How does Neurosis tune their guitars?

[Legion303]

Anyone? It seems to be some sort of open D-ish tuning, but I don't have enough video to piece it together.

-steve

[klm09]

Man, I spent like 15 minutes looking for an answer for you for the hell of it, but couldn't find anything. I wish all bands had like sections on their sites detailing their tunings, gear, techniques..

EDIT: I had a look at some tabs, and some of those say that it's a whole step down, ie. DGCFAd. No idea if that's right, I've never even heard any Neurosis!

[Legion303]

Thanks for looking. Those tabs are note-for-note accurate, but in the wrong tuning. I wrote them.

EDIT: I wrote them for Displacer's Death Tab site forums several years ago. His forums had a problem displaying the percent sign, which was changed to a large negative integer in the text, and broke up the tab lines severely. You can tell which other tab sites stole them from Displacer (and failed to credit me or him) by the obvious cut-and-paste job they did while leaving in the percent sign corruptions.

If you look at the intro to Locust Star, it looks like this in standard D tuning:

d|--------------------0-----------------------------|
A|--------------------------------------------------|
F|*-------0-----------------------------0-----------|
C|*-2-----------2-----------------2-----------2-----|
G|--------------------------------------------------|
D|--------------------------------------------------|
    .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

(etc.)

But on the video I saw this weekend, they play it in second position on four consecutive strings. Unfortunately the angle is bad and I only have a blurry shot of his fret hand in second position, but a relatively clear shot of his picking hand hitting four consecutive strings. This sequence is impossible to play like that in standard D tuning.

-steve

[klm09]

Heh, you wrote the tabs, nice. Sites that ripped your work and didn't credit you, fuck them.

Anyway, I suppose through deduction of required note ranges on said 4 consecutive strings you could probably narrow it down to a handful of tunings, of which most likely one or two would make most sense. I doubt they'd use some convoluted tuning just so that fingering their riffs would be as hard as possible. But that much is fairly obvious, and I'm not being very helpful, am I?

Speaking of tunings, one of my favorites is DADAAd, ie. drop D open power chord. It sounds pretty huge when you play power chords on that on all the strings using just your index finger.

[suzumebachi]

Heh, you wrote the tabs, nice. Sites that ripped your work and didn't credit you, fuck them.

Anyway, I suppose through deduction of required note ranges on said 4 consecutive strings you could probably narrow it down to a handful of tunings, of which most likely one or two would make most sense. I doubt they'd use some convoluted tuning just so that fingering their riffs would be as hard as possible. But that much is fairly obvious, and I'm not being very helpful, am I?

Speaking of tunings, one of my favorites is DADAAd, ie. drop D open power chord. It sounds pretty huge when you play power chords on that on all the strings using just your index finger.

jesus christ my guitar would have a shit if I tuned it like that. floating trem is not so good for the alternate tunings. also... are the two consecutive A's in the same octave? that's a little... weird.

[Geoffrey Taucer]

I've been experimenting a lot with DADGAD tuning lately, and I'm finding I really like it.

But that's just for my acoustic; for my electric, I always use either standard or drop D tuning.

[klm09]

Heh, you wrote the tabs, nice. Sites that ripped your work and didn't credit you, fuck them.

Anyway, I suppose through deduction of required note ranges on said 4 consecutive strings you could probably narrow it down to a handful of tunings, of which most likely one or two would make most sense. I doubt they'd use some convoluted tuning just so that fingering their riffs would be as hard as possible. But that much is fairly obvious, and I'm not being very helpful, am I?

Speaking of tunings, one of my favorites is DADAAd, ie. drop D open power chord. It sounds pretty huge when you play power chords on that on all the strings using just your index finger.

jesus christ my guitar would have a shit if I tuned it like that. floating trem is not so good for the alternate tunings. also... are the two consecutive A's in the same octave? that's a little... weird.

Yeah, the two high A's are in unison. It doesn't sound weird as such, mainly just.. well, not exactly thick, but richer. I don't seriously use that tuning, but it's fun to play around with sometimes.

[Foxhull]

Heh, you wrote the tabs, nice. Sites that ripped your work and didn't credit you, fuck them.

Anyway, I suppose through deduction of required note ranges on said 4 consecutive strings you could probably narrow it down to a handful of tunings, of which most likely one or two would make most sense. I doubt they'd use some convoluted tuning just so that fingering their riffs would be as hard as possible. But that much is fairly obvious, and I'm not being very helpful, am I?

Speaking of tunings, one of my favorites is DADAAd, ie. drop D open power chord. It sounds pretty huge when you play power chords on that on all the strings using just your index finger.

jesus christ my guitar would have a shit if I tuned it like that. floating trem is not so good for the alternate tunings. also... are the two consecutive A's in the same octave? that's a little... weird.

Yeah, the two high A's are in unison. It doesn't sound weird as such, mainly just.. well, not exactly thick, but richer. I don't seriously use that tuning, but it's fun to play around with sometimes.

not to mention the fact that it turns any plain ol' full barre into a power chord, i just might use this tuning for a remix or two