I’m curious why DADGAd and not Open D (DADF#Ad) or Dropped D (DADGBE).
I guess if someone is inclined to list out the benefits and trade-offs to those plus standard, I’d be super interested. I know it somewhat comes down to taste (both instrumental and musically).
I’ve only been playing in DADGAD for six months. I tried the other tunings and strangely I felt I preferred something that was a clean break with standard tuning.
Presumably because it works for accompanying Irish traditional music. The only reason that matters.
One possible answer is that DADGAD does not have a major third for chords I and IV in the open strings. When you hold down the third string second fret you have just Ds and As. These are the basic drones in pipes and fit well with lots of traditional tunes.
I guess it all depends on your style of accompaniment and personal choice. There are several very accomplished players in various different tunings, such as those you mentioned above. Every tuning has its own strengths and weaknesses. The better you get, the more you can work with those advantages and weaknesses of the tuning will become less important.
Standard tuning: Most guitar players are familiar with it. So they have a certain level to start from. Moreover, it is harmonically and technically quite flexible. Jazzy chords and chords like double dominants are easily accessible. Open chords are also playable but harder to find/access than in open tunings. The biggest disadvantage is the missing Bass D which is nice to have since most tunes are in the key of d or d-related keys and modes. That is why Dropped D might be a good kind of compromise when you miss the bass D too much but still want the advantages of standard tuning.
DADGAd in IMHO is a totally different perspective on the tunes. It stresses the drony kind of accompaniment which instruments like pipes also feature. The three D’s and the two a-strings you have, lead to a very big sound. Strings are ringing with the overtones even if you don’t actually strike the string. The various d’s lead to many voicing possibilities for the same chord. Since many drony instruments and drony playing styles are part of ITM, it’s quite logic to also let that feature be part of the guitar accompaniment, I guess.
The biggest disadvantage of open tunings is that it is quite limited to the one key you’re in. Of course, the better you get, you might also handle other keys in a satisfying way without moving the capo. But otherwise you’ll always have to use a capo and practise moving it quickly not to stop playing between the tunes.
I started playing standard tuning and then fell in love with DADGAD but still change between both tunings according to the style I want to accompany a tune. It’s never wrong to try different things and let your personal taste decide… Drop-D is a kind of compromise between the two.
Hope this makes sense… 😉
The answer is in the F sharp. That immediately makes in major. Without it you have the flexibility to go major or minor or neither.
@Matt Milton LOL. It’s like one of those riddles when the answer is very obvious when you hear it. I had been trying to piece it together for days now. Thank you.
Others have mentioned the innate ambiguousness of DADGAD without a major third, lending itself to the kind of accompaniment many Irish melody players like, without forcing a strong major or minor feel.
Personally, I use Drop-D for Irish/Scottish trad guitar accompaniment. I used to do more of that, before shifting to mandolin and then flute for melody playing, but still occasionally back my fiddler Significant Other on guitar.
Drop-D lets me leverage everything I know about the guitar fretboard in standard tuning, and only requires learning a few new chord shapes to adjust for “lost” chord shapes in standard tuning. Like a basic G major or some useful A chord shapes, often assisted with a thumb wrap on the side of the neck.
One advantage with Drop-D for me is not having to use a capo for key/mode shifts within a tune, or when the mode shifts with a new tune in a set. I see many DADGAD players doing rapid capo shifts when that happens, and that doesn’t appeal to me at all. I can handle any key/mode change in Drop-D with no problems. I suppose if you have full command of DADGAD then you don’t need to do all that capo shifting, but I don’t have the time to get that deeply into the tuning when my main interest these days is melody playing.
I also feel that DADGAD lends itself too easily to a monotonous, same-y sound on every tune, when it’s sometimes a good idea to force a stronger harmonic statement. Personal taste enters into it here. I know there are melody players who never want that in accompaniment. But to my ears, sometimes a tune seems to want a nice fat minor or major chord, and that’s easy to do in Drop-D.
“The biggest disadvantage of open tunings is that it is quite limited to the one key you’re in.”
The G in DADGAD makes the tuning a little bit “less open”. For many years it was my preferred tuning - usually without a capo.
I spent half my life in standard tuning/classical tradition. I yearned for the big overtones of long metal strings - and eventually got into wire harp. I love using drones - as a solo player primarily - so the big sound of ‘open’ tunings is an asset for me, especially. I started in Irish tunes after Pierre Bensusan, so dadgad is my guitar default for tunes for the past 30 years
You don’t want the 3rd getting in the way for trad accompaniment, as the Gaelic modal system would have been based on plagal harmony not chromatic. OK to throw one in for effect but equal tempered triads will always sound out of tune against trad melody players. G is also the most in tune note to D and A, in Just scale tuning, so it should sound OK in context
Loughcurra, I’m not sure what you mean. What is ‘plagal harmony’? I know what a plagal cadence is (finishing a piece with chords IV to I). You imply it is the opposite of ‘chromatic harmony’. You refer to temperament and the trouble with major thirds but I don’t get what you saying about the note G and in which context you refer. Is it that the last sentence wasn’t finished before posting? The clue was that there was no full stop! We’ve all hit ‘post’ accidentally at times!!!
Loughcurra’s last sentence makes perfect sense to me.
In the key of D, the G note in Just intonation based on the root note of D has the least deviation (-1.96 cents) from equal temperament.
In the key of A, the note G in Just intonation based on the root note of A, while greater than the deviation of G compared to Just intonation with a D root is still relatively small (-3.91 cents).
So what he’s saying is that when playing an equal temperament instrument like guitar along with just intonation instruments like Uilleann pipes or fiddles that are adjusting their intervals to play consonant with drones in the root key of the tune, G is the least dissonant for both the key of D and A.
Just intonation ffset chart here:
https://i.stack.imgur.com/eMCQP.png
I’m no guitar player, but I’ve always wondered about the merits of variants of standard tuning based around open D strings.
Eg. start with standard tuning and drop everything a tone:
EADGBE becomes
DGCFAD
The great advantage is all your muscle memory stays the same. The big loss is obviously A major, but hey, that’s what barre chords are for.
A slightly fiddlier tweak would be to move the third back to the G string and drop the CFAD strings a semitone:
DGBEG#C# - obviously not great for open chords but should be interesting if you like playing up the neck.
For me, it’s not about the tuning but about the player.
Or, to put it another way, I don’t want to hear the tuning, I want to hear the player.
And that leads to my one criticism of DADGAD, that, with a liberal use of a capo, all keys sound the same and, in the hands of less gifted players, you start to hear the tuning too much.
For tenor banjo players, here’s a trick if someone hands you a guitar in standard or drop-D tuning.
Bring the B string down to A.
Now you have:
EADGAE (or DADGAE for drop-D)
Which easily allows you to play tunes on the
xxDxAE
strings using the fingerings you already know for the tenor banjo. Just jump over the G string. If you need to go below D, you’ll have to adapt a bit since the next lower string will be A instead of G.
They’ll think you’re a masterful flat-pick guitar player. Which you now are.
Just be sure to tune the A back up to B before handing it back.
What about a custom capo to change from standard to DADGAD, or DADGAD to standard? 🙂
While there are obviously some breathtaking DADGAD players; in my experience, most guitarists I’ve come across who tune their instruments that way, do it so their lack of skill doesn’t sound quite as obvious when they’re noodling around…
… Or, at least, they think it doesn’t.
I’ll offer a different perspective. One of the guitarists I play regularly with started playing DADGAD about 10 years ago, and I will say that his accompaniment has gotten more varied and interesting since then. He mentions “wonder chords” (as in, I wonder what that chord was), because DADGAD allows him to move around the neck and find interesting accompaniment that complements what the melody players are playing. I think he’s thinking less about chord progressions and whether to use some inverted diminished 7th chord, and more about creating movement and nailing the rhythm. In other words, I think he’s paying more attention to the result and less attention to the theory, which makes for generally better accompaniment.
The tuning or wotteffah doesn’t matter if it’s cool appropriate creative musical backing.
a nasty way to put it, “dadgad is for people who want irish bouzouki sound without paying irish bouzouki prices”. that said, if I were to start from scratch, I would play a 12-string dadgad guitar, both melody and rhythm: 6 courses vs 4 courses, bigger is better. but a james jones octave/cittern is what I saw first, and “gdae forever” it is for me. https://www.jamesjonesinstruments.com/ in the early 90-ies most everybody played his axes. flatiron and weber came in later.
All tunings do some things well and some not. I think the original question was why a G instead of F# on the third string; and the two reasons I can think of are being stuck with a major third in the tuning (if I want that I can play standard or dropped D or open G) but more importantly there are plenty of tunes in G, and having no open Gs available seems like a pain.
that being said, any tuning you really know can work. I heard Pierre Bensusan messing around backstage comping a jazz clarinet player very convincingly in DADGAD. Try ‘em all! see what you like best! But once you find your ’main’ tuning, log some hours to find every chord voicing in every key that you possibly can.
1. Drone stacks 😍😍
2. DADGAD is boomy and works well in loud pub settings. Drop-D is as good if the guitar is amped or you have few players.
3. Dave Marshall once told me that the #1 quality of backing is machine-locked rhythm and the #2 is decent chords. He also said “you only really need two notes at a time.”
After about 15 years of playing ITM I agree and I would say that in 95% of sessions, he is right. Unless you are playing with a Dervish-level group of ppl, locked down rhythms are your best contribution, and complex backing is not really needed. Hence DADGAD being preferable.
As someone who started in standard and got into dadgad years later, I can say with confidence that the switch improved my playing, and even my curiosity about the instrument tenfold. Since a lot of the older tunes are played typically in G major, D major, E minor, etc, it it made things easier for me starting out. What I really like about dadgad is the versatility of it, as I can do fingerstyle, strumming, and flatpicking, and always find new ways to use it. With a capo, you can accompany just about any tune. Without a capo, there’s still so much to do. I also like the simplicity of it. You can make some fancy major and minor and even 7th chords, sure, but you can very easily not use a 3rd and give a tune more depth without taking away from the melody in my opinion. It was easy for me to start with it, but there’s always something new to learn. I think that’s what it came down to.
Here’s my take on it: I’ve played guitar over 50 years and attend Irish sessions regularly.
I’ve used a variety of tunings and any can be great if you really get to know them. Tony McManus can play Monk or Bach in DADGAD apparently with equal ease. And I love Irish tunes arranged for fingerstyle guitar in DADGAD.
However, for playing in a session, I want to be able to play fiddle tunes note for note or accompany as I see fit and I’ll do both within the same tune. I haven’t found anything better than a plectrum and dropped D to give that flexibility. You definitely want the top E as well as the low D.
So jazz and rock guitar players who can’t play trad can’t “borrow” your guitar.
That’s the best reason yet Jason! Excellent! (from an old std tuning jazzy rocker turned trad!)
I like the sound of both standard and DADGAD. I once heard a guy (actually a jazz guitarist) playing along with some sets. He obviously knew the genre, as he fitted in well, and at first I couldn’t see his left hand.
I though he was using DADGAD or something similar, because of the ringing of some open strings. When I did manage to see what he was doing, he was playing chords (unrecognisable to me), and it was only afterwards that he explained what he was doing.
Basically, he was chording in the jazz style, when you often damp some inner strings whilst letting other inner strings ring open. A great technique, and mighty difficult, imo, but the important thing was that it worked!
He was just using standard tuning.
