Category: Picking patterns

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Celtic music theory Chord scales for modes DADGAD Drop D Ear training Fingerstyle Jazz chord theory Picking patterns Strumming patterns

Top Ten guitar practice tips for Irish, Scottish and Celtic guitarists – Folk Friend

It can be difficult to get started learning Celtic backing guitar. There is so much to learn, from ear training, to music theory, to strumming patterns to rhythms to memorising tunes…. So much to practice- so little time! In today’s free Celtic guitar lesson from Folk Friend, I’m going to be telling you my top ten practice tips to make your guitar practice time more efficient.

I’ll also be demonstrating my brand new invention, the Folk Friend Guitar Practice Diary (click the link to buy now)! It uses a targeted system of quarterly, monthly and weekly reviews alongside an events calendar and my revolutionary Tablusic system to help you achieve your goals quickly. It also contains lots of handy tidbits for the budding Celtic guitarist, like chord shapes, mode diagrams, practice techniques and a ready made section for you to write your own tabs and chord diagrams quickly and easily.

The Stephen Guise book I mentioned (Mini Habits) is available here.

I receive a small affiliate commission if you buy it through the above link.

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Picking patterns

Funky jig picking pattern – beginner Irish guitar tutorial

This free Irish guitar lesson from Folk Friend continues where last week’s left off, with a super funky Irish jig finger picking pattern! You can apply this to any chord progression to fit with any Irish jig. With some minor modifications you can also apply it to slides and slip jigs.

If you missed the first (easier) part, you can watch it here.

You can practice this along with my Kesh Jig playalong video.

 

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Picking patterns

Easy finger picking accompaniment for jigs – free Celtic guitar lessons from Folk Friend

This free Irish guitar lesson from Folk Friend show you how to accompany jigs on acoustic guitar with a simple finger picking accompaniment! This is a very simple pattern suitable for beginners- next week I’ll be showing you a more advanced, funky jig accompaniment.

You can practice using my Kesh Jig playalong available here or with any of the huge range of playalongs available in the Folk Friend Members’ Area.

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Picking patterns

2 Super easy reel and Irish song finger picking patterns – easy Celtic guitar lesson for beginners

This week’s free guitar lesson from Folk Friend covers two super easy guitar finger picking patterns. They can be used to accompany Irish or Scottish reels on guitar or as a nice accompaniment for traditional / folk songs in 4/4! I demonstrate them using my Maid Behind The Bar Playalong video, which you can find here.

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Picking patterns

Clawhammer reel picking pattern tutorial

In this week’s free Irish guitar accompaniment lesson from Folk Friend, I’ll be showing you an unusual clawhammer picking pattern which you can use with Celtic reels! I like this pattern so much that I used it in my fingerstyle arrangement of John Ryan’s polka, which appears in my latest book. It’s called Irish Tunes For Fingerstyle Guitar and you can get it on the shop page.

If you would like to practice the chords and picking pattern demonstrated in this video, then try playing them along with my Maid Behind The Bar playalong video, available here.

If you have short nails and would like to learn this pattern, I recommend these plastic finger picks from Stagg! They are only a fiver and work pretty well for this style of picking (maybe leave the thumb pick off). This is an affiliate link so I receive a small commission if you buy through it.