My eight year old enjoys strumming a guitar, but can't really get into proper chord fingerings yet, so I wanted to get a good open tuning for him to play easy songs/rhythms with. Now I'm a novice myself (about six months experience), and I'm certainly not looking to teach him lessons or anything, just something easy to strum for fun. What would people suggest I tune it to, and what simple songs could be played?

Well even with an open tuning, he would need to learn to finger chords unless all you want him to do is strum the open strings.

At eight he is more likely to teach himself. Try having him strum G, B and E string while fretting different frets on the E string. He'll hear what sounds good together. Have him try fretting 2 strings in different places. And then any open chords on the G, B and E strings.
I think it will help him build strength, agility and toughness in his fingers. There's no law that says you have to start with the open chords.
Hopefully he gets a greater interest in guitar and the two of you have some great quality time making music.
Good Luck to you both,
Gordon

Hopefully he isn't playing on a standard sized guitar. His hands are way too small to be able to play anything on one right. Buy him a kids sized guitar and it'll be a lot easier.

Useful info from you both, thanks. I was thinking that if he had an open tuning, say a D, then he could strum the open chord D, and then bar the frets to get different chords - 2nd fret E, 3rd fret F etc(or have I misunderstood open tuning - as I say, I'm pretty new to this myself?). This would get him able to make a reasonable sound quite easily (nice theory anyway!!).

He has a 3/4 size guitar at the moment which I have to confess is a little big, but it was available and I don't want to spend good money until I know he is interested.

Well, I sure wish I could show you this rather than type it in. Its a bit like what Gordon is getting at. Ok, three and four fingered chords are hard to pull off well when you're starting out... you won't quit on learning them, but you can give yourself a break and have some fun at the same time.

First, take a break from thinking of the guitar conventionally, as in 6 strings all needing to be "strummed" together. Next thing, forget about what notes are what, what notes form what chords. I'm not saying you won't learn & pay attention to these things in the future. I'm saying take a break from conventional approach, but instead of putting the guitar down, try something different.

1) Experiment with a capo. Get something like the Planet Waves Capo, slap it on any one of the first 5 frets. Now, just try fretting one string at a time, and picking just that string, and one or both adjacent strings... experiment. Sometimes the notes will sound terrible together, some will sound really good together. Try adding just one other finger, so you're never using more than one or two fingers to fret your "chord". Try moving around on the fretboard, experimenting with different positions with different open strings. You'll probably come up with some cool stuff. Remember, you're not strumming all the strings... you're just picking two or three strings... whether you play them together, or pick them individually is up to you, you may want to do both.

2) If you go on Wiki-pedia you can find out about alternate tunings. One I like is (starting with the thickest string, the E string, and then moving up):

D-A-D-G-A-E Using the same experimenting technique as in #1, but without the capo, you can play around and see what you come up with.

You may also want to learn some simple fingerpicking patterns as taught by Lisa McCormick on this site. Fingerpicking is a great way to really add interest to a relatively simple chord. It also sounds great on acoustic guitar.

Give it a whirl and see what you can come up with.

Hey there,

also with a little work you can easily change all normal open chords to 2-string chords and teach im in that way, so he can build on it very well later.

For example many players start with the G major not:

3 2 0 0 0 3

but

x x 0 0 0 3


Just make sure he is playing the chords with the same finger he is jusing in the real chords later so he jsut has to add the other fingers.
Then maybe teach him some very easy 2-chord children songs or just some little melodys with not more then 5 different notes, maybe just on the high e string.


By the way, I don't think that starting with Open D tuning will be a lot easier.
Hope that helps!