DADGAD chords.

I am a banjo and bass player, who recently decided to pick up a guitar, 20 years too late. Are there any sites that have session tunes with chords and chord SHAPES anyone knows of? Being a melody and bassline player has made it difficult to pick up chords, especially in that tuning. I love how a guitar player can change the feel of an entire tune by switching to a different mode, or minor to major and vice versa. Check out the chords on this version of “Good Morning Nightcap” (2nd song) in this video.

http://dartz.spb.ru/studio/dadgad/res/dadgad.pdf

I printed these out a couple years ago and they gave me a good start, but the more you experiment, the less you need the charts. Hope this helps

I have one you can download:

http://www.tradlessons.com/DADGAD.pdf

Download and open it with Acrobat Reader.

Here’s some information that I found useful for accompanying Irish traditional music:

http://hspeek.home.xs4all.nl/dadgad/theory.html

Good luck!

@Joshua

The respondents to your thread have provided you with some excellent links - well worth studying.

Your comment worries me though: “I love how a guitar player can change the feel of an entire tune by switching to a different mode, or minor to major and vice versa.”

I trust that you don’t plan on doing that - at least, not at session. The character of a tune is derived from its mode(s) and is therefore determined by the melody players - not by any guitar backer.

I’m sure he meant changing his chord choices, not playing in a different key or whatever.

or whatever…the mind boggles

FWIW, I’ll offer a few other comments on playing guitar for accompaniment of Irish traditional session music. I hope these are useful, and I apologize if I’m insulting anyone’s intelligence…

It’s not all major or minor. There are modes, and major (Ionian) and minor (Aeolian) are still there, but so are Dorian and Mixolydian. The usual three-chord progression that many guitar players are used to won’t work on most tunes; some, but not all.

The best accompaniment players know the tunes. Ideally, everyone who plays on any given tune should actually know it by heart, but this isn’t always the case with accompaniment or bodhran players. Keep in mind that the melody players have to both learn the tune and learn how to play it. They’re justified in expecting you to put some effort into learning the tunes too. Besides, if you don’t, you will some day discover, to your acute embarrassment, that you’ve gone seriously off the track on a tune that happens to be unusual. There are many such tunes in Irish traditional music.

Try to be subtle, support the melody; the melody is of principal importance in this type of music.

GBDG = G, DF#AD = D

figure them out. it’s like standard, but in dadgad.

PS they’re the same in drop d or open G

or a piano, or a marimba for that matter

Joshua, When you started out, did you have a teacher, or are you self-Taht?
(Sorry, I couldn’t resist!) 😉

“or whatever…the mind boggles”
(not 100% sure how to refer back to a specific post, but you get the idea)

No, really, I mean “whatever.” I am not an active member of the forum, but every now & then I poke my head in, and as a guitar player, I am usually interested to see the guitar-related threads. And often, they follow the familiar format of: someone asks question, a few helpful responses, then someone starts warning the original poster about the possible evils and pitfalls of accompaniment. Give the guy a break. It’s only music.

meanwhile, the post by dfrost is a totally welcoming way to enforce the “rules” without being standoffish, and seems like all anyone needs to say to a new player. It’s not like actually learn to play while talking about it. You learn by doing it.

I need my coffee.

lurk mode engaged.

I know what you mean, having a positive discussion of accompaniment around here is often like swimming upstream.

I’ve recently started to learn DADGAD backing. I’m practising revolving around basic D, G and A chords. I mostly use:
D modal: 050200
G: 5x5450
A: x02242
I wanted to know if these are the most used. I’m specially interested in the most “popular” G chords.

The ones I use:
G: 5 5 5 4 x x
Gsus2: 5 5 5 4 0 0
G/B: 0 2 0 0 3 0
G: x x 5 4 5 5

D (no 3rd): 0 0 0 2 0 0 or 0 5 0 2 0 0
D/F#: 4 0 0 2 0 0 or 4 5 0 2 0 0

A (no 3rd): x 0 2 2 0 x
A: x 0 2 2 4 x
A: 7 7 7 6 0 x
A: x 0 7 6 7 7

Look here:
https://thesession.org/discussions/33478#comment715883

Thank you, Jeff!