How to play DADGAD like Davy Graham

An audio lesson with free tab

Guitar Techniques (Stuart Ryan), Fri 11 Sep 2009, 4:25 pm BST

In this audio and tab lesson, we're going to be examining the DADGAD style of Davy Graham – the alternate tunings pioneer who is widely regarded as the father of this versatile tuning method.

DADGAD is something of a gift for guitar players as it affords us many open 'drone' strings which we can keep ringing to fill out the sound. Couple this with the fact that the open strings spell out a Dsus4 chord (With D as the root, A as the fifth and G as the sus4) and you have a tuning that is ambiguous in its tonality.

This can be great for shifting easily between major and minor keys or creating those moody Celtic sounds that don't seem to be obviously major or minor (modal music).

Graham's playing certainly reached a wide enough audience to help popularise this particular tuning. In fact, his influence extended to folk heavyweights such as Martin Carthy, John Renbourn and Paul Simon amongst others – perhaps most importantly to a certain Jimmy Page!

The study here features some classic Graham touches, a descending bassline redolent of his composition Anji and the bluesy double-stops against a pulsing bassline.