Open tunings and chord progressions

deano

Hi,

 I am thinking about trying some open tunings, DADGAD to start with.

 But I am struggling with the concept of chord progressions. I have read that in open tunings you don't play chord progressions as such, but stay focused around the open chord tonality. Is that right?

 I can understand it if so because I would imagine a lot of chords become more difficult to play and don't fall under the fingers so easily.

 So would a DADGAD player play a I-vi-ii-V progression for example? Or a player in say open E?

 If not how do they reflect harmonic movement? Surely just playing the open tuning as the only chord in a tune gets boring? Okay, replacing the 3rd note to give a sus4 chord would break it up a little, but even so you are still fundamentally playing one chord through the tune aren't you?

 I can see that if you tune to say open D, you wouldn't want to play a I-vi-ii-V progression in C (C-Am-Dm-G), but you would want to play a I-vi-ii-V progression in D (D-Bm-Em-A), so presumably you would have to learn the chord shapes of Bm, Em and A in the open D tuning.

 Or have I misunderstood the whole principle (a distinct possibility!)?

Lewy

deano said:

Hi,

 I am thinking about trying some open tunings, DADGAD to start with.

 But I am struggling with the concept of chord progressions. I have read that in open tunings you don't play chord progressions as such, but stay focused around the open chord tonality. Is that right?

 I can understand it if so because I would imagine a lot of chords become more difficult to play and don't fall under the fingers so easily.

 So would a DADGAD player play a I-vi-ii-V progression for example? Or a player in say open E?

 If not how do they reflect harmonic movement? Surely just playing the open tuning as the only chord in a tune gets boring? Okay, replacing the 3rd note to give a sus4 chord would break it up a little, but even so you are still fundamentally playing one chord through the tune aren't you?

 I can see that if you tune to say open D, you wouldn't want to play a I-vi-ii-V progression in C (C-Am-Dm-G), but you would want to play a I-vi-ii-V progression in D (D-Bm-Em-A), so presumably you would have to learn the chord shapes of Bm, Em and A in the open D tuning.

 Or have I misunderstood the whole principle (a distinct possibility!)?

I think maybe you've misunderstood. Firstly, there's no reason you can't play any chord progression in any key in any of the common open tunings. You mind find yourself using some peculiar chord shapes, or never getting to use an open string, and there may be no musical pay off whatsoever, but it's entirely possible.

That being said, most people consider that open tunings come into their own when applied to the "home" key...and I emphasise key....the whole key not just the I chord. So for example let's say you're playing a I IV V progression in Open E. When you're on the I chord, you can do a lot melodically, using ringing open strings to support what you're doing. Then, when you move to the other chords, you can leave some open strings still ringing and that will give you some suspensions from the key, which means you can get some very interesting sounding chords with some very simple (often just 2 finger) chord shapes. Martin Simpson is a great example of this. He very rarely holds down more than three strings for chords and often only two, and the tuning does all the work, harmonically.

You can also find some interesting colours by using a tuning for keys other than the "home" one. For example, you could play something in A using Open E and whilst you'd be needing to potentially barre a bit more for your I chord, the open strings would give you your V chord.

So no, they definitely don't limit you to the open string chord.

All that being said, there are people who stylistically choose to use open tunings in the way you describe. It's common in genres that derive from banjo and fiddle music, so old time, blues, folk etc

deano

That makes sense thank you.

So the norm is to use the open tuning as the home key and go to town when on the I chord. Then when moving to the IV or V (or what have you), do the best you can with the notes you have available!

I don't want that to sound facetious. It is what struck me when I read your reply. It has clarified it for me, so thanks. I will give it a go.

Lewy

deano said:

That makes sense thank you.

So the norm is to use the open tuning as the home key and go to town when on the I chord. Then when moving to the IV or V (or what have you), do the best you can with the notes you have available!

I don't want that to sound facetious. It is what struck me when I read your reply. It has clarified it for me, so thanks. I will give it a go.

What I described is one approach, not "the" approach. Depending on the sounds you want, the open tuning could do amazing things for your IV or IV or any chord other than the I, as opposed to making them a do the best you can type of thing.

Stuckfast

I play more or less exclusively in open tunings these days. They work very well for folk and folk-derived styles, and I think that's because they make it easy to embellish a simple harmonic structure or accompany a modal melody. If your song is in D and doesn't modulate, it's easier to come up with an interesting accompaniment in a tuning that offers you a hundred variants on a D chord. The fact that it's quite hard to play in, say, A flat is irrelevant because a folk tune just isn't ever going to modulate to A flat.

That said, they are not as limiting as many people think in harmonic terms. As Lewy points out, you absolutely can play in keys that are not obviously the 'root' key of the tuning. For instance, I have DADGAD accompaniments for pieces that are in G minor, B flat major, A major, C major and so on.

Check out the work of Alasdair Roberts -- he uses a new tuning on practically every song, I have no idea how he remembers it all.

blobb

https://artedelstein.weebly.com/celtic-fingerstyle-guitar.html

deano

Stuckfast said:

I play more or less exclusively in open tunings these days. They work very well for folk and folk-derived styles, and I think that's because they make it easy to embellish a simple harmonic structure or accompany a modal melody. If your song is in D and doesn't modulate, it's easier to come up with an interesting accompaniment in a tuning that offers you a hundred variants on a D chord. The fact that it's quite hard to play in, say, A flat is irrelevant because a folk tune just isn't ever going to modulate to A flat.

That said, they are not as limiting as many people think in harmonic terms. As Lewy points out, you absolutely can play in keys that are not obviously the 'root' key of the tuning. For instance, I have DADGAD accompaniments for pieces that are in G minor, B flat major, A major, C major and so on.

Check out the work of Alasdair Roberts -- he uses a new tuning on practically every song, I have no idea how he remembers it all.

What do you mean by modulate?

In open D I would expect to use chords D, Em, F#m, G, A, Bm, and some sort of C# (but I wouldn't use it!).

DADGAD isn't a chord I recognize (it may well be though) so I don't really know what chords to use. If I had to guess I would say the same as open D. So I would treat the open strings as the D chord and work out some fingerings for G and D chords.

I won't try to play a G minor piece in Open E; I'll stick to the key of E major!

blobb

In open D I would expect to use chords D, Em, F#m, G, A, Bm, and some sort of C# (but I wouldn't use it!).

DADGAD isn't a chord I recognize (it may well be though) so I don't really know what chords to use. If I had to guess I would say the same as open D. So I would treat the open strings as the D chord and work out some fingerings for G and D chords.

I won't try to play a G minor piece in Open E; I'll stick to the key of E major!

bottom right of the link I shared above.

Stuckfast

By modulate I mean change key.

No DADGAD itself isn't really a useful chord, but with one or two fingers you can play endless variations of D major or minor, so it lends itself most obviously to things in D.

Stuckfast

For instance here are just a few D chords in DADGAD:

000200

004200

000204

400200

000790

etc

deano

Stuckfast said:

For instance here are just a few D chords in DADGAD:

000200

004200

000204

400200

000790

etc

The first one will do me. The rest are a bit complicated!

I have a long'ish journey home from work so I have been using the time to think of some DADGAD-based chords I can use. The first one is the one you listed above...

D - 000200 (no third - all A's and D's but I'm not complaining mind you)

Em - 222022

F#m - 404244

G - 020020

A - (2)02242

Bm - (0)20224

I don't know if most players use those fingerings, but they seemed to make sense to me when I was working them out in my head.

Anyway, I could get away with a playing the relevant scales over those chords and getting the modal characteristics as well I think, or do most DADGAD players stick to chord tones when soloing over those chords?

On the last question, just to widen it a little, would open chord players stick with scales when playing over a chord progression or would they use chord-tones, or is it - like in the EADGBE world - both depending on the genre and what the player wants to do. Of course there isn't a right or wrong answer, but I wondered if there was a soloing approach that was more common or recommended especially for beginners.

Stuckfast

If you want to play something that uses F#m or Bm then open D is probably a better tuning -- DADF#AD.

There are a number of ways to play a G chord in DADGAD but the one you've described is the second inversion so not all that useful. I usually use some variant on 5x0455, 550055, 550450, or even 9109890. You can use 5554xx which works as a major 'barre chord'. In my experience most people who play in open tunings play fingerstyle so it's more about partial chords anyway.

In general, I think that to make open tunings work for you, you need to rethink the way you approach chords and harmonies slightly compared with standard tuning. The beauty of DADGAD, open D, open C, open G etc is the way they let you introduce subtle variety into material that doesn't have much intrinsic harmonic development or variation. It's a different set of compromises from standard tuning, which is more about making it possible to play in any key and less about fully exploring a few keys.

deano

Okay. So a song might well only have one chord (the open) or just a couple (the open and one other) and the player uses the open tuning coupled with the scales and modes that are appropriate to the tuning to add harmonic interest, interest that wouldn't be possible (or very difficult at least)  by playing those chords in standard tuning.

I think I get it now.

I must admit last night I put my acoustic into DADGAD and spent a pleasant evening just messing around playing the open strings and a couple of chords (D and G), along with the D major and minor pentatonics. What was interesting to me was how easily I stumbled across fragments of Copperhead Road, Amazing Grace and other tunes, with both a harmonic and melodic content.

I thought I was missing something you see, that open tuning players still played as many chords in a tune as a standard tuning player would.

I can see why the top players use so many different tunings though, because I guess listening to an entire evening of DADGAD music would be a little wearing, but mixing the setlist up with songs that use other tunings would retain the listeners interest. So a DADGAD song, followed by an Open G song, followed by a CGDCGD song, followed by a DADGAD song in a different style to the first one, followed by... and so on would be more interesting for the listener and the player I would have thought.

Stuckfast

deano said:

Okay. So a song might well only have one chord (the open) or just a couple (the open and one other) and the player uses the open tuning coupled with the scales and modes that are appropriate to the tuning to add harmonic interest, interest that wouldn't be possible (or very difficult at least)  by playing those chords in standard tuning.

Yes exactly, that's my experience anyway.

I don't think that DADGAD is necessarily so limiting that you couldn't make a whole evening of it work -- there are great players who use it more or less exclusively such as Pierre Bensusan -- it's more that once you've properly figured one open tuning, it makes you keen to explore others! But yes an unimaginative or limited guitarist tends to sound particularly one-dimensional in open tunings.

Lewy

deano said:

Okay. So a song might well only have one chord (the open) or just a couple (the open and one other) and the player uses the open tuning coupled with the scales and modes that are appropriate to the tuning to add harmonic interest, interest that wouldn't be possible (or very difficult at least)  by playing those chords in standard tuning.

I think I get it now.

I must admit last night I put my acoustic into DADGAD and spent a pleasant evening just messing around playing the open strings and a couple of chords (D and G), along with the D major and minor pentatonics. What was interesting to me was how easily I stumbled across fragments of Copperhead Road, Amazing Grace and other tunes, with both a harmonic and melodic content.

I thought I was missing something you see, that open tuning players still played as many chords in a tune as a standard tuning player would.

I can see why the top players use so many different tunings though, because I guess listening to an entire evening of DADGAD music would be a little wearing, but mixing the setlist up with songs that use other tunings would retain the listeners interest. So a DADGAD song, followed by an Open G song, followed by a CGDCGD song, followed by a DADGAD song in a different style to the first one, followed by... and so on would be more interesting for the listener and the player I would have thought.

I find I can usually get a few different modes (small m....not modes modes) out of a tuning that mean I can get several different sounding arrangements and approaches out of it without having to retune but yes, your point is right about a whole night of an open tuning being potentially a bit wearing.

So for example in Open G you can play a rural type blues, an alternating thumb bass ragtime arrangement, and then a pretty finger picked country tune without the need to retune. 

By by far the most flexible I’ve found of late is the Sus4Add9 tuning (think of it as drop D with the 2nd string raised from B to D). So that gives you R 5 R 4 R 9, or if you want to compare it to DADGAD it would be DADGDE. It's so flexible... Martin Simpson demonstrates it on this video:

deano

I'm just working out the logistics of going to see Martin Simpson in a couple of weeks. He is playing in Sheffield with Martin Taylor. Talk about quality!

I actually live in Chesterfield, but work near Loughbrough so need to figure out if I can get there. I might just take the day off work because I might not get chance to ever see those two together.