Category: Folky Fridays

In this week’s episode of Folky Fridays I’ll be showing you some examples of classic Celtic tunes which change modes mid-tune. There are lots of common mode shifts in Irish and Scottish tunes so also some more unusual modulations which crop up from time to time- I’ll be explaining how to modes show you which are the most likely key changes and how you can respond as a backing guitarist. I’ll also be showing you a few ways to make it look like you know what you’re doing if you mess up and play the wrong chords!

Today I’ll be demonstrating primarily in standard tuning but I can run through the chords in DADGAD too if anyone wants any specific ones!

Thanks to Duncan Cameron, Peak Fiddler, Shane Farrell and The Whistler for making the fantastic recordings of classic jigs, reels and polkas which appear in this guitar lesson. Check out their channels for top quality renditions of classic tunes on fiddle, tenor banjo, and tin whistle respectively.

Here are all the tunes covered:

Drowsy Maggie:

Banish Misfortune:

Fermoy Lasses:

Kid On The Mountain:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeAKZbUACuc&ab_channel=peakfiddler

The Cup Of Tea:

The Wise Maid:

Lord Gordon’s Reel:

Humours of Ballyloughlin:

In this week’s episode of Folky Fridays I’ll be examining the evolution of “Celtic” instrumental music over time and how the move towards modern functional harmony and the influence of church music can be seen in tunes from different eras. I’ll also be examining how you can update harmony options for older tunes or reflect more traditional modal styles in your backing guitar. I’ll be playing in the DADGAD tuning which is very popular amongst Irish, Scottish and general Celtic backing guitarists for it’s ringing, open, modal sound.

Thanks to Duncan Cameron for giving me permission to use his fantastic recordings of classic jigs, reels and polkas in this guitar lesson.

Here are links to all the tunes covered:

The Lark In The Morning:

The Providence Reel:

I Have A Bonnet Trimmed With Blue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATEr6FKIsJg

Rakish Paddy:

The Monaghan Jig:

Jenny’s Chickens:

Tam Lin:

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

This week’s episode of Folky Fridays I’m going to be sharing some DADGAD experiments with you all! We’ll be looking at some classic Irish tunes in D, G and A ionian and I’ll be attempting to share what I think of as the DADGAD mindset, a completely different approach to backing to my usual standard-tuning and functional harmony oriented way of doing things. This one’s gonna be a bit conceptual but there will be lots of fun and loads of new chords to learn along the way.

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

I’ve finally finished my charity bike ride! Over 300 miles successfully completed – donations are still open here: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/parkstopeaks

In this episode of Folky Fridays I threw the floor open to any questions. We ended up talking about how to pick chords by ear, substitutions, chord runs in DADGAD, how to add linking chords and a very rough introduction to the physics of harmony! We also discussed ways of dealing with stage fright, with which I have really struggled in the past.

One book on the subject which is worth a read is The Inner Game Of Music, which you can buy here: https://amzn.to/34LUXMH or here for US viewers: https://amzn.to/32DRGw7

These are affiliate links, so if you buy a copy through them I will receive a small percentage of the sale, which helps me to keep making free videos.

I’ll also be providing my thoughts on my brand new webcam from Amcrest! Hopefully the picture quality should be a lot better than usual. If you’d like to get your hands on one, you can do so using this affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3a1efOE

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

My mum is back by popular demand in this week’s free Irish guitar tutorial. We’ll be jamming through lots of classic Irish sessions tunes, jigs, reels, hornpipes and polkas, and I’ll be showing you some of my favourite chords for Irish guitar accompaniment. I might also have a look at strumming patterns and techniques for rhythmic variation.

I’ll also be test driving a brand new webcam from Amcrest! Hopefully the picture quality should be a lot better than usual. If you’d like to get your hands on one, you can do so using this affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3a1efOE

This week’s Folky Fridays free Celtic guitar lesson from Folk Friend will be looking at a very common Irish session slip jig called the Butterfly. I’ll be running you through how to strum along with slip jigs (which can be quite confusing!), how to pick chords by ear for this tune and how you can add more interesting chords, jazzy options, bass runs and strummed triplets to make your backing guitar accompaniment more interesting!

You can find The Butterfly played slowly on tin whistle with on screen guitar chords my latest playalong video, available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQFIgWiB4fY

This week’s Folky Fridays free Celtic guitar lesson from Folk Friend will be covering looking at a frequently misunderstood chapter from my book Backing Guitar Techniques For Traditional Celtic Music, called Simple 7s. In this chapter I demonstrate three super useful easy Celtic guitar chord shapes which can be moved around the neck to make all sorts of pretty sounding jazz chords. They are convenient to use as they can be easily played at speed. They do require a certain amount of music theory knowledge for successful application though and I think this is what has caused confusion amongst quite a few of my readers. Hopefully today’s lesson will clear this up for the viewers at home! You can grab a copy of the book here.

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.