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Pickin’ in Open D and DADGAD Guitar Tuning

Spice it up a notch

Sometimes, my guitar pickin’ all sounds the same, and sooo… “predictable.” At least it sounds that way to me, and that ain’t no fun. A quick way to spice it up is with a new tuning. I often turn to the open D tuning and DADGAD to add the flavors I have been missing.

Open D Tuning

Drop your first string to D, second string down to A, third down to F#, leave the fourth as D, the fifth stays at A, and the sixth string tunes down to D. At first, it’s fussy with all the button turning on your tuning machines, but it’s worth it. And since you are taking tension off the strings and the neck it is a very stable tuning. I use open D to add something fresh-sounding to my repertoire without having to learn something new. For instance, I can take a song that I play in open G and directly translate that to open D by moving my fingering up a course of strings. (A melody line played on the third string in open G is played on the fourth string of open D tuning) With very minor modifications, I have a great old familiar song, in a new key, and in a fresh-sounding timbre.

DADGAD Tuning

DADGAD – named for the notes of the open strings, is only different from open D by how you tune the third string… An open G note versus an F# is open D. This makes the open strum a D sus 3rd. This change in timbre and tuning ‘plays’ more radical than the simplicity of the tuning would lead you to believe. This is a great tuning for composition and experimentation.

Below is a diagram of how the simple 1 – 4 – 5 chord progression compares between the open G, open D, and DADGAD tunings.

Below is a link to my video where I am demonstrating my approach to the Open D and DADGAD tunings.

Can I gitcha some FREE stuff?

I would like to invite you to subscribe to my blog. That way you won’t miss any of my acoustic and traditional music ramblings. When you subscribe to the NekkidMusic.com blog, you get FREE get-started e-guides to learning the 5-string banjo AND the ukulele! You will learn the basic blocking and tackling to get you started playing chords, rolls, strums, and fun old tunes. Please subscribe!

Also – take a leisurely look at my general store where I keep some links to important things that you can buy to help your pickin’. >>> Link to NekkidMusic.com general store <<< 

Thanks for stoppin’ by today! Ya’ll come back and we’ll do some pickin’.

TH

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Creole Cross Mandolin Tuning

My Dad’s friend Baptiste was a fiddling wizard. This feller was old! He remembered when Methuselah had a paper route, and he knew every alternate tuning that was ever sawed across a fiddle. My favorite was what he called the ‘Creole Cross.’  

Baptiste would tune the fiddle down to 4th G /  3rd C / 2nd G / 1st C  explaining that Cajun and Creole musicians love to play in the keys of C and G. The he would perpetrate a little bowing magic he called “palming the frog.” He would take the frog completely off the bow and he would rock the bow under the fiddle’s back while holding the frog in his palm, and loosely running the hair over the top so he could bow across all the strings at once.

Baptiste said that the “Cajun” just wouldn’t come out of his fiddle until ‘old Scratch’ hopped out of a paper bag (presumably with a rum bottle in it), and taught him ‘the Debbul’s notes’ (drone), to slide into double-stops, and put a distinctive syncopated lope in his bowing rhythm. He said Cajun fiddlers also need to know, that for ‘le bon Dieu’ to redeem ‘ya im-motal soul,’ ya gotta fiddle on the Creole Cross.

I ain’t much of a fiddler (in fact I am painfully awful at it), but from time to time I tune my mandolin in Creole Cross for a tune or two. After all, I am fond of le bon Dieu (the good Lord), so I ain’t a-takin’ any chances!

I invite you to take a lingerin’ listen to Bonaparte’s Retreat played on the mandolin, in what I was taught to be Creole Cross tuning.

FREE STUFF

I would like to invite you to subscribe to my blog. That way you won’t miss any of my acoustic and traditional music ramblings. When you subscribe to the NekkidMusic.com blog, you get a FREE get started e-guide to learn the 5-string banjo! You will learn the basic blocking and tackling to get you started playing chords, rolls, and fun old tunes on the instrument that launched the ship that Earl sailed upon. (I hear angels singing.) Please subscribe!

Take a leisurely look at my general store where I keep some links to important things that you can buy to help your pickin’. >>> Link to NekkidMusic.com general store <<< 

Thanks for stoppin’ by today! Ya’ll come back and we’ll do some pickin’.

TH

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Oofda Glass Worry Stone Pick

Of all my whiney personal trials, I think having broken a couple of fingers, then developing chronic tendonitis and arthritis in my hands to be amongst my most well-attended pity-parties. I am a bluegrass musician, and when my hands can’t kick in an’ pick like the mill tails of Hades, I am just not livin’ a full and thrilling existence. (I know – ‘real drama’ right?) 

One thing I had to forgo a long time ago was holding a flat pick. For a while, real thick picks like the great Blue Chip would do the trick if I used fiddle rosin or Big Sexy Hair Powder Play to add some grip-factor on my fingers. The hair stuff was my favorite. It would grip a pick and got even stickier as my hands started to sweat a bit. My pickin’ buddies did call me ‘Big Sexy’ for a while, but I have had worse nicknames.

Eventually I gave up flat-picking altogether and started fingerpicking everything. To flat pick you have to grip like you are trying to smush bugs at a picnic with a toothpick. To fingerpick, you make a gentle, non-grip, motions like you are tickling a kitten’s belly. Much easier on crampy hands.

Then the day came when my wife bought some glass jewelry from Oofda Stained Glass. The jewelry came with a heart-shaped glass worry stone. It is smooth on one side, a little rougher of the other, with beautifully smooth edges, really thick, and it is quite heavy. It felt great in my hand, so I tried it out as a pick… Yup! I am back holding a flat pick again. Hello old friend!

A nice lady at Oofda sent me a heap of worry stones in various thicknesses for me to try out, in the meantime she is working up a passel of pick-shaped picks. Now I just need to find where I put my ‘Big Sexy.’

BTW – take a trip over to the Oofda Stained Glass’ Facebook page, and tell ‘em Big Sexy sent ya, and you wanna do some pickin’ with glass. They will set you up right nice.

>>> Link to Oofda Stained Glass facebook page <<<

Here is a quick demo of the Oofda Worry Stone Pick, on a nylon string folk guitar as I take a turn through the ol’ Wildwood Flower.

Try this cool stuff so ya’ll can get a grip on that flat pick! If you try the hair stuff, just dab a bit of powder on your pick-holdin’ thumb and index finger. To use rosin, you should just take your jack-knife or sandpaper and scuff up a bit of rosin powder and apply it the same way. Re-apply as needed. The hair stuff washes off pretty good, the rosin is on your fingers for the long haul.

FREE stuff!

I would like to invite you to subscribe to my blog. That way you won’t miss any of my acoustic and traditional music ramblings. When you subscribe to the NekkidMusic.com blog, you get a FREE get started e-guide to learn the 5-string banjo! You will learn the basic blocking and tackling to get you started playing chords, rolls, and fun old tunes on the instrument that launched the ship that Earl sailed upon. (I hear angels singing.) Please subscribe!

Take a leisurely look at my general store where I keep some links to important things that you can buy to help your pickin’. >>> Link to NekkidMusic.com general store <<< 

Thanks for stoppin’ by today! Ya’ll come back and we’ll do some pickin’.

TH

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The Beautiful St. Anne’s Reel

Kierkegaard once said that ‘grits are not a problem that needs to be solved, but the only true Southern way to experience corn that doesn’t get ya drunk.’ He was the father of ‘bubba-level existentialism.’ Not Soren Kierkegaard, the 19th-century Danish philosopher, but my ol’ pickin’ buddy, fair-to-middlin’ fiddler, and deep thinker, Enis Kierkegaard from Beaufort, SC.

This post is highly ‘bubba-stential.’  

I finally came to terms with the mandolin! The mandolin was demanding that she play rough and loud with chopping vamps and lick-based solos in rousing bluegrass songs. And I would be forced into compliance! I had to confront her. I just wasn’t that good at it. The mandolin taunted that perhaps my hands weren’t as nimble as they once were, or maybe my mind was slowing and solo improvisation was out of reach for me.  But it was something else… I experienced the mandolin as a beautiful, ancient instrument, the deliverer of the literal siren’s song. Then she said, “so you want to play beautiful melodies on my four courses?” I said that I did. The Mandolin then said, “I will allow fiddle tunes, reels, and waltzes, but that’s as soppy as it gets!” I struck the deal!

I have only given a human name to one instrument in my life, but I regularly give a name to the essence of an instrument. The spirit of the mandolin, to me, is Hannah, the canonical derivation of Anne. Because the mandolin’s essence gave us ‘St Anne’s Reel,’ as a blessing of a lilting melody and an ancient story for our hearts to dwell on.

When I play this great old tune, I daydream about a blind youth in Apt France leading Charlemagne to the hidden entrance of the relics of the grandmother of Jesus, Saint Anne herself. For a good ol’ boy like me, drifting away on an apocryphal quest is something significant enough to write about! 

Tracing the origins of old fiddle tunes can be pretty dicey. For St. Anne’s Reel, we started calling the song by that name en masse, when Canadian fiddler Joseph Allard recorded it in the 1930s. But the melody goes back for a couple of centuries before that. Likely a French a-a-b-b dance tune that translated well to an Irish reel… Just like the story of the blessed St. Anne translated well to the Vatican when granting her patronage of grandmothers with wayward grandchildren, miners, and equestrians. (That’s right, The Good Lord’s Memaw watches over the horsey set. I reckon everyone needs a blessing from time to time, even those who are uppity enough to wear jodhpur breeches in public.)

If you share my affection for beautiful old-timey fiddle tunes, please consider St. Anne’s reel as one of those songs that mature along with you over time. Not just a tune you learn so you can jam with your crew, but something that will develop with more and more sophistication year over year. Just like my friend Gene. He retired as a Major in the US Army, a Ranger, and an honest-to-taters warrior. Over time, Gene matured into a right successful Georgia bee farmer and, I wouldn’t say he is a hippie, but he has a ‘deliberately organic spirit’ about him. I just like that feller! He is not afraid to embrace his personal evolution.  Such is St. Anne’s Reel. She came to me as a bluegrass reel, then evolved more of an Irish traditional melody, and now she sports some contemporary chord structures. Just like Gene, she is refining with the passing of time.

Below is a link to my video demo of St. Anne’s Reel.

FREE stuff!

I would like to invite you to subscribe to my blog. That way you won’t miss any of my acoustic and traditional music ramblings. When you subscribe to the NekkidMusic.com blog, you get a FREE get started e-guide to learn the 5-string banjo! You will learn the basic blocking and tackling to get you started playing chords, rolls, and fun old tunes on the instrument that launched the ship that Earl sailed upon. (I hear angels singing.) Please subscribe!

Also please take a look at my general store when I keep some links to important things that you can buy to help your pickin’. >>> Link to NekkidMusic.com general store <<< 

Thanks for stoppin’ by today! Ya’ll come back and we’ll do some pickin’.

TH

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Two Fun Banjo Songs I Learned To Play WRONG

Not how J.D. played it

Being an individual is a beautiful thing. Yet it seems that being a banjo picker has one overriding motto. “Always be yourself, unless you can be J.D.*, then always be J.D.” *Actually, you can insert any icon’s name for ‘J.D.’ – Earl, Ralph, Sonny, Bela, or Allison, so on.  It always hurts a bit to hear “that ain’t how J.D. played it”  as a commentary to your carefully crafted, totally unique, jazz fusion solo to ‘Old Home Place.’ In this post, I am actually headed somewhere else, though. I learned these songs “wrong” because I picked them up on the wrong instrument, but then ended up loving to play them.

I’ve looked at  bluegrass from both sides now

I picked up an LP copy of ‘The Earl Scruggs Review, Live at Kansas State’ and heard Randy Scruggs play a wonderful version of the Joni Mitchell classic ‘Both Sides Now.’ I had to learn it… Like ‘right now!’ I didn’t have a guitar available, but there sat my trusty old banjo. An hour later, I had a fun little version worked out. Inspired by, or better an homage, to a foundational folk/pop songwriter and a late great guitarist. Both true favorites of mine. Hats off Joni, and Randy. It was all wrong but really felt right. That was years ago and I have never forgotten a lick.

But what does it all mean?

OK, I am a huge fan of the viral video from Yosemitebear. For the Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg classic, ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow,’ I immediately knew the answer to the question, ‘but what does it all mean?’ It meant that I needed to learn it on the banjo. In fact, I learned it as an instrumental version of a standard crooning ballad, and breakdown style. My friends would ask me, “Have you heard Tuck Andress? Have you played it on your ES335?” The answers, yes of course, and no – I don’t wanna. I wanna play it as I learnt it… “WRONG.” 

Being musically unique

I do enjoy learning the note-by-note versions of banjo solos from the masters. In fact when a friend shared the TAB for a note-by-note transcription of Allison Brown’s mind-blowing ‘Leaving Cottondale,’ I thought I would wet myself with joy. (I didn’t, thank goodness, but it was close, very close.) But I have to say, I find the better angels of my instrumental covers to be found dwelling in the versions that are more uniquely… ‘me.’

How to catch a one-of-a-kind rabbit… Unique up on him.

So be yourself. Pick up your banjo, and figure out that swing-chord version of Sally Goodin. I swear Earl will smile down on ya, and J.D. will at least give ya an approving wink. And – ‘I’ WANT TO HEAR IT! Sally Goodin is doggone hard to play, and western swing fiddle versions are my favorite.

Listen up

Below is my video so you can give witness to nekkidly true confessions about my song learnin’ wrong-doin’.

Also, do yourself a favor and crane an ear to these great albums that influenced me, and so many of our contemporaries. These are really different genres, but as my old Dad used to say… “it will stretch your ears out somethin’ fierce, but it’s good for ya, we call it growth.” 

Amazon links to: 

Live At Kansas State / Earl Scruggs Revue / Rockin Cross The Country

Tuck Andress… Over The Rainbow / If I Only Had A Brain


FREE stuff!

I would like to invite you to subscribe to my blog. That way you won’t miss any of my acoustic and traditional music ramblings. When you subscribe to the NekkidMusic.com blog, you get a FREE get started e-guide to learn the 5-string banjo! You will learn the basic blocking and tackling to get you started playing chords, rolls, and fun old tunes on the instrument that launched the ship that Earl sailed upon. (I hear angels singing.) Please subscribe!

Also please take a look at my general store when I keep some links to important things that you can buy to help your pickin’. >>> Link to NekkidMusic.com general store <<< 

As always, ya’ll come back and we’ll pick a spell.

TH

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Two weird banjo mutes to get your mellow on

The banjo can be a drunkin, loud-talker.

Banjo playing is a blast! That hard-driving, joyous sound is great fun and quite addictive. Everyone should try it. There will come a time however, that a song requires subtlety and finesse. Suddenly having a banjo hung on ya is like trying to have a subdued conversation with a hard-of-hearing, loud-talking, kinda drunkin’, friend. Y’all have one of those friends don’t ya? Anything but subtle. Not to worry, maybe your banjo just needs a voice with a tad more diverse inflection and dimension available for your pickin’.  I have a little trick with a hole in it, that I have used for years, and I am more than happy to share it with ya.     

Discovering the internal banjo mute

I was in my dad’s workshop studying a beautiful Bacon and Day plectrum banjo with a knee mute, mentioning how, with modification, that is something a bluegrass player might really be able to use to control any harsh overtones and helping the instrument play and record with a sweeter voice. My dad told me about Bobby Thompson’s muting technique of wedging and taping a towel to the underside of his banjo head. I immediately began experimenting.

Mellow-Yellow-Muting-Method

Over the years, I have settled on cutting a thick grout sponge to the basic silhouette of my tailpiece and wedging it under between the head and top coordinator rod (see below). If I place it in the “Y” position, up close to the neck, as Thompson did with his towel mute, it took away too many overtones and with them some of the personality of my instrument (at least to my taste). Placing the mute under the tailpiece, it trims some overtones from the trailing end of any sustain and also hides the strange, industrial yellow color of the sponge under the profile of the tailpiece.

The internal overtone sponge mute

Muting the tailpiece (didn’t see that one coming didja?)

I had just received my custom Greenbrier banjo from Sullivan, and it was by a full pound and a half the heaviest banjo I had ever owned. My wife bought me a Gold Tone cradle strap as a gift to help hoist the beast across my belly a bit better. With the strap, she included a great Gold Tone “ultimate” banjo mute. It just pinches onto the bridge. It works great as a bridge mute, but I discovered a little surprise… When I slid it over the tailpiece just to hold on to it while gigging, it really helped to control tailpiece overtones, with similar impact of putting little gromets between the strings of a mandolin twixt the bridge and tailpiece. It worked on the Fultz, Presto, and even the two-hump clamshell tailpieces I had on my banjos. What a cool thing to discover!

The Gold Tone Ultimate Banjo Mute as a tailpiece mute

If you would like to take a closer look at the Gold Tone Ultimate Banjo Mute that I use, and maybe pick one up for yourself, just click here > Gold Tone Ultimate Banjo Mute < and you will be taken to the Amazon sales page for the mute. I love these things, take a look.

Voice Coach

I found that applying these two weird muting approaches leaves me with the full personality of my banjo, without the harsher overtones. Other “Sulli” banjo owners know how much crack, volume, and projection these expertly constructed instruments have. A little “strategic muting” has really given me a more diversely voiced instrument, that can slow dance like my daughter’s weddin’ on the beach, then shift down and drive like the Dales at Darlington. 

Give it a spin

If you give these weird mutes a try please share how they worked out for you. 

Peek-a-boograss

Please take a look at my video where I give y’all a peek and my weird, yet effective, mellow muting method for the banjo.


FREE stuff!

I would like to invite you to subscribe to my blog. That way you won’t miss any of my acoustic and traditional music ramblings. When you subscribe to the NekkidMusic.com blog, you get a FREE get started e-guide to learn the 5-string banjo! You will learn the basic blocking and tackling to get you started playing chords, rolls, and fun old tunes on the instrument that launched the ship that Earl sailed upon. (I hear angels singing.) Please subscribe!

Also please take a look at my general store when I keep some links to important things that you can buy to help your pickin’. >>> Link to NekkidMusic.com general store <<< 

As always, ya’ll come back and pick a spell.

TH

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Thee Insanely Cool Ukulele Chords

Yookin’ good!

I love playing acoustic string instruments, and I am simply infatuated with the ukulele. I come from South Carolina, where we call this little instrument, a yook-LAY-lee. I know that’s not the correct pronunciation, but we also consider pimento cheese and shrimp-n-grits the two food groups that make up the base of the nutrition pyramid. It’s a Southern thing.

One of the things I like best about the ukulele when played in American folk music, even in hillbilly music, is that you can vamp really cool chords and bless a song with something totally fresh and jazzy that other instruments may need to stray way outside of their traditional space to accomplish without distraction. Three of these favorite insanely cool “blessings” are: the root 6th chord, root augmented chord, and second diminished chord. I LOL’d writing this. I was just remembering my old Dad calling them “augminished and demented chords…” I miss ya, Pop.

Let’s Look at the chords

A major chord has a root note, a third note, and a fifth note. In the G chord, for instance, that is G (root), B (third), and D (fifth). Think of the “numbers” in terms of the major scale… Do (G – root), Re (A – 2nd),Me (B – 3rd), Fa (C – 4th), So (D – 5th), La (E – 6th), Si (F sharp – 7th), Do (G- octave).

Root 6th

G 6th would simply be adding a sixth note (E) to the G chord shape.

Root augmented

In the root augmented chord (in the example G augmented) we just replace the fifth note with a sharp fifth note – or D sharp note.

Second diminished

The second chord in the key of G is A major. We use the diminished shape of the second chord. Which will have us flat the 3rd and the fifth note of the A major chord. So the A diminished chord triad is A, C and D sharp (E flat).

Chord shapes in standard (my dog has fleas) tuning, and slack-key tuning for baritone ukulele.

Note that the Chord symbol for augmented is a little “+” sign, and diminished is a little “o” shape.

Now the cool stuff

As an example, we will use the G augmented chord as a transition to get us into the C chord and the A diminished chord to transition us from C back to G. The G 6th chord will simply be the root chord that we resolve into and finish with.  Try this progression…

G /// G+ /// C /// Ao /// G/// D7/// G6 ///

Note that these chord shapes work the same for soprano or tenor ukuleles, however, when playing the soprano or tenor ukulele these shapes will be the key of C. ( C      C+      Do      G7      C6th )

Please take a look at my video demonstration of a couple of examples of the ukulele applying these cool chords to a standard folk song.

So when you pick up that ukulele, spice with augminished, demented, and 6th chords to taste… and enjoy some insanely cool pickin’.


FREE stuff!

I would like to invite you to subscribe to my blog. That way you won’t miss any of my acoustic and traditional music ramblings. When you subscribe to the NekkidMusic.com blog, you get a FREE get started e-guide to learn the 5-string banjo! You will learn the basic blocking and tackling to get you started playing chords, rolls, and fun old tunes on the instrument that launched the ship that Earl sailed upon. (I hear angels singing.) Please subscribe!

Also please take a look at my general store when I keep some links to important things that you can buy to help your pickin’. >>> Link to NekkidMusic.com general store <<< 

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