Author: Folk_Friend

This week’s Folky Fridays free Celtic guitar lesson from Folk Friend will be covering some of the most useful shapes for use in drop D tuning. I’ll be showing how you can use this very versatile tuning to add bass-depth and richness to your backing in all the common folk keys!

This week’s Folky Fridays free Celtic guitar lesson from Folk Friend will be covering some useful “linking chords” and “bass runs” which will make your Celtic guitar chord changes sound more fluid. I’ll be showing you how to link chords to their related minors / majors, a few classic chord runs, how to use the circle of fifths for fluent chord changes, how to implement chromatic shifts between chords and how to use dominant, diminished and augmented chords for unusual, dramatic, chromatic chord changes! Thanks to Yvonne for the great topic suggestion.

In this week’s free Irish guitar lesson from Folk Friend, I’m going to write a simple fingerstyle arrangement of an Irish tune called the Kesh Jig from scratch. I’ll be composing against the clock- hopefully I’ll be able to do it within about an hour! I’ll run you through all the steps involved so that you can have a go at writing your own.

If you’d like to buy Irish Tunes For Fingerstyle Guitar you can pick up the ebook here.

Or the paperback here.

SORRY ABOUT THE CONNECTION ISSUES – I WILL SORT IT OUT FOR NEXT TIME.

This free Irish guitar lesson from Folk Friend covers how to modify your strumming to reflect the rhythm of a melody. This will lend your backing guitar playing some unique variations and prevent anyone from leveling you with that age old criticism of folk music; “it all sounds the same”!

Here are the example tunes I use in this video:

Jigs:

Out On The Ocean:

Banish Misfortune:

Slip Jig:

The Butterfly (recorded slowly by Conor O’Bryan):

Bonus jig:

The Monaghan

In the 6th episode of the Folky Fridays Celtic guitar tutorial live stream from Folk Friend, I’ll be discussing some of the best ways to practice Celtic backing guitar. I’ll be looking at ways to develop your ear, quickly memorise which chords go together, understand music theory and streamline your practice time in order to get quick results on a limited time budget! You will, as ever, be able to put your questions to me directly and hopefully we can all learn from each other!

The Folk Friend Practice Diary is now available! This ultra useful tool will help you define your goals, use regular reviews to focus on them and make your practice time much more efficient, leading to quick gains in your playing ability even if you haven’t got much time to practice! Get yours here.

I’ve posted some free fretboard diagrams, so you can learn all the mode shapes on your guitar! You’ll find them on my blog, here.

You can also read my top 10 tips to make your practice more effective on the blog here.

In this Folky Fridays free Irish guitar lesson I covered an unusual approach to modal folk tunes: using two modes at once! This combinatorial technique can yield some very interesting chromatic chord progressions using simple shapes which you probably already know.

In Folky Fridays #3 I’ll be covering my favourite easy strumming patterns for all the main rhythms used in Irish music! We’ll be looking at jigs, reels, hornpipes and slip jigs.

Every Friday from 5:30 pm UK time.

In this week’s Folky Fridays I will be doing a bit of a Q and A around picking chords for Celtic tunes by ear. This free Celtic guitar lesson will cover everything you need to know to pick out interesting chords sequences to fit with Irish, Scottish and Welsh tunes (and potentially other types of folk music too!). I will also be showing you a few new chord shapes for tunes in the key of G major. Irish tunes belt along pretty fast so hopefully these easy chord shapes will make your lives easier!

You will find all my top tips from this lesson in the blog on my website after we finish. It’s already got some diagrams for shapes mentioned, but I’ll be updating it tomorrow to include anything else we cover. Check it out here: https://finaleguitar.co.uk/resources-for-folky-fridays2-how-to-pick-chords-free-irish-guitar-lesson/

Out on the Ocean tune loop:

Simple chords:

G / G / G / C / G / G / C / D G X2

C / C / G / D / G / C / G / D G X2

Example with related minors:

G / Em / Am / D / G / Em / Am / D G X2

C / Am / Em / D / G / C / Em / D G X2