The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #9374   Message #4045359
Posted By: Nick
11-Apr-20 - 12:30 PM
Thread Name: DADGAD
Subject: RE: DADGAD
Well I've had some fun exploring prompted by some of the comments from The Sandman (and also looking back at a video we discussed some while back with Martin Carthy about choosing tunings) mostly about the G to A interval in DADGAD being at its heart. And the problems of using a capo/s too high up a guitar. If I remember the Martin Carthy he was saying that you look for tunings to give you the sound you want and/or to sort out a problem (like not being able to reach or finger something - which is one of the reasons I play a number of things in EADGCE but that's by the way)

And that has taken me to explore E A D F# B C# as a tuning for accompanying things in Bm/A. The strings aren't massively slack. Only two strings to retune but enough of a shift to break out of habits and to rely on my ears rather than the shapes of the chords I use in standard. Not a great strumming tuning so far but still exploring

So not quite on topic but grew out of the discussion.

Dick, if you were to have a little experiment for some of the songs you mentioned in Bm/A you might find it interesting. There are some nice chords like loads of easy Bminors - x20030 or x24300 or x20201 etc - lots of As x02300 or x02323 etc but lots of interesting (to me) sounds when playing some of the open strings with pull offs etc- if you wanted a G 320330 is interesting (but you'd get thrown out of a strict dorian session for introducing a wrong chord (LOL). But an easy G#dim (x20201) to keep dorian in the discussion (WTF?).

I just leave it as a slight tangent but in the spirit of DADGAD.

I even checked out the Guitar tuning database which I had never heard of or knew existed until today. Noone has yet added this particular tuning so it is probably mad or I can claim it as all my own (haha!)

Now you can tell we are in lockdown (and I'm retired) that it made me think about it from another angle (for me). Sort of going back to first principles and thinking 'what notes do I actually need to accompany or play this tune and what sound do I want?'

This may be all very theoretical and useless to people but it entertained me thinking it out and creating it and it will help me in the future when I am trying to work out alternatives to some of the strange tuning and capoing exploits that people use to accompany songs when they 'know how to play it in DADGAD or something' but can't sing it there. I will never have to work it out again and it should deal with every tuning and multiple capo combination possible. I don't think I have come across anything similar that does the same. And - yes- I can work it out on a guitar what the notes are and their relationships but this is quicker for me

I have a number of people I know who play Dougie Maclean songs 'note for note' in open C (which is a nightmare on many guitars tuning wise) with capos way up the guitar. There is usually an easier way of finding those notes!

There's a little Excel spreadsheet shared on dropbox here called What notes do I need calculator which looks at the actual notes that are being used and whether there might be other ways to simply tune without capoing at the nth fret. I've left it set with standard tuning, a capo at the seventh fret and a partial capo above that to ape DADGAD and it suggests to be that DGDGCD might be a good starting point as a tuning to give you a lot of the benefits of that configuration.

Or it may all be way too mad and confuse the hell out of people.

I've had fun though...