Dropped D

No, Dropped-D is not a rap singer, it's a way of tuning a guitar -- five of the strings are kept standard, and the sixth string, the bass E, is lowered a step, to D, thus the open strings are DADGBE, going from six to one.

There are all kinds of such tunings, and mostly I stay away from them because they require that you learn new chord shapes and I barely know any in the plain-vanilla standard Elvis-Ate-Dynamite-Good-By-Elvis versions. (To give dropped-D even more of a resonant rumble, you can first lower every string a full step, to DGCFAD, then drop the D to a C -- CGCFAD ...)

However, there are some songs or tunes that a simple Dropped-D tuning will muchly improve. I am working on an arrangement by El McMeen, an acoustic guitarist of extraordinary skill and musicality, of the old standard "The Water is Wide." Lovely the way he plays it.

El has now come out with a book, from Mel Bay, full of arrangements in this tuning. If you are thinking about moving into alternate tunings, this is the easiest one to try, and you should get this book: The Art of Dropped D Guitar

You might also poke around his website and pick up some of his CD's. Guy is, no two ways about it, a terrific guitarist.