Tune your guitar down

I used a voucher I had for Music without frontiers recently to buy Alligator by the National and April by Sun Kil Moon. Both are great records, April especially. Sun Kil Moon is the latest project for Mark Kozelek from slowcore band the Red House Painters. It's dark quiet music that, while not sounding too much like Nick Drake, reminds you of him in a few places.

On one/a few of the tracks on April it seemed that Mark had his guitar tuned way low. The resulting sound is bassy and buzzy-metallic. It sounds like this I guess because the loose strings have more chance to rattle round on the frets and neck of the guitar. I used to do this a bit when I was younger but only because I was bored; I never really took it seriously as a different way to play your guitar. But it sounds really interesting, it gives a dark and murky tone; almost making your guitar sound like a different instrument. It also doesn't require you to navigate a different tuning; you just play it the same old way.

Often I don't take these kind of adjustments seriously. I think this is because I'm too fixed in my idea of what it is to play guitar; you pick it up, you make sure it's tuned and away you go. Also different tunings seem like too much work on an instrument which I find challenging enough. But it's a really good technique to remember I reckon.