Yeah there is alot of this lower tuning stuff going on, Black Sabbath was doing it years ago, Soundgarten started doing it, now everbody is on the bandwagon, what they are doing is lowering or dropping the tuning of the guitar down, sometimes maybe just one string, sometimes all the strings, here's a little example, tune your 6th string (E) down to D, now you can play the root and 5th of a chord with one finger on the 5th and 6th strings but you'll have to play them 2 frets higher, i.e.... normally you play the G note at the 3rd fret,6th string and the D note at the 5th fret, 5th string, but after you tune the 6th string down you just play both notes at the 5th fret with one finger, see, same notes, listen to "NO MORE TEARS" by Ozzy, this is what Zak is doing, now leave the 6th string at D and tune the rest of the strings down so that from 1st to 6th you have D-A-F-C-G-D, now you can play all your chords the same way as normal, but they are a whole step, (2 frets is a whole step) lower, you play A, but it really is G, this is what everyone is doing, the lower you tune down, the heavier the string you'll need to use and you may need to raise your bridge height some, the strings will be flopping around because they are so loose, the down-tuned 6 string is just the poorman's 7 string..............