Day 12 - Open G Acoustic Toolkit

This lesson transfers all your open G electric techniques to acoustic guitar, using Wild Horses as the vehicle and exploring the beautiful chord voicings this tuning offers.

What You Will Learn:

• How the Keith Richards chord shapes translate to acoustic

• Sus chord voicings unique to open G tuning

• The Wild Horses chord progression with embellishments

• Connections to Stereophonics' "Step on My Old Size Nines" and Oasis' "Who Feels Love"

• Am7, Bm, C, D, and Em voicings in open G

• Optional embellishments using the little finger

The Power Chord Foundation

A great starting point for Open G acoustic is treating the root note on string 5 as the start of a power chord with the 2 thinnest strings ringing open – it sounds lovely and easily creates Sus sounding chords!

Then, positionally we can follow a major scale on string 5 and turn each note into this shape – instant diatonic chord progression with beautiful sus-like voicings!

Wild Horses Chords

The intro uses G (fret 5 with specific voicing) and Am7 (a shape similar to standard Am7 but repositioned). The B minor and E minor voicings in open G are particularly beautiful – they contain Sus2 and Sus4 colours you can't get any other way.

Why Open G on Acoustic?

The question "why use open G tuning?" is answered by playing these voicings. Compare the Open G ‘Em chord’ to a standard ‘Em chord’ – the richness and complexity of the open tuning version is immediately apparent. You simply can't achieve these sounds in standard tuning.