{"id":853175,"date":"2025-06-03T19:11:56","date_gmt":"2025-06-04T00:11:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/03\/our-guitars-were-so-bad-we-couldnt-make-them-work-for-us-glenn-came-over-to-my-apartment-with-six-guitars-three-under-each-arm-and-threw-them-onto-the-futon-sonic-youth\/"},"modified":"2025-06-03T19:11:56","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T00:11:56","slug":"our-guitars-were-so-bad-we-couldnt-make-them-work-for-us-glenn-came-over-to-my-apartment-with-six-guitars-three-under-each-arm-and-threw-them-onto-the-futon-sonic-youth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/03\/our-guitars-were-so-bad-we-couldnt-make-them-work-for-us-glenn-came-over-to-my-apartment-with-six-guitars-three-under-each-arm-and-threw-them-onto-the-futon-sonic-youth\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cOur guitars were so bad, we couldn\u2019t make them work for us. Glenn came over to my apartment with six guitars, three under each arm, and threw them onto the futon\u201d: Sonic Youth are now alternate tunings icons \u2013 but the band opted for them out of n"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sonic Youth have been dabbling voraciously with alternate tunings<\/a> for decades, and now, Thurston Moore<\/a> has recalled the exact moment the band began that journey, revealing that a New York art-rock guitarist helped them achieve their lightbulb moment.<\/p>\n

The band had arrived with 1983\u2019s Confusion Is Sex<\/em>, with all the songs in the old reliable standard tuning. But, as Moore says in the new issue of Guitar World<\/em>, they were left wanting.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were aware of musicians using different tunings in downtown New York in the scene we were in \u2013 the art-rock composers like Glenn Branca<\/a>,\u201d he preludes. \u201cI was amazed by that, but I didn\u2019t think it could be employed in a traditional rock band lineup.\u201d<\/p>\n

Branca was making waves in the New York scene with his trippy, ambient, and avant-garde compositions that hinged on the different sonic possibilities of alternate tunings. Who better, then, to educate a young Thurston Moore?<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember saying to Glenn that [our] guitars were so bad that we couldn\u2019t really make them work for us,\u201d he relays. \u201cHe came over to my apartment with six guitars, three under each arm \u2013 no cases or anything \u2013 and threw them onto the futon. It was amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

But this was no mere toe-dipping into DADGAD<\/a>. Branca\u2019s innovating teeted on the brink of insanity.<\/p>\n

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\"Thurston<\/picture><\/p>\n<\/div>

(Image credit: Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cHe had one that had six .10-gauge strings all tuned to E, for example,\u201d Moore goes on. \u201cWe started to really delve into alternatives to standard tuning. I\u2019d just strum the open strings and adjust them until I liked what it sounded like, and then I\u2019d make a note of what the strings were tuned to in that tuning.<\/p>\n

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All the latest guitar news, interviews, lessons, reviews, deals and more, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cThis was before you could buy tuners very easily \u2013 I used to tune Kim\u2019s bass<\/a> to a Black Uhuru record,\u201d he adds, \u201cthen tune our guitars based on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Moore, it was a chance to find his voice on the electric guitar<\/a> \u2013 Confusion Is Sex<\/em> had been a relative success, but he knew there were more interesting worlds out there begging to be explored.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never saw myself as much of a guitarist in standard tuning anyway; I never really engaged with traditional tuning,\u201d he confesses. \u201cI didn\u2019t feel like I needed to express myself in that tuning and never felt comfortable in standard.<\/p>\n

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Sonic Youth Full Set | From The Basement – YouTube<\/span>
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\u201cIn some ways I felt more under pressure because the world was so full of great players who were in standard, and I had no interest in trying to compete with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moore has since employed a feast of oddball tunings throughout his career. Songs like Silver Rocket, Candle<\/em>, and Cinderella’s Big Score<\/em> employ a very open, perhaps Branca-inspired tuning of A-C-C-G-G#-C.<\/p>\n

His 1995 solo LP, Psychic Hearts <\/em>meanwhile, is written almost exclusively in C-G-D-G-B-B tuning. Listing them all would be an exhausting exercise akin to transcribing Frank Zappa\u2019s Black Page<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019d strum the open strings and adjust them until I liked what it sounded like, and then I\u2019d make a note of what the strings were tuned to<\/p>

Thurston Moore<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

The guitarist\u2019s full GW<\/em> chat features in the latest issue of Guitar World<\/em>. Elsewhere in the mag, there\u2019s a look at AC\/DC\u2019s Back in Black <\/em>45 years later, Robin Nolan discussing how he played George Harrison\u2019s guitars for a gypsy jazz tribute album<\/a> to the Beatles\u2019 legacy, and interviews with Deafhaven and Alex Lifeson.<\/p>\n

Head to Magazines Direct<\/a> to pick up an issue.<\/p>\n

In related news, Moore has also hailed Nina Garcia as noise-rock’s secret weapon<\/a> \u2013 while actor-turned-guitarist Devon Ross<\/a> has spoken about the Sonic Youth man loving her demos as she dove into the depths of songwriting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A freelance writer with a penchant for music that gets weird, Phil is a regular contributor to Prog<\/em>, Guitar World<\/em>, and Total Guitar<\/em> magazines and is especially keen on shining a light on unknown artists. Outside of the journalism realm, you can find him writing angular riffs in progressive metal band, Prognosis<\/a>, in which he slings an 8-string Strandberg Boden Original, churning that low string through a variety of tunings. He’s also a published author and is currently penning his debut novel which chucks fantasy, mythology and humanity into a great big melting pot.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

Zonia Culton
Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Image credit: Getty Images) Sonic Youth have been dabbling voraciously with alternate tunings for decades, and now, Thurston Moore has recalled the exact moment the band began that journey, revealing that a New York art-rock guitarist helped them achieve their lightbulb moment. The band had arrived with 1983\u2019s Confusion Is Sex, with all the songs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":853176,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45277,97593],"tags":[109202,15879],"class_list":{"0":"post-853175","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-our","8":"category-guitars","9":"tag-our","10":"tag-guitars"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/853176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}