Tuning advice

Because why not.

Thanks for giving me targeted advice with guitar. What would you advise for the actual right way to do things instead of what was closer to something I would try?

Standard tuning or drop tuning, with each string tuned down the same number of half-steps so it’s still easy on your fingertips. For example, C-standard or drop-C. I particularly like drop tunings, myself, but they’re both popular for a reason. They make it easy to play the most common harmonies (power chords, thirds, and fourths), with a slight modification that makes it easy to play common chords with a lot of open strings. In your tuning (let’s call it special boi tuning) it would be difficult to play a C-major or A-minor with five strings ringing together, or to sweep an arpeggio.

Drop tuning keeps most of the benefits of standard tuning but dropping the bottom string a little really helps out with a lot of the most common types of riff in metal (low power chords and string skipping), plus your lowest note is slightly deeper. The cost is you lose your six-string chords like G-major, but I don’t use those anyway. And you can’t play major or minor second intervals on the two lowest strings, which legitimately kinda sucks because those have a great dissonant sound for metal riffs. A good example of these in the mid-range is the main riff/chord in The Seventh Trumpet by August Burns Red.

Great film.

C-standard would be E-standard with all strings loosened by four half-steps. E-standard is the normal EADGBE. So C-standard would be E minus four piano keys (C), A minus four piano keys (E), D minus four piano keys (Bb), and so on to get C-F-Bb-Eb-G-C. It’s pretty easy to learn the scale and mode shapes. They still mostly repeat, but there are a couple of small quirks to remember.