My name is Kirk Lorange, I live in Australia and I've been earning my living playing guitar since I was 18. I fell in love with slide guitar not long after that and after experimenting for years with the traditional open tunings -- I tried them all -- I reverted to good old Standard or sometimes Dropped D, just the bass string down a tone. I know the layout of my fretboard in standard tuning well and I like to know exactly what I'm playing at all times. I was also very happy to discover that all flavors (major, major7, minor, minor7, 9th, 11th, dim, aug, sus4 ...) can either be played outright or strongly alluded to in standard tuning.

Playing in standard tuning makes it very easy to blend your normal playing and slide into one very spicy hybrid style. It surely is the most fun and free way of making music on these wonderful instruments. You can check out my slide playing on YouTube.  I also own one of the largest guitar sites on the Internet - Guitar for Beginners and Beyond and I'm the author of the bestselling Guitar Instruction course called  PlaneTalk.