This Tuning Made Them Famous (the Coldplay tuning)

🎸Get The Alternate Tuning Course for just $9.00 (normally $39.00) ⬇️

My Most Popular Courses

🎸 Fretboard Fundamentals Bundle:

🎸 The CAGED Course:

🎸 Barebones Guitar Theory:

🎸 Breaking Out Of the Pentatonic Box:

My Favorite Gear (affiliate links)

Line 6 HX Effects

Neural DSP Quad Cortex

Zoom H6

Shure SM57

Sennheiser MD 421-II

AEA R92

Sennheiser MKH 50

Universal Audio Apollo x8p

Want to get in touch?

0:00 Intro
0:52 Learn The Tuning
2:09 How To Play "Yellow"
4:36 How To Play The Chorus
6:37 Let's Make The Tuning Better
8:04 E Maj Chords
9:57 Outro

[raykwon]

That penultimate chord of Yellow (the m11) just elevates the song about 10 levels. I remember hearing it for the first time and it totally blew me away. Yellow is my favourite Coldplay song.❤ Thank you for this video!

[NisGaarde]

Agree that *the first three* albums are great. Almost sound like a completely different band to 2024 Coldplay, which is just ... well, not for me.

[NotSamuelJoshuVa]

never really expected a song tutorial from rhett but man did u not disappoint, keep it up man!! love from singapore!!

[heysahan]

those first two coldplay records are great and fall under this category of artists who, to my ears, were in some form or fashion inspired by the radiohead bends record. them, muse, travis and doves all did some really killer records in that time period that still sound great today.

[CalibSmith]

The grain on that guitar is BEAUTIFUL.

[JackAckley]

Those alternate tunings evoke such powerful emotions that standard tuning chords can’t always capture. Thanks for sharing another, great and insightful video.

[dazwold]

There's so many awesome tunings that Coldplay use in their early material which doesn't get talked about often enough.

The tuning in Yellow of course, but also these:

EADGCC with a capo on the 1st fret- A Message.

EADGCF - The Scientist

EADGCD# - Square One

CACGBC - Till Kingdom Come

[rosbyduhart]

I've been in a dry spell playing guitar in church. I've grow weary of modern worship music. I think messing around with tunings like this will help breath life in to some of those tunes and help me with my writing also. Good one!

[iryan]

I think we need more Rhett acoustic content, this is great!

[pierresarrazin]

Holy Sh*+, now I finally understand why I’ve never been able to make a decent version of it… the tuning!!! Thanks!

[TheTerrypcurtin]

Rhett the guitar player in the band Dry Cleaning is insane great. No pentatonics. No Dorians. Just groove. My god. The spoken word. Simon Le Bon turned me on to them. I cant stop listening.

[codycarroll]

Thank you for sharing this! You’re the first one I’ve seen that plays it like it sounds. All the other videos are close but not what the record sounds like. Love your content!

[rowegardner]

Coldplay’s first three albums (but esp. the first two) are ridiculously strong. Never understood the haters for their earlier work!

[JacksonLamberth]

I just performed guitar for the first time for school with my sister and we played Yellow! That tuning blew my mind! Paul Davids has a good video about this song and the tuning.

[LMacNeill]

Wow -- that E Maj 7 chord with the open D# sounded so amazing!! You could say it struck a chord with me. 😂 Seriously, though, I guess you don't normally hear an E Maj 7 with an open 7th like that, and it just had an extra-shimmery tone to it that I found fascinating. Definitely going to play around with that tuning when I get a chance.

[aa_aa_aab]

Adrianne Lenker tunes to the similar EADGBD in some of her songs and I love the way she uses it, having a high kind of drone note across chord changes, it’s beautiful !!

[JimmyLeeJames]

Sounds ALOT like the tunings used by Dave Gauvrin from the Sundays. I would love to hear an analysis of his tunings and chord choices. Very underrated songwriter.

[komobabo]

I very recently started changing tunings on different guitars based on your DADGAD video so this video and course are exactly what I needed. Thanks Rhett!

[noahpauley]

I play a really similar tuning to the one you landed on. It’s the same except the G is G# so you can play Emaj7 with an E minor position. What I like to do is play the top E string power chords in scale with the rest of the strings open for an interesting sound.

[KordTaylor]

Really a cool tuning. I’m sending to my son and his friends that are into open tunings a lot. Thank you again! 👏🏻