DADGAD Guitar – Week 4

Just to review what we covered on Thursday, I had two main goals for you. First was to think about how you might accompany tunes that had two parts in different keys where you can’t move the capo up and down. We used Out on the Ocean to explore that (noting a change from G major in the B part of the tune). We then followed that up with trying to play an E minor tune, “Sheep in the Boat” with the Capo still on the 5th fret (G position).

The second goal was to learn play out of the E minor position (2nd fret) and show you a third alternative run that could be used in minor tunes. As you may recall, it started with the same E min chord that we’d use to move down the fretboard (Open/Open/5/7/7/Open/Open), but instead of shifting our shape down two frets, we kept it on the same fret, but “switched around” the position to the shape we would use moving up the fretboard (Open/7/7/5/Open/Open) and moved up from there with the appropriate major and minor shapes.

So that gives us two alternatives for playing Emin tunes – out of the usual Capo 2 (same shapes as Amin / Capo 7) and out of G (Capo 5). During this week, see if you can come up with a way to play Emin tunes with no capo (D).

Here is Sheep in the Boat to practice an Emin tune. Note that I found out that it is better to play mandolin with a plastic paperclip than a credit card while recording this one at work.

Listen to Sheep in the Boat

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