personal choice and decision making.

so, instead of giving you opinions, i will remind you of some heurstics and decision making hints. we don’t need someone to tell us if we should use android or ios; mac, windows or linux or ubuntu. benz, tesla or…

i use standard tuning. i started playing Indian music on the guitar when i was 11 years old. There were already guitarists 20 or 30 years elder to me, fluently playing indian music on standard tuned guitar.
they were just not so famous outside Kerala.

guitarists have been using standard tuned guitar to play music – notes and chords – in so many different styles, beautifully. Carnatic or Indian style the way I do, just requires you to know to connect the notes, using slides hammer ons and pull offs, to play fluently. I play different styles on the same tuning.

for me it is just patterns and connections, guitar is a pattern based instrument. horizontally.

 

heuristics etc if you have to make a decision:

occam’s razor – simplest solution, fewest assumptions. but watch out for quick used to solution methods

be careful with confirmation bias – look at antithesis before falling for quick answer

and availability bias – falling for what you are used to and not considering the new situation.

 

but, more than anything, use what is best for you, advantage and disadvantage based and  see clearly what you lose vs how you can learn.

 

this 90 days to guitar that matters page was made a long time back, inspired by what I saw with my students, avoiding unnecessary junk for them etc.

You may find it useful to see some of the basics of standard tuned guitar that can be helpful for you to understand the fretboard, best practices etc.

If you haven’t already, get the foundation videos and other continued resources using the Raga leads resources page.

All the best.

p.s. Want to listen to Alaipayuthe on Acoustic Guitar and go through the complete detailed tabs and Western notation? All the gamakas have been hard coded into the notation so that there is no information lost or left to be guessed. Click to view.