Chord construction in DADGAD and other tunings

[TBman]

Can anyone recommend a decent book or website to dabble with? I'm sure I'm under estimating my own knowledge, but good sources never hurt.

I have a few chord books for alternate tunings, but I thought I would teach myself to at least harmonize a few scales in DADGAD and Orkney with triads and then move on from there. I'd like to build bass string triads as well as the trebles.
Thanks.

[JonPR]

Loads of charts online:

A few
https://www.celticguitarmusic.com/dadgad.htm

A lot more:
https://dartz.spb.ru/studio/dadgad/dadgad.pdf

millions!
https://www.songtive.com/en/chords/guitar/dadgad/D
(that's all the D chords...)

[Gtrfinger]

For scale work, and then working out your triads I found this Barry. You been listening to Bensusan?


https://www.gtdb.org/dadgad/scales/c

This link gives nearly every scale one can think of in C, just click on the key above it to give the patterns for differentn keys.

[Doug Young]

Do I recall that you have my DADGAD book, Barry? Pages 39-60 should be what I think you're look for. Don't know of any equivalent for Orkney, tho Orkney is just DADGAD over 1 string, so it wouldn't be hard to work out.

[TBman]

Thanks everyone. The DADGAD chord chart was very helpful. I also found this chart so I'll be busy in Guitar Pro for a while setting up various triad harmonizations. Sometimes I hear a sound in my head and translating it can be a bit rough sometimes.

Doug, no I never picked up your DADGAD book until now,

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by TBman

Thanks everyone. The DADGAD chord chart was very helpful. I also found this chart so I'll be busy in Guitar Pro for a while setting up various triad harmonizations. Sometimes I hear a sound in my head and translating it can be a bit rough sometimes.

Doug, no I never picked up your DADGAD book until now,

Ah, ok, hope it's helpful. That harmonized scale chart is a great thing to know cold. Nothing to do with DADGAD, it's just good to know. 99% of the time, that covers all the major and minor key harmony you will encounter or need, as long as there are no modulations, etc. Modes (which occur in Celtic music a lot) are slightly different.

[TBman]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

....... Modes (which occur in Celtic music a lot) are slightly different.

I'll have to look into that, thanks.

[jseth]

Barry;

Just to be accurate, the chord chart you posted isn't "quite" right; the 7th degree of the major scale chords should read "1/2 diminished", or min7b5...

I totally agree with Doug Young on this, though; knowing the major chord scales backwards and forwards are extremely helpful, both for "figuring out" new songs and writing your own... being able to "hear" a tune and know what it's doing harmonically is a REALLY good thing!!!

[TBman]

Originally Posted by jseth

Barry;

Just to be accurate, the chord chart you posted isn't "quite" right; the 7th degree of the major scale chords should read "1/2 diminished", or min7b5...

I totally agree with Doug Young on this, though; knowing the major chord scales backwards and forwards are extremely helpful, both for "figuring out" new songs and writing your own... being able to "hear" a tune and know what it's doing harmonically is a REALLY good thing!!!

Ok thanks. Over the weekend I'll start looking up all of the triads for each scale and put them into guitar pro for reference.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by jseth

Barry;

Just to be accurate, the chord chart you posted isn't "quite" right; the 7th degree of the major scale chords should read "1/2 diminished", or min7b5...

His chart only deals with triads. No V7, either... So as a triad, a diminished triad is ok, it's just that when most people say diminished, that's not what they mean.

[Doug Young]

Barry, the simplest thing is to just remember the pattern, not memorize all those chords in each key. The major harmonized scale is (with caps as majors, lowercase as minors):

I ii iii IV V7 vi viio7 (min7b5 as Jseth points out)

So as long as you know or can figure out the notes of your scales, you can know this in any key.

Modes just "rotate", so the minor form, as shown in your chart, really mean aeolian, which starts on the 6th note of the scale, so:

vi viio7 I ii iii IV V7, which if you recast in terms of the root of the scale, becomes:

i iio7 III iv v VI VII7

Dorian is the same as starting on the 2nd note of a major scale, so, rotating, you get:

ii iii IV V7 vi viio7 I, which becomes:

i ii III IV7 v vio7 VII and so on.

it's just the same pattern of major and minor chords in sequence.

BTW, if you don't have it, Mark Hanson's "Triad Power" does a nice job of showing how triads work all over the guitar (in standard tuning)

[TBman]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

Barry, the simplest thing is to just remember the pattern, not memorize all those chords in each key. The major harmonized scale is (with caps as majors, lowercase as minors):

I ii iii IV V7 vi viio7 (min7b5 as Jseth points out)

So as long as you know or can figure out the notes of your scales, you can know this in any key.

Modes just "rotate", so the minor form, as shown in your chart, really mean aeolian, which starts on the 6th note of the scale, so:

vi viio7 I ii iii IV V7, which if you recast in terms of the root of the scale, becomes:

i iio7 III iv v VI VII7

Dorian is the same as starting on the 2nd note of a major scale, so, rotating, you get:

ii iii IV V7 vi viio7 I, which becomes:

i ii III IV7 v vio7 VII and so on.

it's just the same pattern of major and minor chords in sequence.

BTW, if you don't have it, Mark Hanson's "Triad Power" does a nice job of showing how triads work all over the guitar (in standard tuning)

Thanks Doug. I'll review this.

I have Triad Power..... somewhere.....

[capefisherman]

Originally Posted by jseth

Barry;

Just to be accurate, the chord chart you posted isn't "quite" right; the 7th degree of the major scale chords should read "1/2 diminished", or min7b5...

I totally agree with Doug Young on this, though; knowing the major chord scales backwards and forwards are extremely helpful, both for "figuring out" new songs and writing your own... being able to "hear" a tune and know what it's doing harmonically is a REALLY good thing!!!

Not to nitpick, but his chart is absolutely correct because he lists triads, not 4-note scale line chords. Yes, IF the various types of 7ths were listed the m7b5 would be correct for the 7th degree of the scale-line.