“I’ll use a capo on Sympathy on the second fret, because sometimes I like how something sounds a whole step up. “I use capos a lot and also partial capos,” he says. The rest of the strings aside from the B – they’re all D’s but in different octaves.” Especially for a song like Iris, as I can’t imagine what the tension is like on that neck! But, you know, it works. I have to prime the guitar to stay in that tuning. I usually have to tune the guitar and set that guitar to the tuning – and every day or every couple of days I need to adjust the truss rod again. “The downside of doing these tunings is that a lot of them are so extreme in the way they’re twisting the neck and that kind of thing. “Somebody at D'Addario was nice enough to wind a bunch of strings for the low string on my Iris guitar, which is actually tuned down to a B,” he says. Many of his guitars are restrung with a heavier gauge of strings. While the tunings are paramount to the Rzeznik sound, other factors come into play, such as string gauges. "It created this whole set of overtones that’s really hard to replicate if you played it in standard tuning.” “A song like Big Machine – has only four strings on it with this ridiculous tuning, yet it works," he says. He had stumbled upon what became his signature style and sound. The combination of not knowing what he was playing and being limited with what was at his disposal proved to be innovative for Rzeznik.
I’d end up with guitars with four strings on them because two of the strings would pop off because I was experimenting on them.” “I was really trying to create something that was sonically different. And that’s how I started coming up with all these chords. “But if my finger couldn’t reach something, I’d re-tune a string so that it’d make it into an easier shape. If something didn’t sound cool, I’d work with a standard tuning guitar and start running the chords up and down the neck, even though I didn’t know a lot of chords. “I’d basically sit there at night and just start tuning my guitar strings up and down until something sounded really cool. “I started doing some research and getting into players such as Stephen Stills and Jimmy Page and realized these people were doing this thing a long time ago,” he says. With his interest piqued, along with a hunger to explore further, Rzeznik immersed himself in listening to other guitar players who were using alternative tunings. I’d end up with guitars with four strings on them because two of the strings would pop off because I was experimenting on them I was really trying to create something that was sonically different. I started hearing these notes that were kind of droning and ringing it was like they were the engine driving the song. I was like, ‘Wow, that’s crazy.’ So I started listening to his records closely to try and find out what was going on.
“One night I was watching Bob Mould, and he kept re-tuning his guitars between songs.
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