Well, Bob, now that we've established our credentials, first, I challenge the idea, or at least the implication, that someone with classical training is trained only to interpret written music. Good teachers and good music schools place no such limitations. I know that there are some who seem to be afraid to go beyond what's in the written music, but there are many who use that as the starting point, not the boundary. As for myself, I had been playing and singing for a number of years before I started musical training. I found that rather than restricting me with a lot of rules as some of my folkie friends warned me it would, it opened up possibilities that I (and said folkie friends) would never have known existed. The training freed me to explore. Although I can interpret a score quite well—and learn songs from song books when a lot of my folk singing confreres cannot—once learned, I set the music aside and go from there. I am no slave to the lines and dots, nor are most of the well-trained musicians I know.

Within my experience, I have not very often seen a folk guitarist who used special tunings—and I've seen a lot of them, professional and amateur—using only one guitar and re-tuning it, who didn't have to ride herd pretty constantly on his tuning pegs, and usually by the time he finished a song, the guitar had managed to creep noticeably out of tune. Not badly, perhaps. But noticeably.

Problem:   you're not arguing with me, you're arguing with the world of physics. Such matters as tensile strength and elasticity.

Now, I don't mean to be a smart-ass here, but have you had a hearing tested lately?

Don Firth