Could I get recommendations for recorded trad-style backup players to listen to that use standard tuning?
Thanks in advance.
N
Go for drop D, I tried to avoid it - but it’s really the way to go.
Pat Egan. He’s with the band Chulrua, including Paddy O’Brien and Tim Britton. He also has a solo album that’s songs. His backing on the Chulrua album is superb. You won’t believe it’s standard tuning, but it is. http://www.chulrua.com.
Cheers
Oh, yeah. Pat was also on the Music at Matt Molloy’s album.
Thanks, all. If there are other good selections please let me know. It’s not for me; I want to have some listening suggestions for a fellow who is attempting trad backup but has some trouble at it, and he thinks it’s too late to go DADGAD. I have hopes for him because he has a decent command of his fingerboard; he just needs some auditory “mentoring”. I hope he’s willing to learn something new.
Best,
N
Well, there’s also Dennis Cahill – I’ve heard he uses standard tuning much of the time, but his style is so distinctive that any attempts to play with his approach usually just sound like a bad imitation.
I also think Mick Moloney plays guitar in standard tuning for accompanying Irish music, but I haven’t heard him in a long time and that’s just my vague memory.
I’d second Brad Moloney’s suggestion that you persuade your friend to at least try drop D tuning but, prefereably, to give DADGAD a go. To be sure, you can strum major and minor chords and play arpeggios in standard tuning and that’s all you need to be able to do to provide basic backing for ITM. But there are things you simply can’t do in stadard tuning at all and other things which you can do only with the greatest of difficulty that are pretty standard now. These things are easiest and most effective in DADGAD but drop D is a good compromise if your friend really is frightened of learning a new tuning. (Drop D only involves retuning one string yet shares four strings with DADGAD so you get a lot of the advantages of that tuning.)
One of the problems with DADGAD is that there really isn’t anywhere you can go to get a good explanation of why it is so suitable. There are some good web sites—Michael Eskin’s site on DADGAD accompaniment comes to mind—but none really explains why it is so useful. This I think is in part because the devotees make exaggerated claims for its usefulness thus obscuring its strengths and in part because you have to consider its advantages for melody playing to fully appreciate why it is the best tuning for accompaniment. I taught myself to play in standard tuning things that are best played in DADGAD because I didn’t know any better. Well, I acquired a lot of technique that way—think of simultaneously droning on two strings and playing a melody line in octaves and you’ll see what I mean. In standard it’s finger busting, in DADGAD it’s easy. And I could only do that in E, not in D.
To put it bluntly, if your friend really wants that familiar Irish sound, it would be much easier and quicker to learn DADGAD or drop D than it would be to try to get that effect in standard.
Believe me, Wombat, I couldn’t agree with you more! But I guess that I have a bent for the Quixotic, it seems. 
Maybe suggesting drop-D is the ticket.
i see no reason to fear going to drop D, open D, or dadgad.
here is a website, a really cool one, which makes it easy
the main point:
changing to these tunings is not like learning a new instrument
it makes many of the cords easier, not harder.
it is just like learning a few variations on cords.
tell him to go for it.
meir
Ah, I’m no fan of DADGAD. There are a few players who do it up right, but generally it’s too easy for a guitarist to just churn out an indescernable mushy line of droney poo.
If you take up DADGAD make sure you throw some solid chords in now & again to keep your backing from sounding like a tunpura.
I take it you’re objecting to the kind of Celtic thrash that blares out from a lot of DADGAD tuned guitars. Well the pioneers of DADGAD didn’t sound like that and when you grasp its advantages I don’t see why you would want to play like that. As I said, it’s advantages are largely mainly evident when playing melody lines. That’s in large part because the sympathetic resonances that give it it’s ‘magic’ depend for their very existence on not playing all the strings at once. Obviously playing fully fretted chords gives contrast but that’s just one of the missing ingredients in bad DADGAD playing and if it were the main cure there would indeed be no point in taking up DADGAD in the first place.
I don’t know why DADGAD is so common yet so poorly understood. Part of the problem lies with the lack of good teaching materials that explain the rationale for the tuning. A cult has grown up around it which suggests that all you have to do to sound cool is to adopt the tuning and a magical transformation will somehow take place in your playing automatically.
In the wrong hands, it’s almost as easy to turn out sludge in drop D.
This has turned out to be a very informative thread!
Just to rehash the fact that I also play cittern with a DGDAD tuning; sorta like DADGAD in reverse. Personally, I like the way it works and sounds: good for small two- or three-course chordlets (is that a word?), various drone capabilities, brief -or not- melodic runs for counterpoint, open (or “power”) chords, etc., ad nauseam. I find that this tuning lends itself to a “less is more” approach in backup, but is quite capable of full-course chording with limits that don’t really leave me wishing for more at all.
What I find (and this is my own taste, such as it is), is that standard-tuned guitar just doesn’t sound quite right, or unified, or a part of the whole, or whatever…again, it must be the approach, because I haven’t checked out the Chulrua recordings yet. To me there’s something awkward-sounding about it as a backdrop for trad stuff. But I suspect this is in cases where the player is doing the standard thing re: chords in specific. Dmaj7 just doesn’t cut it in my book (but then, I haven’t finished coloring all the pages yet ).
I consider dropped D basically standard tuning as opposed to DADGAD or other changed strings.
John Doyle (ex Solas) is in standard, and has a teaching video out. Arty McGlynn also plays in standard tuning - as do many others.
DADGAD tuning does not have to produce drivel - it depends on whose playing and your definition of drivel.
Accompaniment of Irish Traditional Music can be a touchy subject - much like the discussion of “what is traditional”. A lot depends on your taste, and as the great Chicago guitar accompanist Jim Dewan (also in standard tuning) says, “there is no accounting for taste”
Arty McGlynn, yes! Verrrry tasty stuff. I didn’t know he uses standard tuning. I think this illustrates my suspicions about approach.
Most points covered but a Weekender observation:
If you were to analyze chords being played on DADGAD guitars, you would find sixth chords, major 7ths, major 9ths etc. I believe that the drones and resulting overtones soften the effect of these more modern sounding chords making them more invisible and perhaps fooling people about what they’re hearing. When you take those chords and render imitations on standard tuning, they sound more awkward perhaps. And I believe that the use of DADGAD has sent standard tuners into that domain. I harmonize tunes for my band. Sometimes I stick with I IV V and scalar minors. Othertimes I do these tentative or perhaps ambiguous chord treatments. I didn’t learn them from old records, I got the sound in my head from DADGAD and zouk guitars, thereby insinuating them into the sonic picture as “part of the style.”
I am a guitar player of 35 years but I have to say that many of my favorite Trad cds have no guitar at all. I am still not convinced that DADGAD is any more “traditional” or accomodating of trad than a regular or dropped D tuning, except that famous melody players use the former as accompaniment. It’s just different.
Whichever style is heard the most will eventually “win,” if DADGAD hasnt already done so.
Well put, Weeks. As I said, much of my viewpoint here comes from personal taste, not so much from a perspective of “right or wrong”. Some things, however, just don’t seem to work, IMHO.
This might actually be even more accurate than you realise. (How accurate do you think it is? 
)
What I’m getting at is that teh melodic possibilities DADGAD opens up are principally the playing of octaves and unisons either alone (but with sympathetic resonance from unplucked strings) or together with drones which form interesting chords. Since citterns and 'zouks are strung either in a mixture of octaves and unisons or just in unisons, you get that already along with the benefits of sympathetic resonance. Just churning out full chords would be a hopeless waste of these riches.
Why do Irish 8-string 'zouk players overwhelmingly favour GDAD tuning to the octave mandolin tuning GDAE? I believe for the same reason that guitarists favour DADGAD. Of course, there are no right or wrong ways to tune a 'zouk a cittern or a guitar. If it sounds good and fits what others are doing, it is fine. But there are tunings which are more or less helpful in allowing you to achieve your goals. The prevalence of DADGAD for guitars and GDAD for 'zouks in Irish music is based on sound principles, it isn’t just an accident or a mere fashion.
Since you appear to be in agreement with my own humble views in this matter, I’d say that your accuracy is flawless. Of course.
Drop D tuning is overused enough in rock music, why play Irish music in Drop D? Sometimes making things easier for yourself makes the quality of the music suffer!
Two words: Arty McGlynn