My band can't decide which tuning we should play in. Thing is, not at our songs are in the same tuning. Some are in standard, others are dropped. Right now we're playing in Dropped C, which works well because we play Death Metal and it's heavy. And when we have to play our other songs, we simply tune the last string up to D.

Our bassist has a 5 string, so that complicates things. His guitar doesn't go EADGBE, it goes BEADG or something. That's his standard E tuning. When we're playing Dropped C and want to make it D, he has to tune his whole guitar while we only tune 1 string. How can we make this simple?

Obvious answer: Tune EADGC? (Then drop like the guitars). A guitar will tune to whatever you want it to, provided you haven't been retarded and get thick strings to play high notes. Get a lower gauge if its really an issue and then presto, insta-tuning.

Obvious answer #2: Can't he just play everything with the low-B but just play it up a bit? (First fret should be D, third fret C, though I'd double check this with Ricard as he's the theory master).

I'm not sure I understand. The standard 5 string bass tuning is BEADG. If the guitars tune to that, we'll be at B standard, which is pretty low but doesn't sound very evil for some reason. If we have to drop that, it'll be even lower. I tried it and it's not very practical even though I have high gauge.

A site tells me this:

Drop B/C: GDADC#

This is very confusing to me.

Obvious answer #2 is very obvious. I hadn't really thought about it, I'll ask the bassist if he can do that.

The first one: DONT tune the standard. Standard tuning is just what others are using, theres no reason he can't tune the string to E instead of a B, and EADGC is pretty common with those who'd rather be able to hit higher notes than lower ones. Then his first four are identical to your guitars standard tuning and he can drop it down.

Rosalind wrote:

Obvious answer #2: Can't he just play everything with the low-B but just play it up a bit? (First fret should be D, third fret C, though I'd double check this with Ricard as he's the theory master).

As the owner of a 5-string bass, I second this.

The issue's been resolved, we've settled for playing everything on standard bass tuning. It's a bit more difficult though. Thanks for the help.