Alternate Tunings

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Is this one of the best or worst method or repertoire books for learning to play acoustic fingerstyle blues guitar?

You can learn to play music using a variety of resources including teachers, online resources, and books.

Understanding DADGAD for Fingerstyle Guitar is a method book for… learning to play fingerstyle guitar using the wonderous alternate tuning known as DADGAD tuning. This tuning is often associated with Celtic fingerstyle (Pierre Bensusan and Tony McManus), the British folk revival of the 1960s (Davy Graham), and modern fingerstyle (Andy McKee), but it truly excels in any genre.

So, if you have some fingerstyle or classical guitar experience and you have an interest in beginning to utilize DADGAD tuning, this book will provide a comprehensive introduction. Be aware, it is appropriate for intermediate to advanced fingerstyle guitarists. Do not try to work through this book if you are just starting out with acoustic fingerstyle guitar – you really need to have the basics down before starting in this book.

Understanding DADGAD covers a lot of ground with regards to this alternate tuning, starting out by showing you simple chords, the basics of fretboard navigation, a few easier arrangements, and some accessible ideas for improvisation. The book provides useful insights into how to leverage your knowledge of standard tuning to facilitate your learning of DADGAD – your 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th strings are tuned the same as in standard tuning, while your 1^st, 2^nd, and 6^th strings are tuned exactly one whole step down. The book also does a great job introducing you to many of DADGAD’s unique characteristics – the tuning is especially well-suited to the harp-like cross-string technique, the use of drones, and the use of octaves paired with hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides.

Where the book falls a little flat is that it doesn’t effectively show you how to arrange a tune in DADGAD tuning. Upon completion of the book, you may have a few cool DADGAD tunes that you can play, but you may not know how to apply your newly acquired familiarity with the tuning to other music. Personally, I am always arranging tunes for fingerstyle guitar, and while some tunes work great in standard tuning or drop-D, others seem to shine in DADGAD. I recently arranged the Guns ‘N Roses hit, “Sweet Child of Mine,” to beef up my set-list for bars and breweries, and I started out arranging the tune in standard tuning. It wasn’t sitting right in the original key, so I transposed it a couple times, but still didn’t like the results. Finally, I arranged it in DADGAD and voila, the result was lush, musically satisfying, and playable/performable. Here’s a sample of that arrangement.

My recommendation is that all fingerstyle players learn to arrange tunes in standard tuning, drop-D, and DADGAD. While Understanding DADGAD doesn’t cover this topic, it does give you lots of tools (intervals, cross-string technique, etc.) to use in any future DADGAD arranging. In my eBook, Arranging for Fingerstyle Guitar, I show you how to arrange Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star in multiple keys in standard and alternate tunings (including DADGAD). You can also check out my video/podcast series: Arranging Melodies for Fingerstyle Guitar, in which I show you how to arrange examples from the Essential Elements Guitar Method. I’ll put a link to these videos in the corner and in the show description.

A nice supplement to Understanding DADGAD would be another book from our author: A DADGAD Christmas, again, also by Doug Young. This other book contains great DADGAD arrangements of Christmas carols that you can both play and analyze to gain arranging insights.

Understanding DADGAD provides both treble clef and tablature for each arrangement. Unfortunately, no fingerings are provided in the music. For each example, I notated my own fingering in the music, after which I was able to play much more smoothly, accurately, and confidently. The skill of choosing sensible fingering is important, and you will need to look elsewhere to further develop this skill.

Recordings are available online through Mel Bay’s website. These will be very helpful to many readers.

My own books:

Arranging for Fingerstyle Guitar: go to http://joemcmurray.com/checkout/ to purchase a pdf of my eBook. Learning to arrange melodies will also help your fingerstyle songwriting and your understanding of the inner workings of fingerstyle guitar.

Fingerstyle Blues Guitar: An In-Depth Study of the 12-Bar Blues in E Major – Books 1 and 2 are available in paperback or as an eBook through Amazon [https://a.co/d/g7Udsso (Book 1) and https://a.co/d/aDbh4H0 (Book 2)]. The first priority of these books is to quickly get you playing a solo instrumental 12-bar blues, and then to build on it until you can freely improvise or “jam.” You should be up and running by the end of the third chapter, and each following chapter will add icing on the cake. There is an focus on using a monotonic bass to maximize melodic freedom, and there is an emphasis on creating lyrical melodies using actual lyrics.

My upcoming book, Arranging for Fingerstyle Ukulele, will be published by Mel Bay in 2026.

My music is available on all streaming platforms at https://open.spotify.com/artist/5dcokTG6C598OhTslHH5uo?si=hrQb7FViSZewDRSgECw9Ew:

Pins on the Map: my third fingerstyle guitar album was released on January 19, 2024. Watch the first single, “Open Road,” on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/uPBh8sZQsT4?si=EM_wAwnHFqU1VC9C.

Riding the Wave and Acoustic Oasis: my first two fingerstyle guitar albums.

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Is this one of the best or worst method or repertoire books for learning to play acoustic fingerstyle blues guitar?

You can learn to play music using a variety of resources including teachers, online resources, and books.

Despite the book’s title, this is not a traditional method book for learning to play fingerstyle blues guitar. This is a repertoire book containing fingerstyle blues arrangements in a variety of subgenres (i.e. ragtime and delta blues). The book does offer more than a traditional repertoire book in that it has technical and historical notes before each tune, and then it occasionally introduces a new technique through a tune. This book is suitable for late beginner to advanced fingerstyle players but is best for intermediate players. I really like the organization of the book: tunes are organized by subgenre, and within each section the tunes are arranged from easiest to hardest.

If you have zero experience playing fingerstyle guitar or fingerstyle blues, this is not the best book to start with. If you do have some experience, this is a great book for learning fun tunes, improving your skills, and learning some background history.

What stands out about this book is that some tunes include multiple choruses. If you’ve studied fingerstyle blues from books, you’ve seen one or two page arrangements that, as written, are too short for a full performance. You might have gathered that you should play the original arrangement and then create multiple variations to instrumentally simulate different lyrics for each verse of a vocal tune, to extend your performance, and to make it your own. However, most books don’t actually write out any variations. The Complete Acoustic Blues Guitar Method is wonderful in that some of its arrangements do contain 2^nd and 3^rd chorus variations. These are great for beginners and players that just want to play a tune that lasts more than 30 seconds, and they are even more valuable for players that want to see and study concrete examples of variations. You can learn a lot from analyzing these variations and then you can implement these ideas into other tunes in your repertoire.

Difficulty ramps up quickly in this book with the majority of the arrangements in that intermediate difficulty range. Beginner players may want to first use a traditional method book:

A general fingerstyle method like Alfred’s “Beginning Fingerstyle Guitar,” or
A more focused method like Bruce Emery’s “Travis-Style Guitar from Scratch.”

Then you could utilize Woody Mann’s book as a supplement as you’re working through the method book. Later beginners should aim for the first tune or two from each different section and see what specific styles of fingerstyle blues catch their ear. You will improve faster and have more fun if you play tunes that are aren’t too difficult, so don’t get bogged down with the hardest tunes in the book.

The Complete Acoustic Blues Guitar Method provides both treble clef and tablature for each arrangement, but neither fretting nor picking hand fingering is provided. At least you can tell which notes should be played with your thumb by looking at the treble clef – bass notes have down stems. Regardless, the skill of choosing sensible fingering is important, and you will need to look elsewhere to further develop this skill.

Recordings are available online through Hal Leonard’s website. These will be very helpful to many readers. It’s fun and educational to hear some of the author’s little variations and stylistic techniques (slides, bends, etc.) that aren’t written into the music.

The book doesn’t use the modern percussive techniques used by modern players like Michael Hedges, Don Ross, Andy McKee, Mike Dawes, etc. No thumb slaps, guitar body percussion, or tapping.

My own books:

My upcoming book, Arranging for Fingerstyle Ukulele, will be published by Mel Bay in 2026.

My music is available on all streaming platforms at https://open.spotify.com/artist/5dcokTG6C598OhTslHH5uo?si=hrQb7FViSZewDRSgECw9Ew:

Pins on the Map: my third fingerstyle guitar album was released on January 19, 2024. Watch the first single, “Open Road,” on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/uPBh8sZQsT4?si=EM_wAwnHFqU1VC9C.

Riding the Wave and Acoustic Oasis: my first two fingerstyle guitar albums.

Review #31: Understanding DADGAD by Doug Young

Review #26: The Complete Acoustic Blues Guitar Method by Woody Mann

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Alternate Tunings

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