The red guitar, tuned to DADGAD, ends the night at the Barleycorn Music Club
Hello everybody on HIVE and especially those of the Music Community! I am writing to you from Cape Town, South Africa. The two hobbies I tend to post the most about on HIVE are my music and song writing (usually performed these days with fellow HIVER 
About two weeks ago, Claire and I performed at the Barleycorn Music Club here in Cape Town. This was a real treat as the Barleycorn has been a club dedicated to promoting local music here in Cape Town since 1975, and the audience is a super supportive, listening audience… the best kind! I served on the Barleycorn committee, helping to organise the weekly gigs, back when I was a student who had just started to write his own songs. I had a lot more free time back then, but it meant I got to watch and meet a lot of inspiring talent!
A lot of people who might have been paying close attention to our set would have noticed that I put down my brown guitar towards the end of the set, and chose to play the last two songs on the red guitar instead… why did I do that?
Well, the red guitar is often tuned differently – in this case it was tuned to DADGAD! By the way, 
Here’s a secret I want to pass on to whichever guitar players are reading this: standard tuning (or EADGBE) is a very handy way to be able to play many different keys on the guitar, but it certainly isn’t the easiest to play a single key at all! It often surprises me how few people ever bother to learn alternative tunings… they probably think that alternative tunings should be left to the master guitarists as it means learning new shapes all over again, but this is not true at all!
Some of the more famous alternative tunings are Drop-D (D A D G B E), open D (D A D F# A D) - where you can strum the open strings and get a full D-major chord and open G (D G D G B D) - where you can strum the open strings and get a full G-major chord. All of those are wonderful, but my favourite alternative tuning is DADGAD. It was my first departure from standard tuning, and the only other tuning I have actually written original songs in (SO FAR!!).
I still remember attending a wedding as a kid and enjoying a traditional Irish band. Think tin whistles and fiddles to accompany the guitar. But I remember being confused because I couldn’t recognise the shapes that the guitarist was playing. He was kind enough to tell me to remember “DADGAD”…
So, what are the advantages of DADGAD over standard tuning?
•You get a greater range of deep and high notes compared to standard tuning
•The chords are super easy – you more-or-less slide the same shape up and down the neck with the same finger dedicated to the same string (as I will demonstrate in a minute).
•Because the chords are super easy, you can do more intricate melody and solo stuff while still playing the chords. This starts to make you sound like more than one person!
•The way I play DADGAD, I dedicate the 6th (thickest, deepest) string to be the root note of the chord, and the 5th and 3rd strings to make up the other notes of that chord. The 4th, 2nd and 1st strings I always leave open to ring as Ds and As. This makes it sound like a whole different droning instrument is being played as well! Other instruments that include droning notes are a sitar… or bagpipes… with DADGAD, suddenly your guitar is capable of providing that wall of sound, as well as chords and often melody… all in 6 strings!
Here are the 6 main chords of the key of Dmaj. The D will sound pretty good with a single finger placed on the 3rd string at either the 2nd, 7th, or 11th frets, but I usually use the 2nd fret position. You will notice that the 1st, 2nd and 4th strings stay open for all of the chords, while the fingers are only ever placed on the 3rd, 5th and 6th strings for ANY of the chords! The 6th string is always the root note.
The most common D-shape, but that single finger can be at the 7th or 11th fret if you want the other fingers to be playing melody higher up the neck!
E-minor on the 6th (E ), 5th (B) and 3rd (G) strings, but the wall of droning sound created by the open 4th (D), 2nd (A) and 1st (D) strings continues as well!
F#-minor, again the same fingers dedicated to the same strings…
G-major, those fingers are just sliding up the neck!
A-major, and the pattern continues!
And B-minor makes up the last main chord in the key of D-major! Surely that looks pretty doable?
So how does this sound? Well Claire’s super supportive partner 
Here is an original song of mine that was supposed to end the show:
However, the lovely audience called for an encore which was wonderful! So, we sang them a U2 cover while still tuned to DADGAD! By the way, Claire and I have a habit of wearing hats to show that the song is a cover and not an original, which adds to the fun!
I hope you now understand what I’m doing on the guitar a little bit better on these two songs, and if you’ve never experimented with DADGAD before, I hope I’ve given you some basics to help you try?
THE END
