Hi Nick,

Thanks for your reply. I agree that it's tempting to think that it's something other than a guitar, but the track notes only list guitar and credit both Jack Evans and Rod Paterson as the guitar players. So I'm in two minds whether they're playing 2 different parts, or doubling the same part. The absence of the lower notes can be partly explained by the guitars being capoed at the 5th fret.

The thing that's frustrating me is that for the first few phrases it really is 100% doable in drop D and indeed works perfectly like that and sounds exactly like it does on the record, but then they play something which sounds like it's in DADGAD. It might even be the case that both guitars have different tunings and/or a different capo position, in which case I'm chasing my tail. You're definitely right that I could play something that's 95% there just by going with the tuning I started with - I'm just trying to avoid a "gotcha" point halfway through the piece where something turns out to be impossible or not nearly doable because I have the wrong tuning (I think this piece is going to take me longer than usual!)