DADGAD Tuning Two Celtic pieces

In a special feature Stuart Ryan shows you the lush sound of DADGAD tuning in action with two specially adapted pieces.

- Stuart Ryan

In this lesson I’m going to take a look at a couple of traditional pieces in DADGAD tuning – a tuning that for many is the default when it comes to playing this repertoire. The tuning found its origins in the 1960s via the travels of legendary British folk picker Davey Graham who used it to emulate the sounds of the Middle Eastern instruments he was encountering. Soon it was being used by everyone from Jimmy Page to Bert Jansch and was quickly adopted by the acoustic community as an ideal tuning for replicating traditional Irish and Scottish repertoire on guitar.

There are several reasons why the tuning works so well – first, there is a symmetry to it as you can use the open fourth (D), third (G) and fifth (A) strings to sound the I, IV and V harmony in the key of D. Secondly it is neither Major nor Minor in character, instead giving you a Dsus4 open chord which suggests the modal nature of much traditional music. A good tip with DADGAD is to get some orientation in place, so learn some basic chords and scales so you can start to see where things lie on the fretboard.

A first port of call for many DADGAD arrangers is the music of legendary Irish harper Turlough O’Carolan, whose compositions only exist as melodies meaning there are any number of directions the underlying harmony can take. I’ve kept The Lamentation Of Owen Roe O’Neill and Captain Kane in their written keys, B flat Major/G Minor and F Major/D Minor respectively, to show an extended range of what’s possible in DADGAD beyond just working in D (an obvious temptation).

THE TUNING FOUND ITS ORIGINS VIA THE TRAVELS OF FOLK PICKER DAVEY GRAHAM WHO USED IT TO EMULATE MIDDLE EASTERN INSTRUMENTS

TECHNIQUE FOCUS

DADGAD guitar