“Neil Young and Stephen Stills have explored this tuning to great effect”: Drop D is not just for grunge and metal – Joe Bonamassa explains how he uses it for blues guitar

In this column I’d like to talk about the oft-used drop-D tuning, wherein the guitar’s low E string is tuned down a whole step to D (low to high: D, A, D, G, B, E). Drop-D tuning creates the opportunity for all kinds of otherwise inaccessible riffs and chords, plus it’s a great and easy way to expand the instrument’s low range into new subsonic territory.

I play the song Trigger Finger, from 2025’s Breakthrough, in drop-D. What I find most useful about the tuning is that it simply presents more options to me as a guitarist. For example, as shown in Figure 1, I can play the song’s main riff in 8th-10th position in standard tuning, but as you’ll notice, I sneak in the open low D root note in bar 3 on the upbeat of beat 2.