Ostrich guitar

The ostrich guitar or ostrich tuning is a type of trivial tuning. It assigns one note to all strings, e.g. E-E-e-e-e'-e' or D-D-D-D-d'-d'. The term "ostrich guitar" was coined by the Velvet Underground's Lou Reed after the pre-Velvet Underground song "The Ostrich" by Lou Reed and the Primitives, on which he first recorded using this tuning, the first known commercial composition to make use of a trivial guitar tuning.

Musical theory

The trivial tuning is a regular tuning based on the unison musical interval, which has zero semitones. It assigns exactly one pitch class (for example D, A♯, F or B) to all guitar-strings, tuned to the same note over two or three octaves. This creates an intense, chorused drone music, and interesting fingering potential. Among alternative tunings for the guitar, the trivial tuning is a regular and repetitive tuning. It is its own left-handed tuning.

Example

To create a trivial D tuning from a standard guitar tuning:

Origins

The term "ostrich guitar" was coined by Lou Reed in 1965 after the song "The Ostrich" by Lou Reed and the Primitives, on which he first used this tuning.John Cale, a collaborator with avant-garde composer La Monte Young, recognised the similarity between Reed's guitar tuning and Young's work involving drone music when he was hired to play Reed's song 'The Ostrich' as part of a fabricated touring group.