Both Sides Now is a song by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell that has become a standard. It has since been recorded by dozens of vocalists and instrumentalists including jazz guitarist, Pat Martino and Dobro master, Jerry Douglas, who plays the song in Open D tuning.

My arrangement for acoustic lap steel is in Dsus2/C, a tuning possibly first developed in Hawaii, but best known through the beautiful playing of Celtic/Folk standard guitarist El McMeen. McMeen uses this lush, evocative tuning exclusively, to play a wide range of traditional and devotional music. The tuning is an easy tweak from the standard Open D tuning (low to high) D,A,D,F#,A,D and is related to DADGAD, or Dsus tuning - which we retain on top while changing the bass strings to G and C. McMeen refers to the tuning as “Drop C” tuning but I think of it as Dsus over C. There’s a lot of untapped potential this tuning and I hope you enjoy playing this classic Mitchell song in Dsus/C tuning.

Dsus /C: (McMeen) Tuning

STRING # 6 5 4 3 2 1

NOTES: C G D G A D