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Guitar World
Guitar World
Entertainment
Richard Barrett

“Unusual chord voicings and inversions, which would be impossible in regular tuning, can be played relatively easily”: How Jimmy Page used open C tuning to open up a whole new world of acoustic blues

Jimmy Page plays a dreadnought acoustic, seated in front of a mic, in this B/W archive shot from Earl's Court, 1975.

Non-standard open or altered tunings crop up frequently in blues, folk and country music. One reason for this is that they can greatly facilitate slide playing.

But another is that unusual chord voicings and inversions, which would be impossible in regular tuning, can be played relatively easily – depending on the tuning, of course. This does come at the expense of regular chords and scale patterns, but the whole point here is to get into some fresh territory.

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