Open G Tuning for Guitar: Keith Richards' Secret Weapon
If you've ever tried to figure out how Keith Richards gets his sound and fell short, there's a good chance the answer is: his guitar isn't tuned to what you think it's tuned to. Keith plays in open G, usually with the low string removed, and that one setup change is responsible for the signature Stones sound as much as anything else.
What Open G Actually Is
Standard tuning is E-A-D-G-B-E. Open G tuning is D-G-D-G-B-D, low string to high. Three of the six strings (low D, middle D, high D) are tuned to D, and the other three (G, G, B) form the rest of a G major chord.
The magic property: when you strum all six open strings, you hear a full G major chord. No fretting required. Hence the name "open G" — the open strings make a G chord.
How to Get There From Standard
Three strings change. Three stay.
- Low E string (6th) → D. Tune down a whole step.
- A string (5th) → G. Tune down a whole step.
- D string (4th) → stays D.
- G string (3rd) → stays G.
- B string (2nd) → stays B.
- High E string (1st) → D. Tune down a whole step.
You can verify by strumming all six strings open — if it rings out as a clean G major chord, you're tuned correctly. Our tuner has an Open G preset that checks each string for you.
The One-Finger Major Chord Trick
Here's why open tunings are so fun. Because the open strings form a major chord, you can get any major chord by barring all six strings across a single fret. Fret 2? A major. Fret 5? C major. Fret 7? D major.
Want to play a whole song with just bar shifts? You absolutely can. Move the barre, that's a new chord. No open-chord shapes to switch between. This is why slide guitar loves open tunings — the slide is just a sideways barre moving through those chord positions.
The Keith Richards Move: Remove the Low String
Keith doesn't even play the low D string on most of his open G work. He removes it entirely from some of his studio guitars. The reason: without the low D, the lowest note on the guitar is the G on the 5th string, which means every open-chord strum places G on the bottom — reinforcing the root of G major.
With the low D in place, strumming with force gives you a D note on the bottom, which is the fifth of G. That makes the chord sound like G/D — technically still G major, but with a different voicing emphasis.
Keith preferred the plainer "G with G on the bottom" sound, so he just took the low string off entirely. Try it. You'll find that chords feel more grounded and riffs have more punch. It's also an easier five-string setup to navigate — you only have to think about five strings instead of six.
Songs in Open G
The Rolling Stones alone have a huge catalog here:
- Start Me Up
- Brown Sugar
- Honky Tonk Women
- Tumbling Dice
- Can't You Hear Me Knocking
- Gimme Shelter (partially)
And it's not just them. Open G is all over blues slide guitar — Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Mississippi John Hurt. It's also common in folk/country for songs in G that want that big open ring.
The Chord Shapes You Need
Open G isn't much harder to play than standard — you just learn a handful of new chord shapes, most of which are simpler than their standard-tuning equivalents.
G (open): strum all six (or five) strings, no fretting needed.
C: the simplest movable shape — barre the 5th fret with your index finger, then fret the 5th string (now a G string after retuning) at fret 7 with your middle or ring finger. That's the Keith Richards C. Add the 6th string fret 5 for the full chord.
D: fret 7 barre, or use the 5-string power-chord-feel shape that Keith favors.
F: two frets below G, fret 10 barre. Simple.
The beauty of open G is that you can play most songs with just an index-finger barre shifted around, plus a couple of embellishment notes. If you're used to standard tuning's mental map of chord shapes, open G is almost disorienting because it's easier.
The Trade-Off
Open G isn't free. Because the tuning is optimized around G, playing in other keys takes more thinking. You can definitely play in D, A, C, and E, but the chord shapes aren't the familiar-from-standard shapes anymore. If you're a rhythm player who jumps around keys all night, open G takes some relearning.
That's why most players who use open tunings use them for specific songs or specific tunings per guitar. Keith has guitars set up in open G, open D, and standard, and he picks up the right one for the song. If you only own one guitar, retuning is a 30-second job — but your chord shapes change completely each time, and most players find it clearer to reserve open tunings for specific material.
Try It Right Now
Retune and just noodle for ten minutes. Strum open. Barre frets 2, 5, 7, 10. Slide between them. Add little melody notes on the top two strings while holding a barre — the B and D open strings ring out pleasantly over basically anything.
Within fifteen minutes of playing open G for the first time, almost everyone stumbles into a riff that sounds like a real song. That's the gift of open tunings: the instrument gives you stuff for free that you'd have to work for in standard. No wonder Keith never goes back.