Getting used to drop tunings

[Andrew Chung]

Yesterday, an Amazon order arrived with my first pedals, a Donner noise gate and the Digitech Drop—a huge thank you to those who chimed in on the thread here, by the way. Had a very fun time trying out the Drop for songs in Drop C# and Drop C, such as playing rhythm to "Hail to the King" without pitch-shifting the recording—so much fun! But what tripped me up was finding notes for some other songs I'm still working on, like one that could be played in Drop D (which I was doing), but is technically in Drop C#.

I'm going to guess I'm going to have to re-learn the fretboard to some extent for each tuning. Any tips, aside from going through the process for learning it the first time in E Standard? I really want to stick to standard notation as much as possible and stay away from simply using tab as a crutch.

 

[Ed Seith]

Most guitarists - at least rock and metal guitarists - still think in terms of E or Drop D, unless they go down as far as baritone tuning (B). In other words, even if the guitar is tuned to D standard (1 whole step down), they still think of this as an E power chord:

x
x
x
2
2
0

Even though sonically, it's a D. IIRC, for most its the same when they use a capo.

 

[Ravenstorm]

will you tune it down to sonically change your playing
Most of Drop C# songs are written in Drop D and i say this because they while playing are basic chord progressions in drop D