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Rock in DADGAD


Nevandal

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This tuning is awesome.

 

Trying to find info about it on the net, youtube, etc, has turned up a lot of celtic / irish / indian music, and it's mostly people fingerpicking on acoustic guitars in a classical style.

 

I was wondering..has anyone used this tuning to good effect in rock/metal music?

 

 

 

It's actually not that far off from normal Drop-D tuning...you still have a lot of the easy power chords in the first 4 strings, and it's very very very easy to play Add9 power chords I'm noticing.

 

Also the great thing about dadgad is you can easily tune the g string down a half step to get Open D tuning, and down a full step to get Open D minor tuning.

 

 

But anyways, about DADGAD. Anyone use this tuning for rock and metal music?

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almost all metal is tuned down like that, not necessarily to drop d like you have it, but to an extent, alot of the newer rock thats coming out is in that tuning, i play in it all the time, its just like a 1 finger power chord then

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Thanks for the responses.

 

I actually want to know if anyone on these forums who plays metal/rock uses DADGAD at all, or what they think of the tuning, how it could be useful, etc. What's your opinion of it, not what bands have used it.

 

:D

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A few of my originals I do in DADGAD, one of which is sort of a heavy fusion instrumental prog piece.

 

I think its a pretty useful tuning, especially if you are employing drone type pedal tones. The caveat to using the tuning is you likely want to have a guitar dedicated to it completely, as you want to use heavier strings to make up for the decrease in tension on the neck. Your gonna want to set up the neck/truss rod/intonation properly for the tuning.

 

The way I get around this, is i use a Variax, so i just flick a switch and the tuning changes and my neck stays the same.

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  • 5 years later...
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Looks like an old post - Hopefully, you have moved forward with applying DADGAD to Rock / Metal tunes - It is frustrating to mostly find just celtic / indian  / etc. tunes written for finger picking on an acoustic (great sounds - but also not what I've been looking for...) - Yet, without too much creativity, you can get mystical eastern / celtic sounds that add a nice touch to a good rock tune (of course Kashmir being one of those!)  - Recently, I have written 4 classic (with some LZ type feel to them) / prog rock songs in this tuning - The first one started out by emulating a blue grass type tune (Man of Sorrows), but I changed it up so much and then added more of a metal feel to it that its a whole new song - I look forward to playing them out with a new band I hope to form soon (never too old!!) - As someone else had mentioned, I too keep one of my guitars tuned in DADGAD (its a late 70's Hondo II LP - I love the action on my old Gibson LP "wanna be") - My son mostly plays in Drop D (Pop Punk songs either on his strat or LP - Great sounds) and due to some similarity in the tunings, some riffs (especially power chords - 5th chords) on the 4, 5 and 6 strings can be played identically in both (of course you can also play fully barred 5th chords with 1 added finger in DADGAD as well) - I too like to change to double drop D (DADGBD) to play one of my favorite Neil Young songs (Cinnamon Girl) but in the vein of "Live Rust" - Back to DADGAD:  Haven't used add9 chords in this tuning but I think I will explore such.  Love the use of add9 in my songs written in Open G ("Keef" like, but with my own twists - play on an Epiphone SG with the low E string removed) - Thanks for mentioning add9's in DADGAD - I'll explore and incorporate that into my next DADGAD song - I'd certainly like to hear what others are doing in creating DADGAD rock tunes (of any sub-genre) - Keep playing!!!  Enjoy!

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Beckman wrote:

 

A lot of Pearl Jam Rythms are in DADGAD or DAF#GAD. Daughter is one.

 

Daughter is actually in a variant of open G (the low d is tuned to the G); I wonder why this mistake has been made so many times in this thread, the tunings aren't that similar. I'm fairly familiar with Pearl Jam, and I can't think of many of their songs that are in DADGAD, except Given to Fly. A few are in open D (like Even Flow), but not many.

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