Make your old-time and bluegrass music sing through the warm open-string sound of DADGAD tuning! This book includes twenty classic old-time and bluegrass tunes, arranged and recorded by Rob MacKillop. The material is ideal for playersof easy to intermediate levels and is designed for flatpicking, but can also be played fingerstyle. Repertoire includes Angeline the Baker, Blackberry Blossom, Fire on the Mountain, Old Joe Clark, Whiskey Before Breakfast, Wildwood Flower and much more. Additional content includes DADGAD chord diagrams, instructions and a technique primer. Includes access to online audio.

Make your old-time and bluegrass music sing through the warm open-string sound of DADGAD tuning! This book includes twenty classic old-time and bluegrass tunes, arranged and recorded by Rob MacKillop. The material is ideal for players of easy to intermediate levels and is designed for flatpicking, but can also be played fingerstyle. Repertoire includes Angeline the Baker, Blackberry Blossom, Fire on the Mountain, Old Joe Clark, Whiskey Before Breakfast, Wildwood Flower and much more. Additional content includes DADGAD chord diagrams, instructions and a technique primer. Includes access to online audio.

Rob MacKillop presents 20 wonderful fingerstyle blues arrangements andcompositions in DADGAD tuning. The styles covered in this book include country blues, boogie woogie left-hand piano blues, early jazz blues, gut-bucket blues and modal blues. Great traditional songs are included such as St. James Infirmary Blues, St. Louis Blues, C. C. Rider and more, alongside 15 full-length studies. The book begins with easy arrangements, progressing to intermediate and more advanced ones - in short, these blues studies will improve your technique through playable 12-bar tunes. A wide array of chord and scale fingerings are also provided, including pentatonic minor and major scales, blues scales, diminished arpeggios and scales, 7th chords, whole-tone scales and the super Locrian mode and much more! All the tunes presented have accompanying audio recorded by Rob MacKillop and are available to download

Ragtime music and DADGAD tuning seem to be made for each other, or so you will believe after playing these wonderful arrangements by Rob MacKillop. With performance levels running from intermediate to advanced, there is plenty here to challenge and delight the player and audience too. With titles by Scott Joplin (The Entertainer, Weeping Willow, etc.), James Scott (Grace and Beauty), Charles L. Johnson (Dill Pickles Rag), Fred Van Eps (Rag Pickings), to popular jazzier pieces by A. J. Weidt and the rag-influenced Piedmont blues of Blind Boy Fuller, there is quite a variety of styles to explore. Additionally, recordings by Rob MacKillop will guide and entertain you in the art of DADGAD ragtime guitar! Access to online audio is included. Written in tablature and standard notation.

The word "DADGAD" refers to the names of the notes on the open strings of one of many alternate tunings for the guitar, one that is very popular with acoustic guitar players. It has a wonderfully warm resonance, allowing you to play simple single-note melodies, yet still fill out the sound of the instrument. The twenty Christmas carols presented here form a perfect introduction to playing guitar in DADGAD tuning. The melodies are presented without added bass notes or chords - just those great melodies, once heard, never forgotten. This means you already know what the tune is supposed to sound like, leaving you to concentrate on playing the notes on the right string and fret, and for the right length of time. This book is the easiest of Rob Mackillop's DADGAD books. It assumes you know how to hold and tune the guitar, and play some notes and a few simple chords. The book includes a "Technique Primer" to help get you up and running, plus the essential chord diagrams for playing in DADGAD tuning. Book includes access to online audio featuring Rob MacKillop's performance of each piece.

This book contains thirty of the most requested Celtic session tunes, arranged for DADGAD tuning. Accompanying audio is available as an online download, whichincludes performances by Rob MacKillop. To assist playing these tunes, a technique primer and specific exercises are included. With the use of a capo youwill be able to play these tunes in their traditional keys. The tunes can be played fingerstyle or with a pick. The repertoire includes classic tunes such as DrowsyMaggie, Soldier's Joy, St. Patrick's Day In the Morning, The Kesh, The Rights ofMan and The Wind That Shakes The Barley. A bonus twenty-five traditional Scottish lute pieces are included, also arranged for DADGAD tuning! Includes access to online audio

Many great Scottish traditional tunes can be traced back to 17th century lute music. In this collection, multi-instrumentalist Rob MacKillop has transcribed and arranged 25 popular tunes derived from various lute manuscripts. While idiomatic to the guitar, some of these arrangements include fast runs and chord changes, so are best suited to the intermediate-level flatpicking guitarist. This guitar collection consists of the same melodies in the same keys found in its mandolin counterpart, Tunes From 17th Century Scotland Arranged for Mandolin (Mel Bay Publications). In both books, suggested chords are provided wherever appropriate. Consequently, the settings work fine as either mandolin/violin and guitar duets, or as solos for either instrument. Until now, most of these appealing dance tunes and airs have not been available as guitar arrangements. Here, except for two tunes in drop-D tuning, all are in standard guitar tuning. With MacKillop’s spirited online recording, generous performance notes and standard notation and tablature for each selection, get ready to explore a wonderful new take on an old repertoire! Includes access to online audio.

In this book, journalist, composer, songwriter, teacher, and 2003 Winfield Flatpicking Guitar Champion, Jeff Troxel, delivers a masterclass in arranging fiddle tunes for flatpicking guitar. These 20 themes and variations on favorite bluegrass melodies are designed to improve overall musicianship and augment your own arranging skills. Ideal for the intermediate to advanced flatpicking guitarist, the author reveals techniques for enabling readers to create their own theme and variations settings. Suggested rhythm guitar chords and light left-hand fingerings are also provided. Troxel points out that one of the unexpected benefits of learning and memorizing themes with variations is that the process will ultimately facilitate linear and harmonic improvisation. It would be a painstaking process to learn this skill from a teacher or a harmony textbook, but once memorized, the scale and arpeggio patterns within these tunes and variations will set you on a viable path towards original improvised lines. As a bonus, the author includes a generous appendix containing several of his Flatpicking Guitar Magazine articles that deal with aspects of musicianship that every guitarist should know. While written in standard notation and tab, if you have relied solely on tablature and recordings in the past, this book can provide the key to understanding essential music theory and reading standard notation. If you’re not quite ready to learn to read standard notation, you can still use the tab and the author’s excellent online recordings to learn these delightful arrangements. In any case, it will be fun to get these settings of standard bluegrass tunes “in-hand” and use them in future jam sessions.

Guitarist, composer, songwriter, and Mel Bay author—Jeff Troxel has been successful in the flatpicking contest world as well as being a sought-after college and summer camp instructor. In this book, he shares a lifetime of knowledge about one specific role of the bluegrass guitarist— that of accompaniment or “backup”. Beginning in Chapter One, Troxel lays the foundation for what is to come in rendering alternating bass lines, chord progressions, ornamentation, intros, endings, bass runs, chord-melodies, pedal tones, and other essential concepts that contribute to effective rhythm guitar playing. Five appendices address: Basic Music Theory, Capos and Transposition, Tuning, Guitars, Picks and Strings, and Lead Sheets for the dozen bluegrass tunes featured in the book. All music appears in standard notation and tablature with 69 audio tracks. By the time you finish reading and playing the examples in this book, you’ll be ready to jam or perform with the best! Includes access to online audio.

Celtic Flatpicking in Open D Guitar Tuning Tuning your guitar to DADF#AD or "Open D" compliments Celtic music brilliantly. The open tuning allows the strings to vibrate easily, creating drones and overlapped notes that sound reminiscent of a harp or bagpipe. The 30+ tunes represent a good selection of well-known Celtic session tunes including, jigs, reels, hornpipes, waltzes and songs. Each tune shows notation, tablature and chords. Some of the tunes are arranged with chords added in with the melody, while the faster tunes just have the melody line. Go to my website (KalymiMusic.com) to play along with the accompaniment tracks to help learn the tunes quickly. If you are new to this style, then check out my twelve useful tips for Flatpicking. There are also some examples of how to use ornamentation to further embellish the tunes. For further study in Open D, I have included a series of chord and arpeggio charts with fingerboard diagrams. These charts will help you learn the DADF#AD fingerboard and allow you to accompany in Open D with Major, Minor and Dominant 7th chords. Campanella (overlapping) scales in Major and Minor are given plus Mixolydian and Dorian modal scales, which are common in this style. Use these scales as a technical practice to help master the fingerboard and to help achieve a flowing legato-sound to authentically play the tunes. There is also a small selection of common chords in Open D, some Celtic strumming patterns in 4/4 and 6/8, and note charts and DADF#AD fingerboard charts. If you are new to reading tablature, there is a page on how to read tablature and how to read rhythms. Some audio tracks are available here: Celtic Flatpicking Open D Guitar Tuning - Kalymi Music (brentrobitaille.com)