Tuning:
I use pretty good quality guitars:   one hand-made Japanese classic, one Spanish-made flamenco (Arcangel Fernandez), and a small travel guitar made by Sam Radding in San Diego (which I do use for gigs, because it sounds good, it's easy to pack around, and people sometimes ask me if it's a "period instrument" of some kind). They're all nylon-string instruments. I tune them to concert pitch (440-A) with either a tuning fork or an Intellitouch clamp-on tuner. I keep them at concert pitch, standard guitar tuning (EADGBE), and I don't use special tunings. Once or twice during a performance I may have to adjust a string or two, but it doesn't take more than a few seconds, so no problem.

Sure, you can get some interesting stuff with special tunings, but strings have a "memory," and if you keep cranking them up and down all the time, they'll try to creep back to where they were before you retuned them—while you're in the middle of the song you retuned for. That's the nature of the beast. Jim's right. If you want to use nine different tunings, you'd better have nine different guitars, unless you want to spend half your life cranking on tuning pegs.

Getting gigs:
I'm a bit fuzzy about how things are these days, but I found that most of the gigs I got way back in the days of antiquity came from non-folkie sources. I sang at parties and "hoots" in private homes and such, for fun, not looking for gigs, and the first major break-through gig I got came from a jazz musician whom I knew pretty well and who had heard me at several of these informal gatherings. His day job was as a public relations man for the Seattle Public Library, and one of this duties was to plan programs for KCTS-TV, the local educational channel (now, a PBS affiliate), to be tied in with materials available at the library and funded by the library. He asked me to do a television series on folk music. I didn't think I was anywhere near "ready for prime time," but he wouldn't take no for an answer.

After that, gigs came pretty easily. But even so, most of them came as a result of friends going into some place that offered entertainment and saying to the owner, "I know this singer. . . ." And someplace in the course of the conversation, being able to say, "Well, he's done a television series on KCTS." So I may have just been some dork off the street—but—I was a dork with "credits."

So, get some credits, even if you have to make the arrangements yourself. Stock method for a lot of classical artists was (and may still be) to rent Carnegie Hall (yes, you have to pay for it yourself, unless you have a rich "angel"), advertise the event, do a recital, and pray for good reviews. Unless it was a total disaster, you then have a Carnegie Hall concert on your credit list. It doesn't have to be Carnegie Hall, of course, but. . . .    What venue (theater, concert hall, not specifially a "folk venue") is there where you live that most people, including non-folkies, would recognize as fairly prestigious?

And friends who are willing to brag you up to potential employers are a treasure, a boon, and a blessing!

And—sometimes someone will come up to you after you've just done a gig and want to hire you. I got several of my bigger gigs—full concerts—that way.

Nothing succeeds like success.

{But sometimes it helps to prime the pump a bit)

Don Firth

P. S.   Also—beware of the person who wants to "hire" you to sing for nothing, but tells you "It will be good exposure." This can be true up to a point, but remember the following:

People have been known to die of exposure!
                                       —Dave Van Ronk