Hummingbird, My advice is to try several tunings, though not so many as to drive yourself to madness. I tried DADGAD but could never make it work for me, I tried EADEAE and tunes seem to come to me much more easily. Paul de Grae has a book-CD combo called Irish Traditional Guitar that covers DADEAE and EADEAE. There are several books covering DADGAD. Pat Kirtly's website has a nice piece on alternate tunings. Good luck, John