I've been playing guitar for about 35 years and accompanying traditional singers and instrumentalists for about 30. DADGAD is a hugely useful tuning and I do use it - but I feel it has limitations.

Now, when I started backing Irish music there weren't that many guitarists around who knew their way round traditional music. I didn't, either, but I made up my mind to learn. I'm still learning. At the time there was no 'standard' way of accompanying Irish music on the guitar so you actually had quite a lot of freedom. People tried using blues progressions, bluegrass flatpicking, swing jazz chords and all sorts of techniques. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it was just a bloody awful mess.

Now there seem to be two main approaches to Irish music on the guitar: DADGAD and the Steve Cooney heavy-metal flamenco approach. Both perfectly valid, but the drawback for me is that so many players use each approach they all tend to sound the same after a while. That's no reason not to use DADGAD but I wouldn't give up on standard tuning. It does, after all, exist for a reason and many of the effects guitarists are seeking when they take up DADGAD are perfectly achievable in standard tuning if you know your fingerboard and your inversions (so to speak...).

It is, of course, a bit of a 'cheat' and if anyone asks me for advice about playing Irish music on the guitar I tend to warn them off goig down the DADGAD road unless or until they really know their way around the instrument in standard tuning and until they have learnt a lot of traditional tunes from performances by players of other instruments. Basic musicianship, really. Otherwise, it's not hard for a relatively inexperienced player to become rather stuck in the limitations of the tuning. I don't often find, for instance, that players who use DADGAD are very adept at playing for dancers.

Of course, there are other styles of playing where DADGAD is used and it's great for accompanying songs (especially, in my case, if someone else is singing). I just feel sometimes it's become a little cliched - celtic twilight and all that.

Great for backing Uilleann pipes, mind.