Guitar TUnings (John Mayer) PLease BLUES PLAYERS HELP ME WITH GUITAR!?

John mayer if you like his brand new "blues" album which i like... but many people really dont........ i do i think his a very honest artist... regardless of all the hate by blues fans i have questions about his tunings.......for songs like... Out of my mind how does he tune his guitar....... am just using an example but i really want to Know how MOST Blues artist tune........ is it standard.... ?? I love albert king i want to know how they tune is it all in the guitar or that nice clean sound comes out of standard tuned guitars??? i've taught myself how to play the guitar i don't think it will be so hard to teach myself how to play blues and i really love blues so i want to get started........ anyone help me out on anything blues history? blues tunings......

Most blues artist's tune their guitars to open tunings, whereby, if you play all the strings without freeting you'll get a chord (e.g D - A - D - F# - A - D, open D; if you play without fretting you get a D maj chord). The most common ones I've seen are E minor (which Albert King and Alber Collin's played exclusively), open D maj/min and open G; though some use other tunings (open A, open C, etc. the possibilities are enless), especially when playing slide guitar. Wikipedia's got a bunch listed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_tuning

Some things to keep in mind:

1 - Don't tune up beyond standard tuning unless you have very light strings (especially if you have a whammy bar). Can break strings very easily.

2 - Conversely, if you want to tune down, put heavier gague stings on your guitar so that it'll keep in tune better (especially if you have a whammy bar)

Of course, that's not always the case. BB King and Eric Clapton play in standard tuning, while Stevie Ray Vaughan played down a half step (Eb - Ab - Db - Gb - Bb - Eb). Mostly, it's what you're most comfortable with. Albert collins used to play in open Em with a capo (i.e if the song was in D, he'd play an open Em tuning with a capo on the 10th fret).

Good luck with your playing.

Yes... you must begin by turning ze knobs on tops ze gutaro!

Alot of the old Delta Guys didn't use standard tuning, and as aforementioned, used open tunings, most of the time tuning to whatever they pleased. I've always heard as a roady/harp player that you don't ever touch a Delta player's tunings because you'll mess it up.

As for Mayer, I'd go with the Drop D tuning. Albert King used it alot as well as his protege Stevie Ray Vaughan, which John Mayer borrows heavily from on the "Continuum" album you speak of. I can name some instances where he directly borrows from SRV, but that's another topic.

I'm pretty sure John Mayer is in standard for most of his stuff. The other answers covered a lot of other artists but Jonny plays in standard.