I'm starting this as a parallel to the DADGAD thread that has been running for some while.

I first encountered non-EADGBE tunings fairly early in my guitar-playing career. The first variation was DADGBE, inspired by Gordon Lightfoot, adding a bass run to "Early Morning Rain" sharpened up an otherwise dull accompaniment. Then came DADGBD, from Al Stewart and Tom Paxton.

Then, one dark night in 1967/68, a Canadian singer called Shelley Posen turned up at the London Troubadour playing songs by this lady called Joni Mitchell, and he showed me open D (DADF#AD), open G (DGDGBD) and open C (CGCGCE) and a kaleidoscope of new possibilities opened up. I bought Joni's first album (Song to a Seagull) and spent many happy months working out the accompaniments to her songs from that and subsequent albums.

I know now that bluesmen of old used open tunings, and much music for the parlor guitar used such tunings under strange names like "Vastopol", but it was a revelation to me at the time.

Thirty years on, I still use non-standard tunings, but never DADGAD; for some reason I never felt the need.

One thing I do know, however, is that you need to have more than one guitar with you on gigs if you are not going to spend half your set retuning. I have used this excuse as the rationale for my ever-growing collection of guitars. I think my wife has rumbled me, though.

Songs that benefit from open tunings, IMHO, include:

Joni Mitchell's "Marcie", "Nathan la Franeer", "Morning, Morgantown" (in fact virtually any early JM)

Bob Dylan's "Tom Thumb Blues", Sandy Denny's "Who Knows where the Time Goes", Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne".

...and there are many more. Ringing the changes in your guitar tunings can help to add interest to a set.

Why do most guitarists who use DADGAD use it all the time?

Do any other mudcatter guitarists have any thoughts on other tunings?