Cross tuning

In folk music traditions, cross-tunings are used to give the instrument a different sound by altering the pitch of string resonances and drones.

Cross tuning is commonly used on the fiddle in folk music of Appalachia, the southern United States and Scandinavia.

Even more frequently used is a cross tuning of AEAE for music played in the key of A major.

Relatively well-known American folk tunes that are often played in cross-tuning include "Breaking Up Christmas," "Cluck Old Hen," "Hangman's Reel," "Horse and Buggy," and "Ways of the World."

GDAE is known in some North American Old-Timey fiddling circles as "that Italian tuning," the implication being that it is only one of many possibilities.