Homespun

Get both of Al Petteway's incredible Appalachian DADGAD lessons and SAVE!

Video 1: The ringing strings and open voicings of DADGAD produce an ethereal, almost magical guitar sound. In Al Petteway’s masterful hands, well-known Southern Mountain songs and instrumentals are given a new treatment, brought to life with fresh new harmonies and inventive fingerpicking.

Al shows you how easy it is to play in DADGAD and how this tuning can enhance even the most familiar song. You’ll find it exciting and fun to learn blues/fingerpicking favorites inspired by Doc Watson, Etta Baker and Merle Travis; explore the rich harmonies and haunting melodies of ancient Sacred Harp shape-note hymns; play hard-driving banjo tunes; and imitate the Scots/Irish bagpipe and fiddle sounds that are the Celtic roots of Appalachian music. Al offers a myriad of guitar techniques and numerous tips on musicianship and style that will enhance everything you do on the guitar.

Songs: John Henry, Sitting on Top of the World, I Am a Pilgrim, Going Down the Road Feelin’ Bad, Wondrous Love, Wayfaring Stranger, Shady Grove, Pretty Polly, Reuben’s Train and Craggy Pinnacle.

Video 2: Al teaches a dynamic arrangement of Clarence Ashley’s iconic clawhammer banjo tune, The Cuckoo (The Coo-Coo Bird), replete with hammer-ons, pull-offs, octave licks and other tricks of the trade. 

Using DADGAD for fiddle tunes can build your arranging skills as well as your picking techniques. Bonapart's Retreat, Red Haired Boy, Frosty Morning and the “pure bluegrass” of Black Mountain Rag all fall neatly into DADGAD as Al plays the melody with alternating bass accompaniment and the added power of some iconic bluegrass licks.

Al closes the lesson with Etta Baker’s One Dime Blues, played using a bass/chord thumb rhythm against syncopated high notes to help make one guitar "sound like two instruments."