D-A-D-G-B-C

• OVERVIEW •

Brings a mystical, floating resonance, resulting from the ‘clustered’ presence of four adjacent diatonic scale tones (4-5-6-b7 on 3-5-2-1str). Its intervals get progressively narrower as you rise in pitch (7>5>5>4>1), ending with a minor 2nd (2>1str) – a rare feature in the wide world of altered tuning (also see Ethereal, Gothic, & Godzilla). Use this harmonic shuffle to summon harp-like melodies and ambiguous suspensions.

 

Almost like a ‘mirror flip’ of the classic drop tuning concept – it places the main downward shift on 1str instead of 6str (i.e. like a rough inverse of Drop C‘s alteration). I first stumbled upon the tuning as a teenager, during my peg-twisting attempts to imitate Nick Drake’s clashing, close-voiced chord flavours – but obviously, wasn’t the first to find it (after all, it’s only a couple of twists away from Standard). 

Pattern: 7>5>5>4>1

Harmony: D7sus4(13) | 1-5-1-4-6-b7

• TUNING TONES •

• SOUNDS •

Many guitarists have found their way to the tuning over time – mostly, it seems, independently of each other. In my teenage music notebooks I titled it ‘Icarus’ (the ever-narrowing interval stack reminded me of a flight path steadily veering off-course) – but metalcore group Norma Jean had already used a one-fret downward transposition on their 2005 track Bayonetwork: Vultures in Vivid Colour. Hear how they contrast the two sides of the tuning (i.e. the wide 7-semitone gap between 6>5str vs. the 1-fret minor 2nd between 2>1str).

 

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• Bayonetwork : Vultures In Vivid Color – Norma Jean (2005):

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“We walked on glass all day long,

With eyes rolled back,

It came with smiles, it came with gestures,

And it came with motives,

Investing flowers in one hand,

And a blade in the other…”

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The Indigo Girls have also used it (Galileo, cp.5: sprinkled with tabla) – as explained by songwriter Emily Saliers, “Mary Chapin Carpenter taught me a couple of tunings, but I didn’t start using them until Galileo…[which is] the same as Carpenter’s The Moon and St. Christopher“. More recently, steel-string virtuoso Vicki Genfan has written thumb-slapping sketches in the tuning – and it also appears on Tom Bliss’ Pendle Hill instrumental, with a capo at 1fr (“…it was on Pendle that George Fox had the vision which inspired him to found the Quaker movement”).

 

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• Triplet Riff (sketch) – Vicki Genfan (2018):

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“People ask me how I tune my guitar onstage in such record time. I’ve been tuning my guitar since I was 5 years old, and changing tunings since I was 12 or 13. I wouldn’t have developed a good ear if I had been using a tuner all those years…” (Vicki Genfan)

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DADGBC also sporadically turns up on web forums – e.g. an anonymous GTDB user describes it as “dissonant and wild…makes panic chords really fun and easy to use” (I’m unsure what ‘panic chords’ are, but they sound intriguing). Over on Ultimate Guitar, metaladdict suggests calling it “the ultimate tuning of death” (again, I like it, but really wish they’d explained their thinking a little more…). And singer-songwriter Hannah Frances uses a similar configuration of CGCEFC (7>5>4>1>7) on Bronwyn – the only other tuning on the Menu to feature a run of ‘5-4-1’ (many thanks to composer Kyle Paul for alerting me to her work in early 2025).

 

 

Aside from this small scattering of DADGBC-adjacent examples, my search-engine explorations yielded little of relevance (soon, my queries were being directed to electrical trade sites stocking the ‘Cool-X CX10S-DADGBC bespoke power adaptor’…which, I guess, is at least symbolically guitaristic in being an AC:DC model, with precisely 6 ‘power outputs’. All the toan you’ll ever need).

 

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• The Moon And St. Christopher – Mary Chapin Carpenter (2020):

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“‘The guitar, most of the time, is what kicks something off for me. I play primarily in alternate tunings, because I bore myself to tears in Standard…” (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

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• NUMBERS •

	6str	5str	4str	3str	2str	1str
Note	D	A	D	G	B	C
Alteration	-2	0	0	0	0	-4
Tension (%)	-21	0	0	0	0	-37
Freq. (Hz)	73	110	147	196	247	262
Pattern (>)	7	5	5	4	1	–
Semitones	0	7	12	17	21	22
Intervals	1	5	1	4	6	b7

• See my Tunings Megatable for further such nerdery: more numbers, intervallic relations, comparative methods, etc. And to any genuine vibratory scientists reading: please critique my DIY analysis!

• RELATED •

—Associated tunings: proximities of shape, concept, context, etc…

• Double Drop D (this with 1str +2): no high half-step
• Drop C: moving the C down from the treble to the bass
• Teardrop: I think I was learning it when I found Icarus

• MORE INFO •

—Further learnings: sources, readings, lessons, other onward links…

• Icarus & Daedalus: as mentioned, DADGBC’s interval sequence somehow reminded me of a soaring flight path, rising fast before flattening suddenly: like the one taken by Icarus, the notoriously over-optimistic wingman of Ancient Greece, who couldn’t resist flying too close to the sun – learn more about the myth in a video from Helenika, and a vivid 1910 retelling from Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew (“there was a terror in the joy. The wide vacancy of the air dazed them, a glance downward made their brains reel. But when a great wind filled their wings…like a halcyon-bird in the hollow of a wave, like a child uplifted by his mother, he forgot everything in the world but joy…He longed for one draught of flight to quench the thirst of his captivity…”) n.b. An alternately-tuned variant of the tale sees the pair attempt to escape by ship, after inventing the world’s first wind-sail…
• Re-discovery: naturally, artistic innovations are never really ‘new’ (e.g. several of us independently found this tuning): after all, the sheer variety of the sonic past remains largely out-of-sight to modern musicians – something North Indian singing scholar Dr. Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande reminded me of when I my interviewed her for Darbar (“you can bring your tradition forward by looking into the past, to see what has been missed by today’s musicians…I don’t believe in creating new ragas – I’ve made my own forms, but…they were probably already discovered in the past, and just resurfaced again…”). Read more of her ever-eloquent insights in the full interview, part of my Living Traditions series (“When I’m faced with unanswered questions, I prefer to leave them blank. I like to give them time. It’s more of a process of inspiration. You can do the scientific and analytical approaches too, but I wouldn’t take these routes in expectation of finding an answer. In the end, a green signal has to flash. You will know when you’ve reached that stage…”)

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Header image: The Fall of Icarus, 17th-century (Musée Antoine Vivenel)