BADGAD Tuning

While failing to arrange a tune one day in DADGAD, I decided to drop the bass to B and see what happened. The result is BADGAD, and a new song called Early Hours from my Winter's Tale CD. The initial intention was to play a lot of B minor chords, always a nice sound in DADGAD, and especially so with that deep B on the bass. But like many nice things in DADGAD, it quickly became a bit samey and I ended up playing more in a C major scale with some interesting results.

Start by taking a listen to the song in the Flash audio player up the top ("Play Music" link). "Early Hours" is the one you're after.

Here's the tablature to download as a PDF, but first have a read through this page to get a few pointers on what's going on.

Download Early Hours Tablature

The tune is played with the capo at the 3rd fret, but when talking about the notes we always assume there is no capo. The main theme of the tune based around the progression: C - Dm - Em. The second time around there is the low B in the bass as a sort of turnaround. Note the first note of the 2nd bar has the arrow, indicating that the 5th fret is hammered directly with the left-hand finger.  The second time around the bass notes are played with normal pull-offs and hammers. Go lightly with these, or else you lose the delicacy of the tune.

The next part of the tune, starting on bar 9, uses fairly standard DADGAD fingerings. The low B is used on the bass quite often, while the melody plays around between D major and C major. There is an ambiguity there centering around the 3rd fret on the A strings. This note, being a C, suggests the C major scale, where the C# on the 4th fret, suggests the D major scale. While the 4th fret C# is never used, the other notes are used in a way you often hear with D major in DADGAD, up along the top D string 0,2,4,5 and 7th frets. And with the B on the bass, it feels like it really is D major. When it resolves though, it always ends up back in C major. These are ways to keep DADGAD fingerings from getting boring.

The bridge/interlude starts on bar 23 and is one of those sections that goes into free-time and fiddles about with the tuning. You don't want to get too hung up on details here, instead try adding your own bits here and noodling around. The tab gives some ideas to get going with.

I'm not sure how much this tuning has been used, or how much I'll use it in the future. It's easy to get to from DADGAD and helps change the general sound of things during a set. This is always a good thing with DADGAD, as it can become bland for the audience before long.  Another great tuning could be Bb-ADGAD, with the tune being based around the D natural minor scale. More on this next time.