Author: Folk_Friend

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DADGAD

The Ultimate DADGAD cheat sheet chord progression for Celtic backing guitarists!

In this week’s free guitar lesson from Folk Friend, I’ll be showing you one super easy chord scale to practice in DADGAD, which contains every single chord you can play with a tune in the key of D ionian. The best part? You only need a maximum of two fingers per chord! These have to be the easiest DADGAD chord shapes for Celtic backing guitar!

Diagrams for all the easy DADGAD guitar chords I mention are included in the video :). You can learn more about the modes on my blog here.

I recently finished writing a complete Beginner’s Guide To Celtic DADGAD Accompaniment! You can find it here.

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DADGAD

Folky Fridays #8 – Celtic / Irish guitar backing using DADGAD tuning

The topic of the 8th episode of the Folky Fridays Celtic guitar tutorial live stream from Folk Friend will be DADGAD! I’ll be showing you some extra things you can do to make your DADGAD backing more interesting and how to accompany tunes in a few keys other than D major.

I’ll be providing examples using my slow tune loop videos which are below: Kerfunken Jig (D major):

Tell Her I Am (jig, G major):

I recently finished writing a complete Beginner’s Guide To Celtic DADGAD Accompaniment! You can find it here.

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DADGAD

Celtic DADGAD guitar chords part 2 – the key of G major

In this week’s free Irish guitar lesson from Folk Friend, I’ll be looking at how you can use a set of simple chords in DADGAD tuning to play in G major and its related modes, A dorian, D mixolydian and E aeolian. I cannot recommend strongly enough that you learn a bit about music theory if you don’t already understand why certain chords go in certain keys and how the modes relate to one another.

Check out my Celtic theory videos here to learn everything you need to know.

I recently finished writing a complete Beginner’s Guide To Celtic DADGAD Accompaniment! You can find it here.

Categories
Celtic music theory Chord scales for modes DADGAD Drop D Ear training Fingerstyle Jazz chord theory Picking patterns Strumming patterns

Top Ten guitar practice tips for Irish, Scottish and Celtic guitarists – Folk Friend

It can be difficult to get started learning Celtic backing guitar. There is so much to learn, from ear training, to music theory, to strumming patterns to rhythms to memorising tunes…. So much to practice- so little time! In today’s free Celtic guitar lesson from Folk Friend, I’m going to be telling you my top ten practice tips to make your guitar practice time more efficient.

I’ll also be demonstrating my brand new invention, the Folk Friend Guitar Practice Diary (click the link to buy now)! It uses a targeted system of quarterly, monthly and weekly reviews alongside an events calendar and my revolutionary Tablusic system to help you achieve your goals quickly. It also contains lots of handy tidbits for the budding Celtic guitarist, like chord shapes, mode diagrams, practice techniques and a ready made section for you to write your own tabs and chord diagrams quickly and easily.

The Stephen Guise book I mentioned (Mini Habits) is available here.

I receive a small affiliate commission if you buy it through the above link.

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Fingerstyle

How to write Celtic Fingerstyle Guitar Arrangements and ARRANGEMENT COMPETITION – Folk Friend

This week Folk Friend is running a competition to celebrate the release of my latest book, Irish Tunes for Fingerstyle Guitar! In this clip I’ll be running you through how to write Celtic fingerstyle arrangements. As an example I’ll be showing you how I began to write my arrangement of Cooley’s Reel.

Please note the competition has now closed.

Categories
Jazz chord theory Strumming patterns Styles of great guitarists

Dennis Cahill Guitar Tricks – Accompanying The Old Bush Reel with “vague” and contrapuntal chords

I had a lot of positive feedback from the first Folk Friend Irish guitar lesson covering the unusual playing style of one of my acoustic guitar idols, Dennis Cahill. In fact I had so many messages about it that I’ve decided to have a more in-depth look at some unusual chords he uses to accompany a cracking Irish reel called The Old Bush. Thanks to my mum as ever for acting as my inexhaustible encyclopedia of tune titles!

 

You can watch part 1 of my guide to Dennis Cahill’s guitar style, which covers picking technique, using dynamic changes to build energy and some more standard chord choices, here.

 

The original clip of Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill live from the Irish Arts Centre in New York City is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkxtRbQ_0ZE

 

Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill play this tune on their album The Lonesome Touch, which you can buy here: https://amzn.to/37FqH5H

Full disclosure- this is an affiliate link so I get a few pennies if you buy through it! Thanks.

Categories
Picking patterns

Funky jig picking pattern – beginner Irish guitar tutorial

This free Irish guitar lesson from Folk Friend continues where last week’s left off, with a super funky Irish jig finger picking pattern! You can apply this to any chord progression to fit with any Irish jig. With some minor modifications you can also apply it to slides and slip jigs.

If you missed the first (easier) part, you can watch it here.

You can practice this along with my Kesh Jig playalong video.

 

Categories
Picking patterns

Easy finger picking accompaniment for jigs – free Celtic guitar lessons from Folk Friend

This free Irish guitar lesson from Folk Friend show you how to accompany jigs on acoustic guitar with a simple finger picking accompaniment! This is a very simple pattern suitable for beginners- next week I’ll be showing you a more advanced, funky jig accompaniment.

You can practice using my Kesh Jig playalong available here or with any of the huge range of playalongs available in the Folk Friend Members’ Area.

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Free playalongs

Kesh Jig slow, medium and fast playalong track for guitarists with chords – Folk Friend

This is the first in my brand new series of tune playalongs! This one is The Kesh Jig with guitar chords. The tune is played at three speeds so that beginners, intermediate and advanced Irish guitar players can all hopefully learn some new chords and practice strumming along. If you enjoy it you can find the full pack of twenty playalong videos in the Folk Friend Members’ Area!

Categories
Strumming patterns

How to strum slip jigs and add strummed triplets for beginner Irish backing guitarists!

In this week’s free Irish guitar lesson I will be showing you how to strum along with slip jigs! These are a very common type of tune in Irish, Scottish and Welsh traditional music and are written in the time signature 9/8. They are fairly easy for complete beginners to learn to play on the guitar, but I do recommend that you learn to play standard jigs first. If you do not know how to do this already then check out my tutorial video here.

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