I've been thinking about the altered tunings I'm using - and why I’m using them.

My psychological make-up means I like to know why - like why I’m responding more to the noises a guitar makes in altered tunings than i am to the noises it makes in standard tunings.

I'm a little apprehensive that if I drill down to try and work that out what I'm currently might vanish. Not because I believe the idea that you shouldn’t let daylight in on magic. You should be able to articulate what you're trying to do, even if in the end you don't actually achieve it, because you learn as much from the process of anything you do than the outcome.

It's more that you should stay out of your own way when things are going well. 500 metres to go in an Olympic Final with the Italians charging is not the time to start wondering about your finish.

So with that in mind, here are a couple of ideas as to why I’m playing in any tuning as long as it isn’t standard EBGDAE at the moment.

1) I’m using non-standard tunings because my ability to play in standard tuning was taken away and it’s too hard and too painful to try and recover it.

2) I’m using non-standard tunings because I feel very deeply that guitar music, generally, has become a standardised music made up of recycled patterns and licks and genres and forms - and I want to make music, not play licks.

3) I play in non-standard tunings now because when I do play in standard tunings now, I don’t feel anything. If I turn the tuning pegs I can make what's inside and the instrument align. Then, rather than patterns and licks, music starts coming out - music that resonates with how I feel.

Some thoughts on the above.

When I first picked up a guitar, the strings ran EADGBE low to high. That was how a guitar was tuned and that was how you played it. Negotiating the fretboard's grid of possibilities was hard enough without adding weird tunings to the mix.

Guitar music, more perhaps than any other, advances by responding to what has gone before. Most of us pick up the instrument because we hear something - a song, a player, a band - we like and we decide we want to learn how to do that. And, like everyone else, I started out by copping licks and riffs from the songs I loved.

As with anything, with repetition comes fluency. Repeatedly playing patterns and licks develops muscle memories. As we become familiar with the established contents and forms of the genres we work in, it’s easy to start playing our muscle memory, which is, essentially, playing the patterns that we know and after that the patterns that we know fit.

That's not music.

It might sound like it.

It might even pass for it.

But it's not music.

It's cut-and-paste pattern-recognition: letting our fingers recreate learned patterns and our brains move them around to produce something that cultural consensus says is ‘music.’

In altered tunings I can't rely on muscle memory, because none of the patterns I've learned align with where the notes are. So I have to focus on playing what I can feel and hear, rather than playing what my fingers know comes next.

As guitarists, we know that we stand on the shoulders of giants. Learning by copying our heroes is a celebrated and recognised part of our culture. Read any interview with one of your heroes, listen to any podcast: it’s how we all start.

But music should never be just a collection of learned licks and moves, cut-and-pasted together.

Even when I worked only in standard tunings what I wanted to develop, even then, was my own voice.

In altered tunings, what I'm currently recording sounds like me - probably because I've put the instrument in tune with myself for the first time.

There are a few outliers that might have informed this approach.

My Dad would tune to open G or D for slide playing but I found playing without a slide hard enough and never bothered with it. It’s like learning Manouche music. Why on earth would you want to try and be Django? He’s already done it, and no-one else is ever going to do it better.

I remember stumbling across Martin Simpson demonstrating a few of the tunings he had used on Vagrant Stanzas in a 'Making of ...' style video on YouTube when I was in Sheffield. This would have been 2015 or so. I remember thinking 'Oh. That looks interesting.'

I didn't really get the chance to explore them fully because if I played at all then circumstances meant that I did so late at night with a sock stuffed between the soundboard and the strings at the bridge to muffle the sound. Five minutes here, five minutes there, often weeks or months apart. Not enough to explore anything, and certainly not enough to sustain facility and fluency.

I also remember going to see the remarkable Tony McManus play in the backroom of a pub called The Greystones.

Can you imagine seeing Yo-Yo Ma playing between the bingo and the meat draw at your local Working Men's Club? Well, that's what seeing Tony felt like - like having one of the world's best players in your living room: relaxed, informal, engaging and utterly brilliant.

I remember being stunned at how a guitar could still sound like a guitar while also going to places that a guitar doesn't normally go - all by turning the tuning pegs.

Perhaps I put those moments away for later?

Either way, it's now later and I'm enjoying exploring these brave new worlds.

Without risking paralysis by analysis, there is another thing:

I've always loved the guitar.

I love the sound the guitar makes.

I love the way playing the guitar makes me feel.

I love the songs that have been written and performed on it that have enriched my life.

Love, love, love.

And I've always wanted to go beyond what it's supposed to sound like and supposed to do. The generic sounds. The neat patterns. The same progressions and runs as everyone else.

Don't get me wrong.

There are countless players who never moved out of standard tuning who've moved me, grooved me, floated my boat and rocked my world too. If this was just a list of players who I've liked and listened to at one time or another, it would be a long list.

There's not a guitarist I've heard who I haven't then begged, borrowed or stole something from. Even odd ones that you might not think of if you heard me playing at the moment. I have some Pop Tarts and Prog Dinosaurs in my past and present. I've played Mustang Sally for money.

And Dancing Queen.

ABBA wrote great songs, man.

But beyond the thrilling sound and the possibilities the guitar offered, what it really offered was the chance to engage with the idea of the song.

The song was always the thing for me.

After all, you might be able to negotiate the fretboard at a million miles an hour, but without something to say, all you're doing is an expression of musical athleticism.

(Here's looking at you, Yngwie ... ).

It's ironic when you think about it.

We all pick the guitar up because our heroes, whose unique voice thrills us, inspires us to. But then rather than develop our own voice, we copy theirs: BB's Box. Eddie's triads. Eric's Buddy Guy licks. James's riffing. Travis's picking.

Our heroes even show us what it takes to develop your own voice on the guitar:

Head off the beaten path.

Strike out into the uncharted territory.

Find what resonates with you.

Work with it.

Take the time to develop it.

Let it speak.

Get out of your own way.

Be brave.

Be bold.

Yet overwhelmingly as guitarists we don't do any of those things.

We play the licks of our heroes.

We copy the sound they make.

We buy the same instruments as them, the same amps, the same pedals, turn the dials to the same place, let it rip and call it music.

I don't play like any of the players I've just written about.

Surely, though, that's the point. The world doesn't need a sub-standard Simpson clone or a second-rate McManus. It doesn't need another second-rate take on BB, God, Koss, Jimi, Jimmy or James.

The world already has those original real I-ams.

Perhaps I'm engaging with those non-standard approaches now because it's finally time to sound like me?

And accept what that is.

Whatever that is.

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©℗ A. I. Jackson