Author: Folk_Friend

I have a special guest in this week’s Folky Fridays free Celtic guitar lesson from Folk Friend! My mum Alexa, from whom my love of Irish music stems, will be joining me to play some classic session tunes. I’ll also be showing you lots of ways to vary standard chord and strumming patterns and covering all the shapes I use for each set.

Here is a list of all the tunes we played (they are under the names my mum knows them by- some of them have several others!):

The Lonesome Jig – D ionian

The Roaring Barmaid – G ionian

The Mushroom Treatment – A mixolydian

Taylor’s Rambles – A mixolydian / A dorian (possibly not the standard version you would hear)

Reaping the Rye – E aeolian

The Butterfly – E aeolian

Light and Airy – A mixolydian

Christy Barry’s (?) – G ionian

The Donegal Lass – A mixolydian

The Old Flail – G ionian

Porthole of the Kelp – E aeolian

Unknown (recorded by Carty & Tully) – A dorian

The Old Bush – D mixolydian (starts on an Am chord)

O’Gallagher’s Frolics – E aeolian

Sean Ryan’s (widely known as The Castle- this is arranged in my Fingerstyle book available on the shop page) – E aeolian

The Spotted Dog – A ionian

In this week’s episode of Folky Fridays from Folk Friend, I’ll be giving you a first glance at partial capoing techniques you can use to get ethereal, tinkly chords with big ringing bass notes! These techniques all use a standard capo and can really enhance the range of cool chords you can get using standard chord shapes which you will already have used for Celtic guitar backing. I will be expanding on the topics covered in this free Celtic guitar lesson live stream in the forthcoming partial capo-ing video which will be up on the Folk Friend channel in about three weeks.

This video only requires a standard six-string capo. If you would like to buy one then please support the channel by buying one directly from my guitar shop, here.

I also used the 7th fret partial capo technique in my arrangement of The Castle Jig, also commonly called Sean Ryan’s (E dorian). It appears in my book of fingerstyle arrangements of Irish tunes, Irish Tunes For Fingerstyle Guitar, available on the shop page of this site!