In today’s Folky Fridays free Celtic guitar lesson livestream, I will be running you through the basics of how to incorporate tetrads (major 7, minor 7, 7 etc) and more advanced jazz chords (9s, 13s, altered dominants, inversion etc) into your trad guitar backing for Irish and Scottish tunes!
Author: Folk_Friend
In today’s Folky Fridays free Celtic guitar lesson livestream, I wanted to discuss my thoughts on what makes Celtic music sound Celtic, and how it’s different from more modern music or folk music from other cultures. I’ll also be relating this to guitar backing as much as possible and doing my best to show you how melodic conventions can influence your guitar accompaniment choices for traditional/ folk music.
In this week’s Folky Fridays free online guitar lesson live stream from Folk Friend I will be showing you how you can pick chords for the most popular Irish tune on Youtube, Swallowtail Jig. I’ll show you how to pick simple chords by ear, how to use substitutions to make them more interesting and then loads of cool variants and techniques to make your chords more interesting! If this sounds like something you’d enjoy then please join us from 5:30GMT!
In this week’s Folky Fridays free online guitar lesson live stream from Folk Friend I will be showing you how you can use the humble “power chord” as a super easy move-able chord option for Irish, Scottish and general Celtic guitar accompaniment in loads of different keys! If you’re looking for an easy way to super charge your chord armoury with just one shape (and maybe a few extras) then join us from 5:30GMT!
I’ve been putting this one off for a while, but it’s finally time to examine the style of one of the absolute giants of Irish backing guitar- John Doyle! Famous for his work with Solas, The Teetotallers, McCusker, McGoldrick and Doyle, Usher’s Island and many more, John Doyle is a hugely versatile player who brings a wealth of interesting techniques to Irish guitar accompaniment. In this series I’ll be breaking down the most common chord shapes he uses for backing tunes, by examining a live clip of John Doyle and Liz Carroll at the Cutler Majestic Theatre in Boston from 2009 (see below). In the next part I’ll be going into more detail on the chord techniques he uses later in the clip, and in the final part I’ll be examining his simple strumming style for reels and how he uses syncopated accents to make loads of cool rhythmic variations.
Here’s the original clip:
And here are all all four parts of my guide to John Doyle’s unique Irish guitar backing style:
In this week’s Folky Fridays free online guitar lesson live stream from Folk Friend I will be having a look at some of my more unusual reel strumming patterns, including the dubstep inspired “half time” strum. These are a fun way to add variation to high-speed tune sets and can really enhance your rhythmic fluency.
In today’s Folky Fridays free Celtic guitar lesson livestream, I’ll be having another crack at streaming some tunes with my mum on the whistle!
In this week’s Folky Fridays free online guitar lesson live stream from Folk Friend I will be taking questions on any aspect of Irish / Celtic guitar playing. Whether you’re struggling with barre chords, can’t seem to get your ears tuned in, don’t know what to learn next or need to find ways to stay focused and motivated, I will be more than happy to help with your questions, whatever they may be!
In this week’s Folky Fridays free online guitar lesson live stream from Folk Friend I will be responding to a request from channel regular Brian who wanted to have a look at the slip jig Fig For A Kiss and examine how arrangement options would differ between standard EADGBE tuning and DADGAD.
Fig For A Kiss is included in my collection of 10 arrangements of classic Irish tunes for fingerstyle guitar in standard tuning, which you can buy as an e-book or paperback at the link below. It comes with a playing guide for each tune, a short history of its provenance and author if known, chord diagrams, MIDI downloads, audio demonstrations and lots more! Get it here.
I recently finished writing a complete Beginner’s Guide To Celtic DADGAD Accompaniment! You can find it here.
In this week’s free guitar lesson from Folk Friend, I’ll be showing you two easy strumming patterns you can use to play along with polkas! One is the “hup-two” pattern which you see a lot in Irish sessions and the other is a more motion-efficient variant which I have borrowed from the great guitarist and music educator Steve Cooney.
Get your hands on the Folk Friend Playalongs Pack in order to practice along with 20 tunes at 3 speeds each, with on screen guitar chords, diagrams, a write up of why the chords work and loads more.