|
John shows you a more complex approach to backing up “Mooney’s Reel” in this video.
Traditional Irish music is fundamentally linked to dancing, and the essential repertoire comprises rhythmic dance tunes, primarily reels, jigs of various sorts, and hornpipes. John will introduce you to his approach to playing Irish music on the guitar with a thorough grounding in rhythmic accompaniment, starting with the guitar in dropped-D tuning: DADGBE.
Rigorous strumming-hand and forearm technique is at the heart of John’s driving accompaniment. Most of you use your right hand and arm for strumming and picking, but because John is left-handed, you’ll be seeing a mirror image of your own setup. In these first lessons, John introduces you to his very specific approach to choosing a pick, holding it, and using his forearm to power his strumming patterns. Once he’s shown you the foundations of his approach to rhythm guitar, he’ll give you some additional tips for accenting your steady strums to create more complex grooves.
In this section, John focuses on the essential skills you’ll need to accompany reels, the driving 4/4 dance tunes at the heart of the tradition. For those of you with backgrounds in bluegrass or old-time music, a reel is akin to a hoedown or breakdown. In these next lessons, John will introduce the basic chords and some variations for several of the main keys found in traditional Irish music, beginning with D and G. He’ll show you the fretting-hand chord forms in one or two octaves and introduce a popular session (seisiún) tune so that you can practice what you’ve learned on both hands in a practical context.
John uses these next lessons to introduce the primary chords he uses for playing in the key of D. One takeaway is the utility of learning “modal” chords without a clearly defined major or minor third in the triad. He also shows you how to imply a chord change by shifting just a note or two without playing a fully defined triad of the change chord.
Written by Sligo fiddler Michael Gorman, “The Mountain Road” was originally a six-part tune. In most sessions today, it’s played as a single, two-part tune in the key of D, with each part played just once. In these next lessons, John demonstrates a basic accompaniment pattern for “The Mountain Road” and follows that with a more embellished version.
John takes you on a journey similar to what you just explored in the previous set of lessons, this time in the key of G. You’ll learn the basic chords, build a harmonized scale with the rest of the chords for G, and then apply it all to developing basic and embellished accompaniment patterns to “Mooney’s Reel.”
Donegal fiddler Tommy Peoples often played this great tune in the key of G, and it is sometimes given his moniker. You might also find it called “The Milkmaid,” “Green Pease Straw,” and “Liam O’Flynn’s.” John shows you how to play a basic version of the accompaniment and then a more embellished approach.
