The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #75225   Message #1318844
Posted By: Cluin
06-Nov-04 - 12:03 PM
Thread Name: The pros and cons of DADGAD
Subject: RE: The pros and cons of DADGAD
It's a great open tuning for sure; technically, an open Dsus4 tuning. But you will find it can get a bit limited without a major investment of exploration in it. Everything tends to sound the same after a while (even with a capo)and the novelty will wear off, after which you move on to explore other open tunings or return to standard tuning.

In general, concentrate on the 2nd and 4th frets for the D major scale and the 2nd and 3rd frets for the D minor scale. Have fun with it; those 1 and 2 finger chords allow you to throw in a lot of fills and "colour notes" to your chords.

Then move on to try some other open tunings: open G (DGDGBD), Open D (DADF#AD), Open Em (EBEGBE, which I call Eebee Jeebee tuning, great for a bluesy sound, but open minor tunings are called "crossnote" tunings), and DADGAD's equivalent tuning with respect to A (EADEAE, an open Asus4 tuning, nice and drone-y for a bagpipe feel).

Learn which notes make up which chords then work out the fingerings for yourself. It's a lot more fun and instructive that way. You find your own way of playing it that way too. And remember, the great things about open tunings are all those ringing drone strings (the Ds and As in DADGAD). Don't lose those in your creative fingerings. ;)