Dadgad?

[earthbender]

I have been playing for close to 20 years now and have never learned any theory. I don't read music or tab. I was thinking about dadgad tuning. What is it about the specific notes and which strings they are assigned to? Is it simply because of how it sounds when played open or is there a mathmatical or alphabetical explanation. I'm finding that as I explore it, it's not as easy to find chords and melodies as I had thought when I first messed around with it. It's easy to write one song. The notes repeat in close proximity so I find myself playing two note chords with an open drone often or really stretching to find triads. Am I just making this up and missing something? Can anyone explain why it's so popular?

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by earthbender

...Am I just making this up and missing something? Can anyone explain why it's so popular?

Hey e-bender...
DADGAD is the notes the strings are tuned to from 6 (thick) to 1 (thin)

Doug Young who is a member of the forum and reviews products for Acoustic Gutiar Mag and is a fantastic guitarist wrote this:

Understanding DADGAD - CLiCK

My fascination with DADGAD is the openness and fluid nature of the things I write or play in this tuning. I love the ability to easily get an Irish feel, or to be as complex or simple as I like.

Pretty easy to understand and get a handle on. There are lots of teaching DVDs or books around on the subject. Doug's book is well laid out and easy to follow…

Hope this helps...

[wcap]

DADGAD is great for all the reasons discussed, but I have actually come to like DGDGAD tuning even better. DGDGAD tuning really seems to facilitate some really nice sounds for me, and it has become my favorite alternate tuning.

It is similar to DADGAD of course, but it works better for me than DADGAD for arrangements in G (and also is good for D). Doug Young's absolutely lovely arrangement of Bring a Torch is in DGDGAD tuning: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW-YzEgC30s

I don't feel I have totally mastered chord-based accompaniment in either of these tunings yet though. I made a lot of progress on this in preparation for my family's big set of music for the preludes and postludes we played in church on Christmas Eve though. This worked well for several pieces, but there is a tendency for the chords I play in these tunings to sound sort of empty compared to standard tuning (I guess there tend to be a lot of notes repeated an octave apart in these chords - a cool sound sometimes, admittedly).

[shawlie]

Dadgad is a nice tuning (and one of the many great tunings out there to try, of course).

Funny, I kind of feel the same way - easy to write one song in ( I'll get one or two short ideas done or half done, and then come back to others months later...). And then I just miss standard tuning - for the sound it has, the sound of the chords.

It is always inspiring what some can do with the tuning, give such a nice feeling to songs. And so I always give it a go, once in a while - never rule it out, it's a needed change sometimes. And scales are really fun in it too (at least D major for me) - like melodic banjo, it takes a bit to figure out what string is playing the higher note, but you can figure out lots of patterns that are pretty quick to play. And hammer-ons on open strings are always fun, but in dadgad, they're even funner.

[Doug Young]

Thanks Larry and wcap for the recomendations. (wcap, I really like DGDGAD, too, there's another tune in that tuning on my latest CD. Makes sense, as I like DADGAD in the key of G, and this just makes it easier!)

earthbender, I think you're stumbling on the basic issues with most new tunings. No matter what the tuning, it's the same 12 notes, but each tuning lets you play different chord voicings and reach different bass/melody combinations. Certain things that aren't easy, or even possible, in standard tuning become easy, and other things become more difficult. So the trick with any new tuning is to figure out what it's good for and how to take advantage of it. With DADGAD, one of the keys is the 2 strings that are a major 2nd apart (G and A). That's the source of most things that are cool in DAGDAD, as well as some of the challenges with it.

You also touch on one of the big dangers of alternate tunings - the "one song" thing. I cringe every time I see someone post that they've written "a DADGAD song", which tells me that they sort of randomly found some neat sounds in DADGAD and have come up with something that only really works in DADGAD, and probably doesn't have a strong melody, just lots of neat drone sounds. People who are masters of DADGAD, like Pierre Bensusan, use the tuning as a tool and don't let the tuning use them. Pierre even composes completely away from the guitar, only mapping the tune to the guitar (and DADGAD) once it's written.

One suggestion I have for learning any new tuning is to try to arrange something in it. Take a folk song, kids song, "twinkle twinkle little star", whatever, and try to arrange it in the tuning. Try it in different keys. That puts you in the drivers seat instead of the tuning. You'll have to find how and where to play a specific melody and figure out bass notes and chords to play with it. (I'm assuming fingerstyle here, but you could do the same thing for accompaniment, just working with chords). That keeps you out of the "everything sounds like the same 'DADGAD song' " way of thinking. Along the way, you'll learn a lot about the tuning and how to work with it.

[rick-slo]

Dadgad is a popular tuning and interesting in being modal, neither major or minor, and not as limiting harmonically and chord progression wise as open tunings are. Nevertheless often dadgad tunes sound a lot alike each other. Spending most of my time in standard tuning when I do go into dadgad I tend to write tunes a bit differently that someone who lives in dadgad. I have tabbed out some of my dadgad tunes and you can listen to the midis if interested.
Fat Daddy
Greensleeves
In The Mists Of Time
Progress
Three Steps To Joy

There are a large number of ways you can tune the guitar. Sometimes I have randomly tuned to something and made up a new song from the inspiration of the voicing readily available in that tuning.

[JonPR]

DADGAD was invented by Davy Graham in the early 1960s, after visiting Tangier, when he was looking for a guitar tuning that sounded like the Morroccan oud. The oud is tuned differently, but he obviously felt that gave him enough of that modal sound.
He here is with an old folk tune played "morroccan" style:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwVsLcawHwQ

Here's the album version (better audio quality
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvpTV...feature=fvwrel

[wcap]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

You also touch on one of the big dangers of alternate tunings - the "one song" thing. I cringe every time I see someone post that they've written "a DADGAD song", which tells me that they sort of randomly found some neat sounds in DADGAD and have come up with something that only really works in DADGAD, and probably doesn't have a strong melody, just lots of neat drone sounds.

Been there and done that. Too many times.

(To be fair though, sometimes pieces like this can be very nice.)

And this can (and frequently does) happen in any tuning. There are a lot of guitar pieces out there (including many that are performed by very well-known guitar players) that just seem to be a bunch of interesting sounds and not much more. But without some sort of clear and engaging melody running through at least some of the pieces, a set of music like this just all starts to sound like the same thing.... the first few pieces are wonderful, and then the rest is just all the same musical ideas repackaged in slightly different (and by this point in time not very interesting) ways. I have found myself looking forward to the ends of concerts by several big name guitar players because after the first 20 minutes or so there was really not much new happening.

In contrast, Laurence Juber had me interested to the end, not simply because he was doing arrangements of well known popular music, but because he had melodies!

(By the way, one of the things I like so much about your music Doug is the strong respect for the melodies (and the fact that you have melodies!) in your beautiful musical arrangements).

Originally Posted by Doug Young

People who are masters of DADGAD, like Pierre Bensusan, use the tuning as a tool and don't let the tuning use them. Pierre even composes completely away from the guitar, only mapping the tune to the guitar (and DADGAD) once it's written.

The matter of not having one's compositions and arrangements overly influenced by (and thus limited by) the peculiarities of an instrument or a given tuning is one of my biggest challenges in creating guitar pieces and arrangements. On one hand, some of the best sounds on guitar come about as a result of taking advantage of the instrument's (and a given tuning's) unique opportunities, and several of my best original pieces (which do have melodies) originated this way. But more often than not trying to compose or arrange with a guitar in my hands closes off ideas and everything ends up becoming somewhat limited by what comes naturally (and easily). I can't even hear anything else in my head sometimes when I have a guitar in my hands! And under these circumstances an awful lot of one's music ends up sounding the same, not just in alternate tunings (where this is a particular danger), but even in standard tuning.

My best original pieces (out of the handful that I am proud of) started with the discovery of some little things that sounded really really beautiful on the guitar, and some creation of the music on the guitar, combined with significant work on the music away from the guitar. I find that singing the music is a particularly useful approach to better developing the melodies started on the guitar and creating countermelodies and such. Once I have these ideas worked out in my head, I can then take them back to the guitar to try to figure out how to play them.

[hansentj]

I think DADGAD is great because of the stacked notes you can get. You can create chords like you can on a piano. I mean, just strumming it openly gives you three different octaves of D. I don't know much theory either, so I don't do much in DADGAD outside of the key of D major, but man it makes things in that key sound awesome!

[Dru Edwards]

Originally Posted by ljguitar

<< snippet>>
My fascination with DADGAD is the openness and fluid nature of the things I write or play in this tuning. I love the ability to easily get an Irish feel, or to be as complex or simple as I like.

I agree. I've been playing DADGAD nearly exclusive the past month after I picked it up for the first time. I find when I play something my voice tends to throw in some Irish accent as well.

[pg60]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

You also touch on one of the big dangers of alternate tunings - the "one song" thing.

Hi Doug!

I've just recently caught the DADGAD bug and am working your DADGAD book to get traction. I love it! It seems to be written in such a way that I can really learn DADGAD, not just work a few songs until I get bored. I'm not that far in but I'd put it right up there with Mark Hanson books that I've worked, and that's very high praise And now I see you posting DADGAD tips here at AGF. How cool is that!

[AtlJohn]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

One suggestion I have for learning any new tuning is to try to arrange something in it. Take a folk song, kids song, "twinkle twinkle little star", whatever, and try to arrange it in the tuning. Try it in different keys. That puts you in the drivers seat instead of the tuning.

Great stuff and that's great advice, Doug! Anyone else here play Baba O'Riley in DADGAD? It's a heck of a lot of fun to play that way.

Cheers,
-js