<table border="0" align="center" width="90%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td class="SmallText"><b>Chunglittle wrote on Tue, 20 June 2006 11:33</b></td></tr><tr><td class="quote">
Tuning your guitar lower so the strings will be easier to barre against your fretboard is a cop out, and you'll be sorry in the long run. Not only will the instrument's action diminish, but also your ability to sing songs due to the deviant tuning. Standard pitch is set for a reason, folks. You can transpose, sure, and if you know theory, you can transpose a simple G chord into an accidental half way up the fretboard just so you can manage the pitch you need to sing a song, unless you want to use a capo, which you'll probably need to fret pretty high just to sing a long. Also, your strings will buzz if you strum too hard. If the differential between your strings and your fretboard is too far, you don't tune your guitar lower to solve the problem. What you do is you adjust either your guitar saddle, bridge, or both. This will bring your strings lower without sacrificing standard tuning. Careful, however, for if you decrease the differential too much, your strings will buzz against your fret wires. Also, when someone mentioned the mechanism for slide guitar, he/she meant glass bottle slides, which will leave your finger useless for chording. In short, the answer for questions of this nature are usually, "No. There is no easy way. Just practice."
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just for your information many of the greatest guitarist in the world tune down a half step or more, not for barre chords obviously but to get a heaveir chrunchier tone