Folk Friendhttps://youtu.be/ctkSdAvDObM
In this video I’ll be showing you how to accompany one of my favourite Irish reels, Ramnee Ceilidh in DADGAD guitar tuning!
I’ll also be telling you all about the Folk Friend tour- I will be offering tailor made guitar and general accompaniment workshops all over the UK, suitable for groups of all ages and levels! Click here to book or find out more
Click here to find out more about Finale Music School.
https://youtu.be/leQPIJj0hJk
My latest business venture (alongside Folk Friend and Finale Guitar) is now open! You can find out more about Finale Music School here.
This week I had a little jam with one of our tutors, Mitzi. In this video we play a hornpipe called Nod To Tom and a reel called Secret Sister and I run you through the DADGAD guitar techniques I’m using to accompany them by ear. I talk about DADGAD chord choices, rhythmic variations and lots more!
Mitzi offers fiddle lessons over Zoom- you can contact me to book.
My latest (currently!) book, The Beginner’s Guide To Celtic DADGAD Accompaniment, is available here.
In this week’s free DADGAD guitar lesson from Folk Friend, I’ll be running you through some of the techniques I use when accompanying Irish reels by ear, with special guest Felix Parker-Price!
You can get the new book with a complete kit including Mode Wheel and Playalong Pack by clicking here. You can also click here to get the book on its own.
This week I’ve decided to post a little clip of myself and my mum jamming through a new set of jigs. It’s not perfect as it was the first time we’d played this set, but I think it gives a good insight into the process of picking chords by ear. I’ve then added a commentary track which will hopefully help you to steal some of my backing techniques and apply them in your own playing. You can find loads more great Irish guitar accompaniment ideas in my new book! Tune names will be added soon. This video also includes a top secret view into my kitchen lair at a top secret location in the back of Folk Friend HQ.
You can get the new DADGAD book by clicking here.
https://youtu.be/LHt7rVuDJsc
Welcome back to part 2 of the Folk Friend Beginner’s Guide to Celtic DADGAD Accompaniment! This video series will be covering some of the material from my latest book, which shows you everything you need to know to become a great Celtic DADGAD backing guitarist and is available at the link below. This week’s installment will cover how to pick chords by ear for a very popular Irish session tune in the key of G major, the Kesh Jig.
Click here to open my free Playalong video for the Kesh in a new tab.
Here are the root notes I mentioned in this clip:
Click here to watch part 1
It’s nice to be back making videos at Folk Friend HQ! I’ve finally finished my latest book, The Beginner’s Guide To Celtic DADGAD Accompaniment, so to celebrate I’ll be making a free course of DADGAD Youtube tutorials for complete newcomers to this rewarding and easily accessible tuning! This week’s instalment covers how to pick chord by ear in major keys- we’ll be looking at a classic Irish reel called The Maid Behind The Bar.
This week I’ll be teaching you to play an easy DADGAD fingerstyle arrangement of one of my favourite Irish polkas, Ger The Rigger! I’ve slowed it down to make a nice, bouncy little arrangement that can be played for hours on end leading to a kind of polka trance!
This arrangement and nine others are available in my latest collection of DADGAD tabs. The complete download also comes with MIDI playthroughs, a short history of each tune and its author where relevant, tabs, playing instructions, chord diagrams and loads more! Get it here.
You can download the tab on its own (free) here.
I recently finished writing a complete Beginner’s Guide To Celtic DADGAD Accompaniment! You can find it here.
In this week’s free Irish / Celtic guitar lesson from Folk Friend, I’ll be showing you the most useful scale ever for beginners learning to play in the DADGAD tuning! This handy scale lets you play an octave of D major without hitting the same string twice in a row, which is handy if you have a slow picking hand and want nice overlapping notes for a cool harp-like ringing effect! It also provides an easy way to add bass notes below a melody and thus start writing your first DADGAD arrangements.
If you would like to learn 10 easy arrangements of Irish tunes for DADGAD guitar then check out my book available here.
The free tablature and scale exercises download mentioned in the video can be found here.
I recently finished writing a complete Beginner’s Guide To Celtic DADGAD Accompaniment! You can find it here.
In this week’s Folky Fridays free online guitar lesson live stream from Folk Friend I will be showing you a completely “by ear” approach to DADGAD backing, with almost no music theory! We’ll be covering tunes in the common keys of D major, G major, E minor and A minor and I’ll be showing you some simple approaches to make chord progressions which follow the melody, tune your ear in and sound absolutely great! We’ll be looking at bass runs and replicating the melody at the top end of your chords too.
I recently finished writing a complete Beginner’s Guide To Celtic DADGAD Accompaniment! You can find it here.
https://youtu.be/K-2QuP35y70
In this free lesson from Folk Friend I’ll be running complete beginners through the top 5 tips for complete Irish guitar beginners! I’ll be showing you how to hold your guitar and plectrum, some of the best things to learn to begin with, which chords fit with tunes in the most common keys and general tips for how you can improve your Irish guitar backing fast!
