"While the honorable Mr. Richards has played in many tunings — including the open D and E he copped from Don Everly — it's open G that people think of when they think of Keith and the riffs of the Rolling Stones."

"The beauty, the majesty of the five-string open G tuning for an electric guitar is that you've only got three notes — the other two are repetitions of each other an octave apart. It's tuned GDGBD. Certain strings run through the whole song, so you get a drone going all the time, and because it's electric they reverberate. Only three notes, but because of these different octaves, it fills the whole gap between bass and top notes with sounds. It gives you this beautiful resonance and ring. I found working with open tunings that there's a million places you don't need to put your fingers. The notes are there already. You can leave certain strings wide open. It's finding the space in between that makes open tunings work. If you're working the right chord, you can hear this other chord going on behind it, which actually you're not playing.. It's there. It defies logic….It's called the drone note. Or at least that's what I call it."

"If you're looking to wade into Joni [Mitchell's] musical waters, open D is an essential first step. Often, you see the same Joni songs transcribed in open E, as it's the same tuning one step down, and just requires different capo placement."

"This tuning can be heard on quintessential Fahey tracks lie "Sunflower River Blues" and "Funeral Song for Mississippi John Hurt" among many others."

"With the release of Fair Warning in 1981, Eddie staked more new territory with his use of drop-D tuning in a hard-rock context. Years later, the influence of drop-D cuts like “Unchained” and “Dirty Movies,” as well as “Sinners Swing,” would be felt in songs like Ozzy Osbourne’s “No More Tears,” Alice in Chains’ “Would?” and Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name.”"