How long did it take you to learn DADGAD?

[Methos1979]

So I've been playing hardcore (by my standards) for around 7-ish years. After a couple years I had standard tuning down for the most part. My wife (my acoustic duo vocalist) and I took the summer off from playing open mics and I switched over from playing with a pick (which never felt right) to playing fingerstyle. It was a revelation and took my playing to the next level. Now five years after that I have a style and we've taken the acoustic duo to the next level and we're on our second year of playing out.

Early on I wrote a bunch of songs and in part because that's what I was good at and what I liked they are all slow ballads. Many got back burnered as we started adding tons of standard covers that go over well in order to play out and get gigs. (No one wants to hear nothing but ballads!) Now we're getting a little tired of that grind and we're looking to take a little time off over the coming winter months and get back to our roots, write more material (originals) and just try to improved overall. We don't need to play out for money so we have that going for us.

One thing I need/want to do is to get better up the fretboard, more moveable chords and/or alternate chord voicings and just generally improve overall. Since our duo is just me on guitar and her on vocals, being a better guitar player (more flashy) would be helpful in filling out the overall sound. I'm self-taught for the most part and I have no interest in formal lessons. I'm pretty much a 'cowboy chord' player although I do venture quite a bit into bar chords and all the many variations of the sus/add chords, 7's, etc. So it's not just ALL open major and minor chords. Plus, as a fingerstyle player, it sounds way more impressive than it is to the non-guitar playing crowds.

DADGAD fascinates me and I've tuned down to it a couple times and love it but I've never been able to dedicate the time to actually learn it well enough to become proficient in it since it takes away time from learning songs, playing and practicing in standard tuning. So now I'm at a crossroads where we're going to take some time off from the cover gig grind and work at our originals to see where that takes us. I'm wondering if now would be a good time to really putting in the effort to learn DADGAD (or some other open tuning) as it might be a great way of helping write new material and just having a fresh, new approach. I'd also like to get away from the acoustic duo cover thing which is a VERY crowded field around here and offer something new, different and fresh.

For those that have been down this road - you were proficient in playing and performing in standard but then learned (or at least tried to learn) DADGAD - how did it work for you? Did you try and fail and go back to standard? For those that learned successfully did you drop everything and not play in standard at all until you mastered or were at least proficient in DADGAD? Or did you learn DADGAD while still playing in standard? In all cases, how long did it take before you were proficient? For those that tried and failed, how long did it take you to give up and go back? For those that become proficient did you relearn all your old songs (covers and/or originals) in DADGAD and stay there or did you just continue to play those in standard and only concentrate on new material in DADGAD.

Many of the above questions can be applied to other open tunings as well so for those that went down that route feel free to chime in. As always, thanks to those for sharing their stories.

[henryrobinett]

I never did. I only use standard tuning. Ever. 50 years.

[Red_Label]

I'm curious to hear the answers to your questions. I've tried to learn DADGAD on several occasions and always fell-back to the familiar. I've been playing "hardcore" in nearly all genres for for 35 years. I am VERY scale/mode pattern oriented on the guitar, so turning things on their heads by jumbling the tunings just completly throws me for a loop. I can improvise in any style/key all day long... in standard tuning. But change that tuning and I am just lost. I understand that's a good thing, but it's extremely difficult when my entire guitar existence is founded on EADGBE. I could sit down and diagram and memorize the patterns in DADGAD, but it would still take time to work out the new phrasing.

[Pitar]

The question infers a contrast to standard tuning, and the assumption that I've learned it and can claim a span of time it took to do that.

I'm 64, started playing at 17 and can say that standard tuning's palette is a coloring of notes and combinations that will outlive my discovery. Same goes for any other tuning.

If you're asking if I have familiarized myself with the chord shapes and notes of DADGAD as well as I have with standard tuning I can tell you I have not. That's because I see DADF#AD as a tuning for easier chord shapes than DADGAD. Now, I can say that I'm pretty well versed in DADF#AD and can easily switch between it and standard tuning. That took some time to reach but I can't nail it down. I taught myself Little Martha about 5 years ago in DADF#AD but didn't start exploring the tuning until a couple years later, maybe less.

[Bain]

Fingerstyle dadgad where ever the tab takes me I also quantify with the notes for time, rests etc .... no different to normal tuning for me I’m a n ew player to guitar so not so taking back for all the , ( it took ages to do this or that gang ) if it sounds good for me it’s good .........

[henryrobinett]

Yes. For me, 50 years of playing standard tuning, it’s all about knowing what the notes are I’m playing. I just gotta know that. It’s not just shapes for me. I know a whole new world of possibilities and sounds and shapes can open up. Easier grips? I don’t know. None of that is important to me. But I’m primarily a jazz guitarist who plays in all styles, or can fake then pretty well. Nah. Just not interested.

But if it works well for you and others, great. Nothing against it. It’s just not for me.

[zmf]

I've wondered what kind of brain/learning strategy it takes to feel comfortable fairly rapidly in an alternate tuning. Because I haven't got it. I suppose it partly depends on whether you're chord oriented (like me) or note oriented.

I tried DADGAD and it just didn't take. On the one hand, there seemed nothing familiar re standard. And on the other hand, it seemed too easy -- you're hardly making any chords.

Open D made more sense -- at least I knew I had a ready-made E chord.

[rick-slo]

More four and up note chords are finger reachable in standard tuning and it's easier to switch between more keys in standard.
So you may miss those things and are reasons I generally play in standard tuning.

In DADGAD you will probably need to retrain you mind on the note intervals between strings if, for example, you want to do scales
well. I would just spend some time learning some existing tunes in DADGAD and in reviewing DADGAD chord charts to see where
they play out.

My forays into alternate tunings started with lap steel tuned to C6. Then I got into resonators in open G, open D, and open Dm. I made note and chord charts and got proficient enough to write and play in those tunings within a couple of months of sporadic practice. I would imagine that DADGAD would be no more difficult.

On a side note, you should try using a partial capo sometime. When placed on the second fret of the A, D, and G strings, it puts the guitar into E B E A B E, which is just DADGAD tuned up one step. The cool thing is that when playing in first position you're in that alternate tuning, but once you play a barre chord, you're back in standard.

[Michael Watts]

I’ve been using DADGAD as my standard tuning for 20 years. I look forward to learning it all at some point in the next 100 years

[maxtheaxe]

It's been so long that I can't really remember, except to say that I first became aware of it when Jimmy Page graciously spelled it out for us at the beginning of "Black Mountain Side". I started messing with it concurrently with standard tuning because of that one song...50 years ago.

I use it all the time now (along with several other alt tunings and standard); most of the original stuff I've come up with has been in dadgad. Lawrence Juber, BTW, calls it "the other standard tuning".

[donlyn]

How Long did it take you to learn DADGAD?

And the answer is still learning; haven't been at it for that long a time.

From the recent thread, Are you too old to learn guitar?

Originally Posted by donlyn

Never.

I'm still learning new stuff.

Been playing guitar since school daze back in the 60s, and still at it. While dabbling in open tunings (I blame Stephen Stills) every now and then, nothing really stuck until recently. I have a dedicated DADGAD guitar now, and am having a lot of fun with this. A circuitous route involving a Tony Polecastro Acoustic Tuesday feature about Tony McManus last year got me listening to this music, and then a recent quick demo of DADGAD by Tony Polecastro on his show started me off and running with it. Somehow it took this time, and this old dog is now really learning new stuff, sometimes from Tony McManus videos and other times just fooling around with DADGAD.

‎Αἰέν ἀριστεύειν‎ (Ever to Excel)

Don
.

To re-state, I am a relative newbie to DADGAD, so I haven't got to the point where I can say that I have learned DADGAD. But I can say my bottom line is that I now play some DADGAD material all the time, and am adding to my repertoire whenever I can.

I would recommend having a guitar tuned to DADGAD all the time, as this will make it easy to just dive right in any time you want. Any half-way decent guitar will do.

A more detailed story of my recent journey follows. .

* * * *

What New Song Are Your Currently Working On?


"Amazing Grace".

In DADGAD.

Here's the story about teaching this old dog a new trick.
Hopefully it will be amusing and/or insightful.

A while back on the "Acoustic Tuesday" show on YouTube, Tony Polecastro featured an artist named Tony McManus, a renowned Celtic Guitar player. Much of his material is in DADGAD. I liked what I heard, and bought some Tony McManus music on cd.

On a subsequent Acoustic Tuesday program, Tony Polecastro featured a quick DADGAD session, encouraging everyone to try it. He said that because DADGAD wasn't tuned to a specific chord and had no third, you could use it to play both major and minor key songs. This was a selling point for me, and so I tuned a 6 string guitar to DADGAD. After learning a 2+ octave D major scale built around the open positions, and playing around with it a bit, I felt it was time to explore.

I play "Rising of the Moon" in G major, and Donovan's "Three Kingfishers" in E minor, both as 12 string instrumentals. They are built around using the DGB and the EGB open strings, respectively, as drones, plus other frettings of course. I tried both pieces in 'D' (major and minor, respectively) on the 6 string with the DADGAD tuning, and both worked very well for a first try.

Here's where it got a bit strange. On YouTube I found :

"Celtic Fingerstyle Guitar
An Introduction by Tony McManus",
and featuring a piece titled "Si Bheag, Si Mhor"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DLJYk7LI0s

Looks simple and sounds great, right?

But it turns out that after playing the finished piece, he digresses into what he could have done for his arrangement and the choices he made. Actually very interesting, but somewhere along the line I realized I couldn't quite pick up the underlying melody, mostly because it's not a tune I'm familiar with. That is, which notes are part of the tune and which notes are part of the supporting arrangement.

So I started looking around for something more. Among other videos featuring McManus on YouTube, I found what I think works as a 'Rosetta Stone' for me :

"The Process of Arranging Celtic Melodies
by Tony McManus"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWfVznJpvIc

In this one he basically states that he starts with the melody, and finds a guitar tuning that works best for it. Then he works out what chords and notes support the melody, making his arrangement unique. Which is kind of what he did in the other video, but didn't start close enough to the beginning for this DADGAD novice. But the idea of 'melody first' was now imprinted on my brain. Then build your arrangement around it. I have always enjoyed doing my own arrangements, and knew that would be a fun part of the process.

I decided to work from the ground up, using songs with which I was familiar but didn't already play. That way I had no preconceptions about anything. I chose and worked out the melody to "Old Folks at Home" by Stephen Foster. (You may know it as "Suwannee River".) And then "Amazing Grace". I decided to use key of D for both as I was working out the melodies, mostly because that is the key which I would initially use with DADGAD. After learning the melodies and playing them many times each, I felt that "Amazing Grace" held the most promise. Even while learning the melody, I started using hammers, pulls, and slides to stretch the melody and really liked the result.

So right now I have a somewhat fluid first arrangement using drones and hinted chords to accompany my version of playing (with) the melody. Not a finished product yet, but the goal is to arrive at a piece interesting enough to play in mixed company. 'Mixed' in this case being loosely defined as a spectrum from non-musicians to guitarists.


Thanks for reading,
Don

* * * *

[RGWelch]

I've not begun working on DADGAD, though I plan to. I've got some videos with some Celtic music instruction in that tuning, which is where it seems very popular. What I understand about it is it lends itself to both major and minor chord structures better than most open tunings. However, what it may lack compared to standard tuning is the available variety of easy alternate chord voicings. So while it is more versatile in use than most open tunings, it lacks the versatility of standard tuning. With that, I would assume it is easier to "master" than standard tuning, at least in terms of really having a proficiency in using the commonly used chords and scale structures. As with any tuning, a lifetime is really not enough to know all there is to know about using it, but DADGAD should offer something of a shortcut to playing songs that work well with its mode and structures. As I said, seems to be a strong favorite with Celtic flavored music.

[TBman]

I'm not a "chord based" player so the need to "know" DADGAD isn't at the top of my list, but I did buy a huge book of DADGAD chords for reference.

Everything I cover is from notation. My own creations are done by ear.

[M Sarad]

I figured it out after a few years. That was in the 90s. I can play most songs I knowingly Standard in dadgad now. The jazzy tunes require more thought.