Category: Strumming patterns
In this free Celtic guitar lesson I’ll be showing you how to strum along with hornpipes and reels, two rhythms which are very popular in Irish and other Celtic traditional music. You can find a complete guide to rhythms, strumming patterns, chords (including more jazzy options), music theory, ear training exercises and everything else you need to become a great backing guitarist in my e-book, available here.
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.
I had a lot of positive feedback from the first Folk Friend Irish guitar lesson covering the unusual playing style of one of my acoustic guitar idols, Dennis Cahill. In fact I had so many messages about it that I’ve decided to have a more in-depth look at some unusual chords he uses to accompany a cracking Irish reel called The Old Bush. Thanks to my mum as ever for acting as my inexhaustible encyclopedia of tune titles!
You can watch part 1 of my guide to Dennis Cahill’s guitar style, which covers picking technique, using dynamic changes to build energy and some more standard chord choices, here.
The original clip of Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill live from the Irish Arts Centre in New York City is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkxtRbQ_0ZE
Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill play this tune on their album The Lonesome Touch, which you can buy here: https://amzn.to/37FqH5H
Full disclosure- this is an affiliate link so I get a few pennies if you buy through it! Thanks.
In this week’s free Irish guitar lesson I will be showing you how to strum along with slip jigs! These are a very common type of tune in Irish, Scottish and Welsh traditional music and are written in the time signature 9/8. They are fairly easy for complete beginners to learn to play on the guitar, but I do recommend that you learn to play standard jigs first. If you do not know how to do this already then check out my tutorial video here.
In this free Irish guitar lesson from Folk Friend, I’ll be looking at how to play polkas. These are a type of tune written in 2/4 which are infamous amongst Irish and Scottish backing guitarists for their speed! The polka is also a common dance and tune type in western European folk music.
We’ll be demonstrating using John Ryan’s polka, a very common session tune. If you’d like to practice along at home, you can find my slow, medium and fast playalong track with on-screen guitar chords here.
A clawhammer style arrangement of John Ryan’s can be found in my book Irish Tunes For Fingerstyle Guitar, available in the Folk Friend online shop!
Here’s the clip of the amazing Steve Cooney and Seamus Begley playing polkas to which I refer in the video:
This free Irish guitar lesson from Folk Friend covers “swing” and shows you exactly what is actually going on. It also shows you how you can copy the amount of swing a given melody player puts on a tune and reflect it in your own backing.
In this week’s free Irish guitar lesson from Folk Friend, I’ll be showing you a simple rhythmic variation for jigs which will really enhance your Celtic backing guitar! I’ll also be showing you how to apply it using linking chords to create a smooth chord progression between a major chord and its related minor chord. The demonstrations in this acoustic guitar tutorial use DADGAD tuning (including diagrams for DADGAD chords), but I’ll also show you how you could use the same techniques in standard (EADGBE) tuning.
I recently finished writing a complete Beginner’s Guide To Celtic DADGAD Accompaniment! You can find it here.
In this free Celtic backing guitar lesson from Folk Friend I’ll be showing you how to vary your reel strumming patterns by using off-beat chord changes to make your playing smoother and more funky and add drive to the melody! I’ll be demonstrating the chords in both DADGAD and standard tuning, and applying the theory using my playalong video for the classic Irish reel Maid Behind The Bar, which you can find here.
I recently finished writing a complete Beginner’s Guide To Celtic DADGAD Accompaniment! You can find it here.
In this week’s free Scottish and Irish guitar lesson from Folk Friend, I’ll be looking at the playing of the amazing folk / gypsy jazz fusion artist Peerie Willy Johnson, a fantastic traditional guitar player from the Shetland Isles. In the first part of this video I’ll be showing you a set of guitar chords he used together often and some of the principles behind his chord choices. I’ll also be showing you how you can emulate his “La Pompe” strumming pattern (as borrowed from Django Reinhardt and other gypsy jazz guitarists). In the second part, I’ll be looking at his recording of the classic, traditional hornpipes Harvest Home and Ragtime Jane, taken from the amazing Willy’s World album, and showing you how he applies jazz theory to come up with outstandingly original chord progressions for folk music and how you can take his chord choice techniques and apply them to your own guitar playing!