Rob Schumann: This is the continuation of our DADGAD tuning tutorials. So this will be part two. Previously we had talked about DADGAD tuning and the way that the strings are tuned differently on a guitar, which is, D, A, D, G, A, D just as the name implies and we would watch through some Major key fingerings in the key of D Major and how those chord fingering will be altered with this tuning and I am incorporating some droning notes on top to give you that DADGAD sound.
So today is a continuation of that, we are going to look at chords in the key of D Minor and alternations that can be made to those by using drones as well. So we will be looking at this new key in and we will maybe give another example of song that gives you that feel of DADGAD. So I am going to start all the way up here actually at the 12th fret and this will give us a D Minor chord. So let's just look at this fingering. I am going to have the third finger on the 12th fret of the 6th string, the fourth finger on the 12th fret of the 4th string and I will use my 1st finger on the 10th fret of the 3rd string.
So what I am going to do then is mute the 5th string of the 3rd finger. So you can hear that Minor sound. I have got this F here on that 10th fret, which gives me that Minor 3rd and then I have just got an A and a D on these top two strings. So I don't have any notes in there that are not part of a D Minor chord. Now, of course, we can get some D Minor tonalities in the open position, because as we talked about before, just the open tuning itself gives us that Dsus4 sound, we have got a four instead of a three.
So we can figure out different ways to incorporate an F note into there. However, part of the problem is that we have got such low notes on these strings with it being in drop D, sounds will just get a little cluttered, especially having a G in an A, which are just a whole step apart here on the 3rd string. That makes it little funky to add another F note in there, which is kind of another whole step because we have F, G and A. So it gets a little clattery there in the middle of the chord.
So playing this up here gives us a nice wide open D Minor chord and taking my 3rd and 4th finger down two frets to the 10th fret and then adding the 2nd finger to the 9th fret of the 3rd string, still muting the 5th string, gives me a chord that sort of substitutes for C Major. What I am doing is I am kind of going down the scale since we are starting way up here on the root. We will just go down through the chords.
So this will be the five chord of the Major key, if we are thinking about the key of F Major, and in this case, the relative Minor D. This would serve for C Major with these droning notes, it takes the C Major, adds an A to it, which will be the 6th of the chord and a nine to it with the 1st string, so that will be the nine of the chord. So we end up with a chord called a C 6, 9 which can be substituted for one chord or a Major 7, that kind of thing. It sounds real nice as a Major chord.
Going down two more frets, now I am on the 8th fret with the 3rd and 4th finger, same strings and the 2nd finger on the 7th fret of the 3rd string. This is a B Flat chord so this will be like the 4th chord of a Major key and F. In this case, I get a B Major 7. This A on the 2nd string acts as the seven of the chord, and then this D is already in the chord. So we get a Major 7 there.
Going down a few more frets, now we are on the 7th fret with the 3rd and 4th finger, and then I can use the first finger here on the 5th fret of the 3rd string, that gives me an A Minor kind of chord. In this case, it's like an A Minor add 11 because this D acts as that 11, since I have already got the 3rd in the chord. Then sometimes in a Minor key it's very common to take this chord, which is 5th above the root and make it into a Major. To do that, I just replace this first finger with the 2nd finger on the 6th fret of the 3rd string. So what I can have is this D Minor, going down to C Major to B Flat Major, going down to A Major. You see that sounds a little bit more normal. That's just what our ears used to hearing is that chord substitution.
But normally within the key, that would be a Minor chord. Going down two more frets to the 5th fret with the third and fourth finger, we can get a G Minor kind of chord. That's with adding the first finger on to the 3rd fret of the 3rd string. This actually gives me a G Minor add 9. So I get the G Minor here and then this 2nd string is an A note, so that adds the 9 onto the chord. Of course, this D is already on the chord.
It's interesting because this B Flat note is actually a half step above this open 2nd string. So that can make for some cool arpeggiation ideas. So you can get some nice melodies out of that. To make this chord a Major, since this would be like the two chord of a Major key, so notice we might substitute a Major chord here. We can take the second finger and add that, just as we did on the A chord and now it just gives me a G Major add 9. So it's important to know both of those fingerings.
Now when we get to the F chord, which will be the relative Major of this Minor key, we have got a couple of options here. One thing and I am actually going to use this in the example at the end of the clip here, we can do an F 6, 9, which is similar to that C chord we looked at up here on the neck. To do that, I can use the first finger to bar two strings here at the 3rd fret, 6 and 5 here at the 3rd fret. Then use the fourth finger on the 5th fret of the 4th string.
It's kind of weird because I get two Gs in a row. That gives me that nice F 6, 9 chord. I could also fret here at the 3rd fret. Since this is an F, I can just double up on the root. That will work as well, which just depends if you want to really emphasize that root or if you want just two of these G notes in there. Another thing that I could do is go back and hit an E here for more of a Major 7 sound.
So really you have got a few options there and one other one that I should also mention is, remember this fingering that we had for our Major chords that we have been moving around. I could also do that here and just get a boring F Major. I still have this D on top, which would be like a 6, so it would be like an F6. So there, I am doubling this A note between the 3rd string and the 2nd string. So with that F 1, you can either do this, this, this, you really have a lot of different options on that one. So it really depends what chord you are coming from or going to and what's more comfortable to used to get there.
For E Minor, this gets a little weird because this would be like the 7th chord. In this position, we don't really have a 5th and on the 7th chord of a Major key, or the two chord of a Minor key for that matter, you end up with a Minor 7 Flat 5 chord, which is like half-diminished. The 5 is what really makes it not sound like a Minor, it gives you a diminished sound.
In this voicing that I am going to show you here, we just don't have a five in it at all, which is always fine to leave out of a chord. So we can just sort of consider this a Minor chord. In this case, it would be a like a Minor 11 because we have got this A note on that 2nd string. So I've just got one, two and three fingers on the 2nd fret of the 6th, 5th and 4th string.
Basically, I have got two roots here and then the 5th there and then this G axis, the Flat 3rd of that chord. I have got the 11 and another D for the Minor 7 of the chord. So that would work for that. So that gets you through all of those chords in that key. I think in our last video we looked at a finger picking example to kind of get a sound of DADGAD. So today for the one that we will do, let's do something that's more like an acoustic strumming groove for the pick.
One thing that's really cool about this tuning is you can always fall back on open strings if you are playing in the right key. So a lot of times you can get away with having no fingers on or doing some pull-offs to open strings, just because everything goes back to that modal D sound. So some things that you will see as we play this, we are going to use some of that Dsus4.
Also, in this little th
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