Reasons
- to suit vocalist
- to get mean tone, say u want low D tone, the lowest you can get from standard tuning is on the free D string and on 5th fret of A string which the tone is not deep enough, quite high i guess, so how? You want a deeper D, so you drop the E string la. The drop D is not necessarily for metal only, ive seen acoustic player do also, very nice bcoz he was playing solo majorly in D.

yes you can play along with band with Eb as long as you tell them u using Eb, bcoz they are using standard. Many times i play with band, i drop D but the rest standard, as long as u know what to do sure can.

This post has been edited by ashportal: Jun 2 2010, 02:58 PM

Sorry if misleading, what i mean is they shift left hand position one fret more/less either you or the rest shift, and regarding open strings, this is very subjective, if the song u want to play involve open strings, i guess better dont coz sure it will sound horrible, but if the song do not involve open strings, y not? i mean sumtimes u are not rich to have more than a guitar to have 2 type of tunings, and it is annoying to tune guitar on stage to play next song, again this is subjective, depends on how u want it, for me i prefer both depends on the song. Anyway this is good question