Your next stop in the dropped-D juggernaut is the key of A minor. Minor keys are more prominent in traditional Irish music than they are in most traditional American idioms, and there are scads of A minor tunes, as well as tunes in E minor, B minor, and D minor. In this lesson, John will give you the basic chords you’ll need for playing in this key, and then he’ll show you how to apply them to backing up “The Congress” reel,  a wildly popular session tune. Named to commemorate the International Eucharistic Congress held in 1932 in Dublin, the tune is attributed to button accordion player Joe Mills. You can find dozens of recorded versions on YouTube, including this setting by Kevin Burke’s Open House. Once you have a basic accompaniment to “The Congress” in hand, John will show you several ways to embellish your backup. 

In this video, John walks you through the basic chords you’ll need to play in the key of A minor based on walking up the A minor scale. He demonstrates a number of different voices for some of the chords, including both a D minor and a D “modal” (no third) for the IV chord, for example. Then he shows a parallel series of chords he calls “middle A minor” starting at the fifth fret, using a pattern similar to what you learned in the previous lesson for chords in the key of A major.  John suggests that this is usually his preferred way of approaching accompaniment in this key. You will note that John includes some drone strings that are strictly in the basic triads for the chords in this key so that they function as extension notes—an open B string against the A minor chord suggests a ninth, for example. John calls some of these ambiguous voicings “ish” chords.