Alternate guitar tunings are simply a way of tuning your guitar differently than the standard E-A-D-G-B-E tuning. Alternate tunings change the way your guitar sounds and they can be used for a variety of purposes. For example, if a guitarist wants to create a darker and heavier sound, this can be achieved with a dropped tuning, or tuning the strings of a guitar lower than usual. In other words, playing the same song in a different tuning will make it sound quite different. However, some alternate tunings are so different from the standard guitar tuning that playing the song the same way using the standard tuning will no longer sound good.