Exploring DADGAD Guitar
Laurence Juber
Homespun Video VD-JUB-DG01 (1999); 90 minutes, $39.95

Although his first studies were in classical guitar, Laurence Juber ended up becoming proficient in a variety of musical styles. His gigs included touring as lead guitarist with Paul McCartney's Wings for three years (in fact, Juber has played with three of the four Beatles). As shown on the very impressive opening cut on the video, Juber uses every part of the guitar, moving effortlessly up and down the neck and slapping the guitar body for rhythmic effect.
On this video, Juber shows how flexible the DADGAD tuning actually is, using it in a variety of keys (such as F and Gm). He lays to waste the misconception that DADGAD is "just" a Celtic tuning, referring to it rather as "a different standard tuning." In the first 20 minutes, Juber offers a variety of pieces of advice on scales, octaves, adjacent scale tones, and so on, ably illustrated by a few excerpts from songs. Then he begins to teach his own tunes individually, beginning with "Still Warm," where he takes about 20 minutes to go through the sections of the tune. Juber teaches two more of his own tunes, including "Silhouette" in Am and "Fountain Jumping" (which has a ragtime feel).
Throughout the video, Juber provides insights on modern fingerpicking and the use of DADGAD to create unusual textures. Aimed at the intermediate to advanced guitarist, this will be an excellent video for people with lots of facility in standard tuning who are looking for new challenges or textures. While some previous knowledge of chord theory would help, Juber is nevertheless practical, advising viewers not to expect that everyone will be interested in everything. Instead, he urges the viewer to focus on what they might find immediately useful, and there is clearly much here which fits that description.
— Ivan Emke (Corner Brook, NF, Canada)