The Guitar (The Redux)

A generational touchstone for facing a troubled world

I retuned my old Yamaha acoustic guitar the other day.

Not to traditional tuning, adjusting the tone for each string to the standard E, A, D, G, B, E, but to alternate tuning. It’s referred to as “Nick Drake tuning.” Many great artists, mainly singer-songwriters have changed the tuning of their six strings to alternate notes to produce a particular sound. Joni Mitchell was famous for it. The Nick Drake tuning is specific to his style. Drake, if you are unfamiliar, was a genius who never found the recognition he deserved when he was alive, one who died too young after a long struggle with depression. I sometimes liken him to the Van Gogh of modern music. His songs are timeless, enigmatic, and gorgeous. “Pink Moon” may be one you know. It’s been used on countless TV shows and in film scores, and even in a Volkswagen commercial. Not sure how Drake would feel about that. Probably wouldn’t approve.

What the retuning did for this guitar, and for me, was to give it new life, a life of playing in a new way, with new fortitude, and for what one might term a new generational experience.

The Yamaha FG-160 is over 50-years old. It’s a somewhat coveted guitar these days. I bought it new when I was 17 for somewhere around $150, if I remember correctly, with the money I had saved from my newspaper delivery route. It has the nicks and bumps and scratches of age, but it has served me well, accompanying me at coffee houses all around Central Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh back in the day. Somewhere around 1972 through the early 1980s. It was there in times of sorrow and joy. I strummed and sang songs to all kinds of audiences, and then to my kids when they were quite young. And now my 3-year-old granddaughter strums it with awe, smiling and laughing as she plucks the strings.

“Can we play the gitter, Papa?” she says, struggling a bit with the pronunciation.

Nearly four years ago, I wrote about this guitar here at The Abundance. It’s one of the few things in my life I have held onto since my teenage years. I don’t think there’s a single thing of mine tucked away in a nightstand drawer or a closet or a box in the basement that has been personally mine for so long. The guitar carries with it—seeped into its natural wood grain—all the songs I’ve ever sung, all the bars and parties and stages I’ve every carried it into and onto. And especially all the people I’ve ever played in front of—my children, old girlfriends, other musicians, drunk college students, bar patrons, my father, my mother, my wife, and now, my grandchild.

This old Yamaha has been a thread running through a life, the heart pumping blood through my existence.

However, the guitar hasn’t always been an active participant. There have been long stretches of time that it sat silent in the corner of a room, leaning against a wall, waiting for me to reclaim it. But, always, I have returned. The patience it has shown me is that of a good friend, one who knows you may have lost touch with them but that you will, eventually, reach out again. That’s what old friends do.

I have another guitar, a newer one. It’s a Taylor. It has a brighter sound than the Yamaha and I love how it feels in my arms. The Taylor will stay traditionally tuned, mainly because the Nick Drake tuning takes time to create. Tuning to standard and then to alternate tuning is kind of a pain. So now, my old Yamaha has a new purpose, a revival, a rebirth.

And with its renewal, comes my own.

In many ways, I have reclaimed the old Yamaha and given it youth again, and it, too, has discovered a new place in my life, a revived existence, a kind of symbol of what we all need, a repurposing, a “retuning” that allows one to find new joy, new avenues, most of all new hope.

Over the last month, I’ve seen the world and America, our political and societal existence drastically shift, move, erode, and change at breakneck speed. Injustices abound. Incompetence and ignorance thrive. Misinformation fuels contempt and alarm. Billionaires exert relentless greed. Cowardice thrives in Congress, on both sides of the aisle. Kindness and compassion are seen as weaknesses. Religious zealots fail to see that Jesus was the first non-violent revolutionary, a radical, the one who called on all of us to “love our neighbors as ourselves.” Spiritual deprivation has caused many to ignore what Buddha said: “Hatred does not cease by hatred.” Or the word of the Prophet Muhammad: “Gladden the heart of a human being, feed the hungry, help the afflicted, lighten the sorrow of the sorrowful, and remove the wrongs of the injured.”

The world needs a retuning.

I am watching America today with a foreboding dread, to use the recent words of one U.S. governor. “Tyranny requires your fear and your silence,” he said. Instead of silence, each of us needs a retuning in these troubled times, an adjustment of our strings so that we can hear the music differently, sing our songs with new power and reverence, with new purpose, new determination, renewed meaning, with revitalized hope and courage, songs that sing of kindness, compassion, and reject evil. Retune so that our worlds, and our beloved “guitars” will keep playing songs of resolve.

My old Yamaha is going to stay in its new alternate tuning, and I’m going to play it over and over again, louder and louder, until maybe America and the world can hear every single note.

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David W. Berner is the author of several books of award-winning fiction and memoir. His latest, Daylight Saving Time: The power of growing older is available now. His debut poetry collection, Garden Tools is due out in October 2025 from Finishing Line Press. His novella, American Moon will be published by Regal House Publishing in 2026.