Tag: slow

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Playalongs Reels

McMahon’s – G ionian / A dorian

 

Basic chords

This tune is in the key of G ionian, and therefore has G major, A minor, B minor, C major, D major, E minor and F# diminished as its chord options with G, C and D being the main ones. I always like to start out by breaking a tune down into “chord I sections”, “chord IV sections” and “chord V sections”. In the A part there aren’t any sections which really sound like they NEED chord IV. That means that most of the tune could have been accompanied by chord I (G), but I thought this was a bit dull, so I have thrown in a bar of chord IV (bar three), which works nicely because any time you have been playing chord I for a while you can always throw chord IV in for a bit of variation.

The final bar of each line has to be chord V (D). This is because the V chord always goes on every seventh foot tap, aka every fourth bar. You will notice that, unlike most tunes, McMahon’s actually has no V-I in the last bar of the A part (bar eight), but instead stays on chord V for the whole bar. The tune actually ends its A part on a long D note, and consequently sounds like it should stay on chord V instead of returning to chord I to make the section sound finished as most other tunes would.

McMahon’s is something of an unusual melody and can be quite tricky to find the right chords for. The B part changes key, to A dorian. A dorian contains the same notes as G ionian, but you can tell the mode has changed as there are suddenly far more As and Es (A dorian’s root and 5th) on dominant beats of the melody, making the section feel a lot more A minor-y and a lot less G-y! In the dorian mode the main chords are chords I, IV and V as normal, but chord V can also be replaced with its related major if you prefer a less dark sound. For that reason I have broken this part of the tune into chord I (Am), chord IV (D) and chord VII, which is chord V’s related major (chord VII is G, the related major of E minor). You can gain a much better grasp of how and why chords fit together using the Amazing Mode Wheel, available here.

As we are now in the key of A dorian, I have begun the B part on A minor. The third bar is pretty vague in its tonality- its notes are “E B B B G – F# G”. To me this sounded most like a G chord (G, B and D) but really I’m never too sure with this tune whether there is really any right answer! The fourth bar is a bit more clearly a G major section; “E B B A B – – -” . We would expect a chord V in this bar for our seventh foot tap, and chord V (Em) in the dorian mode can always be substituted to its related major chord VII (G) for a lighter sound, so another bar of G is a good fit.

In the B part’s final bar, the tune is transitioning back to being in G ionian. For this reason I have ended the section on chord V from the original key of G ionian, aka D major. This makes the transition back to G seem natural.

Substitutions

In this version, I have added a G/B chord, otherwise known as G in the first inversion. This is a very common technique, which creates a nice linking bassline from G up to B and then on up to C. A G major chord normally contains the notes G, B and D. It doesn’t matter what order you pile the notes within the chord, but it is traditional to have the root note at the lowest pitch. For example G, B, D, G, B, G or G, D, G, B, D, G would both be valid G major chord voicings. If you invert the chord so that its 3rd, B, is at the lowest pitch within it then the chord is said to be “in the first inversion”. To play chord I, chord I’s first inversion, then chord IV is a very common technique in folk backing and will work in any key.

In bar six of the A part I have replaced G major with its related minor, E minor for a darker variation. Any chord can be replaced with its related minor at any time, unless it is chord V in a major key which has to be chord V and cannot be substituted.

In the B part, I have capitalised on the vague tonality of the tune to put in a more “pop music” type chord progression. For example the second bar contains the notes “D B B A B – – D”. This could be seen as the top of a G major chord with an A thrown in, so I’ve stuck a G in there instead of the A I went for in the previous version. The third bar contains; “E B B B G – F# G” which is so vague as to be basically a free for all. I decided to go on round the circle of fifths from G to C as progressions which go up in fifths always sound nice and this is basically a chord I section which means you can put anything from the chord I or IV families here without any adverse effects!

Basically there are so few clearly defined chords in this section (each bar contains notes from multiple chord families) that I have simply plumped for a chord progression which sounds good in its own right, and more or less fits with the melody.

Jazzy substitutions

In this version I have converted each of the chords from the substitutions version to a jazzier version of the same. When adding tetrads (four note chords) or more complicated “jazz” chords into folk music in major keys, chords I and IV become major 7 type chords, chords II and VI become minor 7 type chords and chord V becomes a dominant type chord. You can learn a lot more about how to implement these types of chords in my book Backing Guitar Techniques for Traditional Celtic Music.

Therefore in my version, G major becomes G69, the quintessentially gypsy jazz sounding substitute for a major chord (replacing chords I and IV in a major key with 69 chords always sounds nice). In bar two, B minor is a substitute for G major, because a major chord can be substituted for the minor chord two degrees below it within the key scale (its related minor- in this key G is related to Em) or the one two above it in the root scale (in this case G can sub to Bm). As we are in jazz-chord territory I play Bm7 instead of plain Bm. As the following bar’s Am has become A minor 7, and this chord is an identical barre chord to Bm but two frets lower on the neck, I have slid down and played the intermediate chord on the way to provide a nice chromatic link, Bm7 – B♭m7, Am7. Finally I have used D9 in place of chord V, because chord V always becomes a dominant 7 type chord when you get to jazz land, and adding any extra notes from the root scale always makes a jazz chord jazzier! In this case a D7 chord would contain D (root), F# (major 3rd), A (5th) and C♮ (flattened 7th). The 9th note in a D major scale would be E, and E is also in our key scale of G ionian so adding an E note to my D7 chord to give me E9 sounds good. As a general rule, using a 9 chord (D9, A9, etc) in place of chord V in a major key pretty much always sounds great.

In the B part, I have more or less taken the chords from the basic version and converted them into the right kind of tetrad. Recall that the chord options for A dorian are the same as the ones in G ionian. This applies in tetrad land too, so the complete chord options are G major 7, A minor 7, B minor 7, C major 7, D (dominant) 7, E minor 7 and some sort of substitute for F# diminished. As we are in A dorian, chord I is Am7, chord IV is D7 and chord V is Em7.

Categories
Jigs Playalongs

The Coleraine – B minor

 

Basic chords

This tune is written in the mode of B aeolian. This means the available chords are the same ones which would be available in D ionian, aka D major, E minor, F# minor, G major, A major, B minor and C# diminished. The tune actually uses the melodic minor scale, where the seventh note in a minor scale is sharpened by a semitone. In the case of this tune it means that instead of the usual notes of a B aeolian scale, B C# D E F# G A, the seventh sometimes switches to A#. When this happens you have to accompany it with chord V converted into a major chord. The major 7th note is an unstable tone and really wants to resolve to the root note when included in the melody. That is why it has to be accompanied with chord V, which also wants to resolve to chord I. Furthermore, the notes in chord V are the 5th, 7th and 9th or 2nd notes from the scale, so if the 7th has been raised by a semitone, that means the middle of the three notes in the V chord (F#m) has to be raised by a semitone to match. That is why the V chord converts to F# major. The use of the melodic minor in this way is not at all common in Celtic music.

The tune’s second bar contains the notes “C# F# F# F#”. In relation to the key centre of Bm, these are “2 5 5 5”. Therefore this bar is firmly a chord V section. I have used chord V’s related major chord, chord VII, for ease of playability.

The F# chord in the fourth bar could have been either minor (as in the aeolian mode) or major (to match with the A# taken from the melodic minor scale) as there is neither an A nor an A# in the bar. I have plumped for the major V chord for consistency, but you can experiment with both.

The B part of the tune begins with the notes “D E D D C# B” so sounds pretty clearly like it needs a D chord. The second bar goes “C# A A A – -” making it very definitely an A bar. In bar four of the B part there is an A#, so chord V has to be major to match. Likewise in bar seven.

Substitutions

In the A part of the tune I have added a G chord as a substitute for Bm. This works because any minor chord can be switched to the major chord which is either two above it (its related major) or two below it in the key scale. That means that Bm can be replaced with either D or G, because both of these chords have two notes in common with it. G works particularly well here as it creates a nice run down the scale- Bm A G F#.

The second time through the B part I have substituted an Em for a Bm. This works because you can always play chord IV (or a substitute thereof) over a chord I section, but not chord I over a chord IV section. Straight after the E minor I have used F# minor instead of F# major, because the chord is not going to resolve down a fifth to chord I. Playing F# major would make the listener want to hear chord I next (because of the major 7th note of a B melodic minor scale being included- the major seventh is unstable and wants to resolve up a semitone to the root note) and so as the following chord is not Bm but G, F# minor has to be played instead.

Jazzy substitutions

You might be put off this chord selection by all those numbers! Don’t panic though, they’re actually a very simple set of chords which are very easy to change between (see the diagrams down below which I have written in descending scale order). Lots of further uses for the same slide-able shapes can also be found in my first book, Backing Guitar Techniques for traditional Celtic music. The idea is that every chord in the A part can be fingered with the index finger on the bottom E string, the middle finger on the D string and the ring finger on the G string. By sliding this fingering around the neck and moving the middle and/or ring fingers a fret higher in relation to the root note (always under the index finger) you can quickly and easily switch between all those beautiful, jazzy chords with lots of numbers in!

The basic principles behind this selection of chords are as follows:

  1. You can replace the chords in any mode with a combination of major 7s, minor 7s and dominant 7 chords. In the ionian mode, chords I and IV have to become major 7 chords, chords II and VI have to become minor 7 chords and chord V has to become a dominant 7 chord (which contains a flattened seventh note relative the the root note’s scale, eg a D7 chord contains C♮ not C#.
  2. As this tune is written in the mode of B aeolian (with occasional accidentals) the jazzy tetrads (seven chords) available are the same ones which would be available in D ionian, because B is the sixth mode and the sixth note of a D major scale is B. This means that the A chord has to be a dominant 7 chord, NOT a major 7.
  3. In jazz chord land, adding ANY note from within the key scale to ANY of your chords is theoretically fine (in context some might sound better than others).
  4. Any chord which resolves down a fifth can be replaced with an altered dominant, which contains accidental notes NOT from the key scale. This is what makes the F#7#5 chord (an F#7 chord with the #5 relative the F# added, aka Cx which means C double sharp, alternatively just known as D) work in bar 7 – it resolves down a fifth to Bm7.

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Categories
Jigs Playalongs

The Kesh Jig – G ionian

 

Basic chords

The Kesh is written in the key of G ionian, so the available chords are G major, A minor, B minor, C major, D major, E minor and F# diminished.

The second bar goes “A – – A B D”, so it could be seen as a chord V bar. In order to avoid having chord V right near the start of the tune I have played A minor (chord II) instead. This works pretty well as most of the bar is full of A notes!

The third bar could take either C or G. I’ve gone for G for contrast and because this makes a more satisfying chord progression.

As in almost all folk music, the fourth bar takes chord V. On the repeat it resolves back to chord I for the second half of the bar, in order to make the section sound finished.

The seventh bar of the B part is really a chord I section- its notes are “G – – A – -” (either a whole bar of G or half a bar of G and then half a bar of D). However, replacing chord I (G) with chord IV (C) in this section creates extra tension which is then diffused byt eh resolution from chord V (D) to chord I (G) at the end of the section.

Substitutions

In bar three I have replaced G major with its related minor, E minor. In the fourth bar I have played chord V in its first inversion. This means that of the three notes normally in a D major chord, D, F# and A, the middle of the three, F# has been played at the lowest pitch within the chord instead of the root note D which would normally be the lowest note in a D chord. The reason I have done this is that it sets up a nice walking bassline from the E at the bottom of the E minor chord, via the F# at the bottom of D/F# (aka D in the first inversion) to G at the root of the G chord.

In the B part I have replaced G with its related minor, E minor and C with its related minor, A minor.

Jazzy substitutions

In this version I have taken the progression from the previous section and converted each of the chords into “the right kind of seven chord”. These are the “tetrads”, or four note “jazz” chords, where as well as the 1st, 3rd and 5th which make up the notes of a regular triad (three note chord) you also add the 7th note from the root note’s scale. You can discover the theory behind these in my first book Backing Guitar Techniques for Traditional Celtic Music.

For any major key the list of tetrads available is:

Chord I – major 7 –

Chord II – minor 7

Chord III – minor 7

Chord IV – major 7

Chord V – dominant 7

Chord VI – Minor 7

Chord VII – ½ diminished (rarely used in folk music)

So for our tune in G major, the options are G major 7, A minor 7, B minor 7, C major 7, D (dominant) 7, E minor 7 and F# ½ diminished. These simply replace the equivalent triad from the old progression, so D becomes D7 (note that it must be D7 NOT D major 7 because it is chord V), G becomes G major 7 and so on.

You can also add any chord extensions (extra notes) to a jazz chord, so long as the notes you add are from the key you are currently playing in. For example instead of playing D7 for my chord V I have used D9. This works fine because the 9th note in the D chord is an E, and E appears in the scale of G major so adding it sounds fine.

In bar four of the B part I have broken up a chord I bar by playing half a bar of G then half a bar of its first inversion, a G chord with B at the lowest pitch in the chord. This creates a nice little bassline to lead up into the C chord in the next bar. The same principle applies to the momentary shift from C back to G/B in the next bar- it creates movement in the bassline.

In bar 7 of the B part, I have used a nifty trick to create a chromatic link from a C chord to a D. Instead of just playing C major 7 followed by D7, I insert a C#½ diminished chord as a passing chord. You can use this to create a chromatic link between ANY two chords whose roots are separated by a semitone. For example, within the key of G, you could link G – Am (G – G#dim – Am), Am – Bm (Am – A#dim – Bm), D – Em (D – D#dim. – Em) etc etc. It also works in any mode, for any two chords whose roots are a tone apart.