DADGAD Guitar Primer

[John Flynn]

I attended an Irish session about a few weeks ago and I loved it. The music and the people were great! But it's going to take me a quite a while to get up to speed with those meolodies on the mando. That is firmly in the "long term goals list."

However, the DADGAD stuff the guitarists were doing, sounded great, looked very interesting and seemed well within my cababilites as far as technique and hand/ear coordination on the guitar. I am a very decent guitarist with a few decades experience, but unfortuantely, I haven't done any work in DADGAD yet.

So I am planning on attending a DADGAD workshop with Al Petteway in about a month and I would like to spend some time getting up to speed on that tuning before then, so I can come off as at least slightly more than a total clod. Does anyone have any recommendations as to a good basic DADGAD instructional book/CD or any web instructional material on this tuning? I know Al P. has a book/CD out, but it was hard to tell from the description if it is all DADGAD and if it is appropriate to my situation. Thanks in advance for your help.

[Jacob]

I have found The Irish DADGAD Guitar Book - Sarah McQuaid (http://www.ossianusa.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=ossian&Product_Code=00106-IB&Category_Code=INST), which has a companion cassette, to be a good introductory method. #
Some of the material is pretty basic, aimed at newer guitar players, but it has a DADGAD fingerboard chart, chord diagrams,
and a couple of dozen tunes in tablature and standard notation.
It also has a brief section on using DADGAD for backing traditional Irish tunes at sessions.
Here (http://www.torvund.net/guitar/OpenTuning/DADGAD.asp) is a collection of DADGAD material.

[Steve L]

Johnny, DADGAD is great, but obviously takes time to re-learn the fretboard and most books I've seen are more of the "Put these fingers here..." variety vs. a systematic approach to learning where the notes actually are.

To get playing Irish back up a bit faster, you would be surprised what a difference just dropping your E string down a whole step to D makes. You still have the vast majority of your current knowledge and a much more modal sound which you can exploit even more with a capo.

Gavin Ralston and John Doyle and Pat Kilkelly have some good material to get you going in playing Irish accompaniment.

I could be mistaken, but I think Al Peteway's mainstay is solo fingerstyle playing as opposed to what you may have heard at a session. Not that there's anything wrong with that! http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[POB]

Of the resources already mentioned, I'd probably be more inclined to recommend John Doyle's and Frank Kilkelly's (neither of which would be strictly DADGAD).

As another alternative to DADGAD, you could check out Paul De Grae's book/CD which uses DADEAE. You might find the tuning closer in feel to your mando GDAE.

[Dagger Gordon]

John Doyle's Irish accompaniment video is very good, but is indeed in dropped D.

I think there is an assumption than Irish guitar is done in DADGAD, but when you examine it, many of the main players actually use dropped D. In addition to those already mentioned, I'm pretty sure that Steve Cooney and Arty McGlynn usually use dropped D.

Quite often guitarists play in standard, but use open sounding chords all the way up the neck in an effort to sound more like an open tuning; for example you might do Em by playing the fifth string-seventh fret and fourth string-ninth fret. If you were not familiar with the idiom you might well think they were in a different tuning.

Micheal O'Domnhaill (Bothy Band) and Brian O'Headhra (Anam) tend to be mostly DADGAD, but are also singers. DADGAD is very good for song accompaniment.

Last weekend there were a lot of musicians from Brittany who came over to our area. Their guitarists exclusively used DADGAD. They reckoned it was much better for Breton music.

[POB]

I have a feeling that Steve Cooney (and Donogh Hennessy) uses double-dropped D (DADGBD) but I'm open to correction.

[Don]

Happy Traum on Homespun has DVDs/VHS showing dropped "D" tuning.

[Dagger Gordon]

You would probably know better than me about Cooney, Padraig.

I've only seen him once, and concluded he was dropped D, but I wasn't certain.

A lot of these guys use the capo mercilessly. The fastest capo mover (and a great player) is a young guy from Kent called Tim Edey.

[cam]

My fav DADGAD player is the Italian Franco Morone. He has an instruction book with cd with some of the most beautiful soulful arrangements of Irish tunes that I've heard (Mostly DADGAD, but a couple of others too). Not only is it a great introduction to DADGAD, the technical level is within reach of most decent fingerstylists.

[POB]

Johnny,

One trap you might want to look out for is to get distracted from your mando/melody playing by getting more into the accompaniment. What I mean is, if you keep bringing your guitar to sessions because of the more immediate gratification, you'll only delay your development as a melody player on the mandolin.

Of course you know best about where you're at in relation to the music you can play comfortably and the music those at the sessions are playing, and if you feel you'll be able to get into the music quicker via the guitar, then that's good. However, you should at least consider the possibility of spending your time doing more woodshedding on the mandolin instead of getting sidetracked by the guitar.

Also, the better your understand the melodic structure of the music, the better an accompanist you can become later on. Concentrating on the mandolin first and then the guitar might actually speed up your overall progress as a melody player and as an accompanist.

I've seen more than one musician who would bring a melody intrument and something like a bodhrán or guitar to a session, so that if they didn't know the melody well, they could switch to the accompaniment instrument. The thing is, in every case I've seen, these musicians stayed stuck at that stage for years because they weren't picking up new melodies (and developing their skill as melody players) - they were just cruising along doing the accompaniment. One woman I know finally made the decision to leave the percussion at home and within a year was amazing everybody with the extent to which she improved. After years of being an okay fiddler, she suddenly became a really good one.

By the way, I'm not trying to diminish the importance of accompaniment - my main instruments are guitar, bouzouki and mandolin, in that order, and I absolutely love playing accompaniment. I've been doing it for 20 years and I still find it fascinating. I don't think I would ever be content with only playing melody. But, the other side of that is that I'm a much better accompanist than I am a melody player (or a much worse melody player than I am an accompanist, depending on your point of view http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/laugh.gif ) because I spent more time playing accompaniment than I did melody.

Hmmm - I do go on a bit. Basically, all I'm trying to say is, get into accompaniment if you want to play accompaniment, but if you mainly want to be a melody player, concentrate on that. Regardless, enjoy it!

[Aidan Crossey]

VERY sage and considered advice from Padraig; as good as anything I've read on this (sometimes vexed) topic.

[POB]

I'm blushing!

[otterly2k]

What Padraig points out is the reason I am honing in on OM as my instrument of choice for this sort of music... I wanted to learn both melodies and accompaniment. So far, it's going pretty well... I am getting some melodies under my belt (although adapting to the scale is a challenge), and can also slide into accompaniment if I don't know the tune or if it's moving too fast for me. I'm hoping that by switching back and forth, I won't have to leave either one in the dust.

That said, in my limited experience, GOOD accompanists/rhythm players are not as common as one would think. To my ear, it's the combination of having interesting chords/lines in the accompaniment with having interesting (and steady/accurate) rhythmic things happening that separates the OK from the Good.

re: DADGAD... I have played and composed in this tuning quite a bit... mostly fingerstyle and not accompaniment per se. I just love the built-in suspensions and open intervals. I'd encourage you to explore the world of DADGAD... using drop D tuning (DADGBE) is a good way to start in that direction.

KE

[withak]

This guy has some really useful stuff on DADGAD chords and modal chord progressions.

http://members.cox.net/eskin/DADGAD.html

[John Flynn]

Thanks to everyone for the replies, especially "withak" on the last reply. That link really lays it out nicely!