Open tunings are very popular with slide players as they offer the facility of playing triads with one finger (or slide), giving convenient groups of notes with which to build licks and patterns. In this way, open tunings differ from ‘alternate’ tunings, which don’t give us an open chord. Either way, open or alternative tunings provide the opportunity to create wide-ranging, piano-style chord voicings that aren’t available to us in regular tuning. However, there are many more chord shapes hidden away in this open D tuning – and don’t forget you can move shapes around for some nice surprises. Gadd9/D(Image credit: Future)Here’s a nice Joni Mitchell style Gadd9/D, using the shape that would give us E7 in standard tuning.