Bagpipe accompaniment

rpe

rpe

NM - Land of Excrement
I'm going to be accompanying a bagpipe with my acoustic guitar for a church music festival one Sunday next month. The piper will be playing Amazing Grace (what else?!!). I've got a fingerstyle version in DADGAD tuning or I suppose I could just appegiate the appropriate chord voicings in that tuning. I guess my question is: is DADGAD the most appropriate tuning for this type of accompaniment or can you suggest others? Any ideas how we could make this sound fantastic?

thanks,

rpe
 
DADGAD should be fine, since you already know the tune in it, but you will probably need to capo on the first fret, to make it "DADGAD sharp". Dropped D would work nicely as well.

The best explanation I heard for bagpipe tuning has been "Just like A# Mixolydian, but a bit sharper."

A# Mixo= D#Major, and a lot of those old tunes are in some version of D. DADGAD lends itself very well to both major and minor sounds, being somewhat ambiguous on it's own, especially when you fret the G up to an A, making it all roots and fifths. Sometimes called a modal tuning, free to drift minor or major because it has no specific leanings either way.

Here's a page that lays it out pretty good. Click on Playing Along. Apparently you may need to tune to the pipes. I didn't when a piper played with us, but it was Johnny B. Good with my blues band, in B (reltive minor of D#). Couldn't really tell it was off a bit. :D

http://vortex.netbistro.com/georgemusic/Playing-with-Bagpipes.html
 
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