This one came a little while back via email:

Dear David,

I love your site – and your lessons and your arrangements and ideas for changing the keys of songs and different rhythms to try. I was inspired to buy a twelve string by your article “Double Your Pleasure” and I listen to your great podcasts. As experimentation is something that seems to inspire you as it does me, I wondered if I could ask for your input with something I am working on and not many people seem to be able to help me with…

I love the rather simple song “All I Can Do Is Write About It” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. But as I’m Scottish and now living in America, I thought I’d change a few of the words to make the song about Scotland rather than the American south. Then I also thought to make it sound a bit more Celtic, it might be worth putting into DADGAD…

The chord progression is really simple: G D C; G D Em C, G D C C.

Do you think I can just play those chords in DADGAD or if I retune to DADGAD is there an equally good sounding progression or a transposed set of chords that you have experience with that would sound better in that tuning – while obviously keeping the same rhythm and feel as the original…just with a Celtic twang, if you will…

Your thoughts would be gratefully recieved…

Now it’s been ages since I’ve heard this song, which if I remember correctly is the closing number off Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Gimme Back My Bullets album, and the idea not only intrigued me but it seemed like a cool thing to do for Saint Patrick’s Day (although I’m not sure I’m going to make it by then!). So I sat down and worked up some ideas and here is a quick lesson that came out of that bit of brainstorming. Of course, we’ve got to go through the usual formalities:

These files are the author’s own work and represent his interpretation of this song. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

First things first, as mentioned in the email, the song is indeed very simple in terms of structure and chords. Not counting the solo between the second and third verse, there are two different sets of two-measure chord progressions. The first, which we’ll call “Progression A” is two beats each of G, D, Em and C. The second set, “Progression B” if you will, is two beats each of G and D, followed by four beats of C.

Pairing one “Progression A” with one “Progression B” will give you two lines of the first verse, as you can see here:

The introduction of All I Can Do is Write About It is also made up of one pair of these two progressions. Immediately following the first half of the first verse, “Progression B” is then played by itself, serving as a short interlude between the two halves of the first verse (you could technically call these two separate verses – that’s up to you).

The chorus of the song, as well as all the subsequent verses follows a different structure. First you play “Progression B” twice, then “Progression A” and then you tack on one last “Progression B” to finish things off. Here’s the way the chorus parses out:

The very last time the chorus is played, the final line ends with a single Em chord, played once and held instead of playing the full measure of C. And that pretty much takes care of both the chords and the song structure.

And that means it’s time to tackle the chords. I assumed (correctly it turns out, and that’s fortunate because otherwise we’d be having a chat about that word “assume”) that the reader wanted to play and sing this song at the same time, so instead of going for full chords, I went with embellished chords that (a) were relatively easy to finger and (b) allowed access both to open strings as well as potential hammer-ons and pull-offs that would help give the song that “Celtic twang” the reader was looking for.

My thinking was this – in order to sing and play the song at the same time, you’re going to want to have an arrangement that you can play pretty much on auto-pilot. The less you’re worried about the playing, the more you can enjoy the song and also come up with all sorts of other trills and frills.

So here are the chords, displayed both in chord charts and guitar tablature:

Having the chords and the structure, all that was left was to come up with a Celtic feel to playing the chords. If you’ve read A Celtic Air, one of the old Guitar Columns here at Guitar Noise, you know that there are many aspects to giving an arrangement a Celtic feel. Being tuned in DADGAD is one way of doing that, but using a lot of droning notes, not to mention a generous helping of hammer-ons and pull-offs, also can help.

But if you’ve ever listened to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s original version of this song, or to any song of Skynyrd’s for that matter, you know that their guitarists are constantly using hammer-ons and pull-offs. It’s part of their signature sound.

So we have to come up with something else, and I chose to go with rhythm. Most Celtic pieces have a swing to them; it’s rare for a reel or jig to not have a triplet feel. Yes, this will make our arrangement of the song a little more difficult, but it will also make it feel a lot more Celtic and less Southern Rock Ballad.

In order to do this, I re-arranged the time signature of All I Can Do Is Write About It, going with 6 / 8 timing instead of 4 / 4. This gives us an intrinsic triplet feel. It’s all a matter of the “pulse” of a song. Normally, we think of 4 / 4 timing as having the following sense of pulse:

In 6 / 8 timing, our pulse is gotten by counting the beats in the following manner:

In 6 / 8 time, even though each eighth note technically gets a beat, the convention is to think of the dotted quarter note (which is made up of three eighth notes) as the pulse, giving each measure two pulses that can, in turn, be neatly divided into three. This is why when you see a song in 6 /8 timing, the BPM will usually indicate the dotted quarter note getting the BPM count and not the eighth note or quarter note. In other words, you get one triplet set for each click of the metronome.

And because we’re looking at chord changes that take place every two beats, I want to subdivide the pulse even further, mostly in order to give myself more room in which to play:

Here we’re using three sixteenth notes (and not sixteenth note triplets, as I say on the first MP3 files – good help is so hard to find!) for each half-beat, giving up six sixteenth notes to play around with when we get ‘round to creating our riffs, which should be any moment now…

I hope you’ve followed along with me this far, because now we’re getting to the fun part! Since there are only four chords, all we have to do is come up with a cool, Celtic sounding pattern for each of our chords. For whatever reason, when I was working this out I was using a pick. It just happened that way. So you can definitely play this with a pick (and I do in the MP3 sound files), or use your fingers if you prefer. Here’s what I came up with for the G chord:

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For the fingering, I suggest using your middle finger on the sixth (now low D, as we’re in DADGAD tuning) string, while your ring finger plays the regular D (fourth) string and the index finger handles the chores on the G (third) string.

I came up with this particular pattern after a bit of playing around. Giving it a bit of breathing space, that is, not filling it entirely with sixteenth notes, made this seem, to my ears anyway, as fairly playful and slightly mysterious and also allowed for no end of possible variations (one of which you can see and hear in the last example) should I really get into things. That’s important to me. If I’ve a pattern that has to be played precisely in sequence for the duration of a song, chances are very likely I’m going to botch it at some point. So having a pattern that can be slightly scramble on occasion is a big plus as it allows me freedom to screw up and still carry on with the song.

And having a little bit of space where I could add in more sixteenth notes, again as you hear on the variation, means that the number of possible variations can be quite high.

For the D chord, I could have gone with many other options, but I liked this one best:

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Mostly, I enjoyed using the hammer-on of the F# on the D string. There’s a big tendency, when playing in DADGAD, to use D5 chords instead true D chords. Making this one a little more embellished by adding the B and G notes on the G (third) string appealed a lot to me for some reason.

Now let’s look at a pattern for the Em chord;

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As with the G chord, I added a single variation to this particular pattern, but there are even more possibilities with the Em than with the G, especially with this fingering. You can get many more notes, from the low B at the second fret of the A (fifth) string to the E note at the second fret of the first (now high D) string. You should play around a lot with this pattern, as you should with the C:

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Again, I cannot stress enough how you should make the time to experiment and try to come up with your own variations. I choose these particular patterns by thinking, “what could I play and still manage to sing this song at the same time?” and your answer will (hopefully) be a little different than mine.

And you will hear that, when playing this without thinking too much about it, I ended up with even more variations than I’d planned. Please notice that I ended this final MP3 file with a simple G 6 / 9 chord (550000 in DADGAD) simply because, at the time of recording this, I wasn’t even aware that I was going to write a whole lesson around what I came up with! Using Em7 (220020) or even leaving the second (A) string open (220000) will work as well.

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In the original recording, there is a solo before the last verse, played after a brief change to the key of A. The chords are A (two beats), D (two beats) and E (four beats) and this progression is played four times. For our arrangement, I decided to simply leave out the solo. Maybe the next spot of spare time I get I’ll come up with something and then update this lesson!

I hope you had fun with this lesson on arrangements. It’s a lot of fun, not to mention occasionally challenging, to come up with an arrangement that’s different enough from the original yet still pays homage to the sentiment of the song. And it’s always a treat to hear people come up with arrangements because it can be a real eye (and ear) opener that inspires you to get a little more creative.

And, as always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or songs (and/or riffs and solos) you’d like to see discussed in future pieces. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forum page or email me directly at either dhodge@guitarnoise.com or dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Lynyrd Meets DADGAD – A Celtic Arrangement of “All I Can Do Is Write About It” was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Christmas Songs for Guitar

• Silent Night
• Silver Bells
• O Tannebaum!
• Joy to the World
• The Little Drummer Boy
• I’ll Be Home for Christmas

One tune I play nearly every Christmas is The Christ Child’s Lullaby, a traditional song from the Outer Hebrides (known as Taladh Chriosta in Scots Gaelic). I’ve heard many versions of this song over the years, but I first learned it from an early 20th collection titled Songs of the Hebrides, which was collected and arranged by Marjory Kennedy-Fraser and Kenneth Macleod. Apparently this song is still sung on Christmas Eve for Midnight Mass in some churches in the Hebrides.

The verse and chorus are quite similar melodically, so I’ve created a composite melody for this lesson.

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This is a stark and simple arrangement, and I’ve provided only a single-line melody and the chords. There is a lot a room to add your own ornamentation, variations, and expressive nuances, but a tune like this still sounds wonderful played simply and unadorned.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this tune as much as I have. Have a Merry Christmas and a glorious holiday!

The Christ Child’s Lullaby was written by Doug Sparling for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Fortunately, there was a great revival of the British carols in the Victorian era (in the first part of the 19th century), including the publication of new collections of the old songs and carols. And so, this is where our brief history lesson ends, and our guitar lesson begins.

One carol that has always caught my ear is The Sussex Carol (also known as On Christmas Night All Christians Sing). The words were originally published in 1684 by Irish bishop Luke Wadding in a collection titled Small Garland of Pious and Godly Songs. The words and melody sung today were collected in the early 20th century (1919) by Cecil Sharp and Ralph Vaughan Williams, who heard it sung by Harriet Verrall at Monk’s Gate in Sussex.

My arrangement is in standard tuning and offers few technical challenges. This tune is normally notated in 6/4, but I found 6/8 a little more readable when writing it out for guitar. The thumb plays the bass notes on the downbeats (beats one and four in each measure). I bar two I play the F# on beat six with my thumb, but you could also play it with your index finger. In bar nine, there’s a quick switch to 9/8, which moves back to 6/8 in the following measure.

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I hope to post a few more lessons in the coming weeks featuring Victorian carols, so I hope you have enjoyed this tune as much as I have.

The Sussex Carol was written by Doug Sparling for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

One Christmas hymn that I’ve loved ever since I first heard it is Love Came Down At Christmas. I first heard it in church – it’s in many hymnals including the Methodist and Lutheran hymnals – but Shawn Colvin also did a wonderful job of covering this song on her Holiday Songs and Lullabies CD.

The melody used for Love Came Down is a traditional Irish tune titled Gartan, which can be found in The Complete Petrie Collection of Ancient Irish Music, Part II (1902). The words were written by poet Christina G. Rosetti (1830-94). Several of her poems were used for hymns, including In the Bleak Mid-Winter, which I covered in a lesson last year.

I did this arrangement in DADGAD, a tuning I often use when arranging Irish tunes.I used a capo on the third fret to put the melody in the key of Bb (I’m fingering the tune in G instead of D).

This arrangement starts with a descending bass line to contrast the upward moving melody. I didn’t notate it, but you’ll hear it on the recording – I like to add a quick little half step hammer-on and pull-off starting on the second fret on the first string on beat four. The tricky part of the arrangement comes in measure three, where I finger the C on the third fret of the fifth string with my first finger and the G on the fifth fret of the fourth string with my fourth finger, moving you quickly to third position. I put both fingers down at the same down even though they are played on separate beats. You do the same thing in measure four, playing in second position for the first two beats, and third position on the last two beats.

In measure five, I use an ascending bass line (suggesting E minor instead of G major) for a little variation. Measure seven has the quick jump to third position, just like measure three.

On my recording, I added a second guitar part on the third time through tune. The second part adds the melody played as harmonics using a slightly different tuning, DADGAB, to accomodate the melody.

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This is a beautiful Christmas hymn, and a fun one to play in DADGAD. I hope you’ve enjoyed learning this tune as much as I have.

Love Came Down At Christmas – A Christmas Hymn was written by Doug Sparling for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Jigs are in 6/8 time, which can take some getting used to if you haven’t flatpicked many jigs or used a lot of triplets in your playing.

There are a few general guidelines to flatpicking jigs. Jigs are often played with a “lilt” by slightly lengthening the first eighth note of a triplet (on the downstroke) and subsequently shortening the second eighth note (on the upstroke). Another item to consider is picking direction. Unlike reels, which are normally played using alternating picking, with jigs we’ll use a downstroke on the downbeats to give them emphasis, which in turn helps give the tune a rhythmic drive. For example, we’ll pick triplets Down-Up-Down Down-Up-Down (DUD DUD) instead of alternating (DUD UDU). This is a guideline, not a rule…you may like the sound of alternating picking better, and in some places, sticking with one picking pattern may be awkward.

The tune for this lesson is a well-known jig called Sean Bui (“Yellow John” in Irish). I learned this tune from bouzouki player Roger Landes many years ago, and it’s one of the first tunes I learned when I was playing uilleann pipes. You’ll see a few staccato triplets on the fourth string open D (see the Humours of Tulla lesson for more details), but there’s nothing really new here as far as ornamentation (look for a more in depth lesson on ornamentation in the future). This tune is a little unusual in that the B section is twice as long as the A section, but there is a nice little variation in the last few bars of the B section that give the tune a little twist.

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Also check out… The Humours of Tulla – Irish Flatpicking Guitar

Sean Bui – Irish Flatpicking Guitar was written by Doug Sparling for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

I mostly play Irish music, and though there are many great tunes from the other Celtic traditions, I’ll be covering traditional Irish tunes for now.

In traditional Irish music, there are several types of tunes, including reels, jigs, and hornpipes. Probably the most popular is the reel, and that’s where we’ll start.

Reels are normally in cut time (2/2), and on guitar you’ll use alternate picking (Down-Up-Down-Up) most of the time. Traditional players tend to give reels a “lilt” by slightly lengthening the first eighth note (on the downstroke) and subsequently shortening the second eighth note (on the upstroke) in each group of two eighth notes. If you’re familiar with “swing eighths” from jazz or the basic blues shuffle (which you can learn in the Guitar Noise lesson Before You Accuse Me) then you’ll have no problem with this type of rhythmic pattern.

While DADGAD is nice for playing backup, you’ll find standard tuning works great for flatpicking Irish tunes, which are mostly played in the keys of D, G, Em, and Am, and on occasion, in a few in other keys and modes such as Bm and A or modes like D or A mixolydian. Some guitarists will use dropped D (DADGBE), as it offers the advantage of a D drone in the bass without leaving standard tuning for playing the melody. Of course, you can flatpick in DADGAD or other open tunings too.

Before starting the tune, let’s take a look at Celtic-style ornaments for guitar.

Ornaments for guitar can be broken down into right hand ornaments and left hand ornaments. In the last lesson there were a few left hand ornaments – “the cut” and the “strike.” For this lesson we’ll learn a right hand ornament commonly known as a triplet, also called a staccato triplet (in reference to how it’s commonly played on the uilleann pipes).

The term “triplet” in this case is a bit of a misnomer, as it’s generally played as two 16ths followed by an eighth note. However, keeping with tradition, I’ll call it a triplet as well. A triplet can be played on a single pitch, or it can use two or three different notes. In this tune we’ll use a single-note triplet and a three-note triplet.

One note about the triplet – it’s common to use Down-Up-Down (DUD) for the triplet and then use another downstroke for the following note on the beat, giving you DUD D. There are exceptions, and feel free to use what feels comfortable for you. However, using downstrokes on the downbeats will give the tune more of the lilt. That’s one reason why I (and many guitarists) play them this way, as you’ll hear on the MP3 examples.

While trying to think of a good first tune for a flatpicking lesson, I had the good fortune to be called to do a few sessions for the Irish rock band The Elders. The title song of their new CD “Racing the Tide” features a traditional Irish session tune called The Humours of Tulla, which is very nice reel in the key of D, and also happens to fit very nicely on guitar. As a side note, I actually played this tune on penny whistle for the session, and the tune was in the key of A.

To start with, we’ll play the tune with no ornamentation. Here’s a plain “bare-bones” version.

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Now we’ll add a few ornaments. In bars four, five, nine, and ten, I’ve added a B-C#-D three-note triplet (notated now as two sixteenths and an eighth), and in bars six, seven, and eight, I’ve added a single-note triplet on the F# on the second fret of the first string. To make it a bit more musical, I’ve also added a simple chord progression.

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Traditional Irish tunes are not only a lot of fun to play, but they can also give you a good technical workout. Not all tunes fall so easily on the fretboard as this one, but if you enjoy this type of music, grab a tune book or two, and try working up a few arrangements of your own. And be sure to listen to as many Celtic CDs as you can – listening to the music itself is one of the best ways possible to pick up on the nuances of playing your guitar in Celtic style.

Also check out… Sean Bui – Irish Flatpicking Guitar

The Humours of Tulla – Irish Flatpicking Guitar was written by Doug Sparling for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

I first heard this tune on the 1986 LP of the same name by the family-based Donegal band Na Casaidigh (The Cassidys). I’ve seen this tune classified both as an air and as a 3/4 time march (a marching tune of the O’Donovan family), but either way, you won’t want to play this tune too fast.

Before we move on to the tune, let’s take a quick overview of ornamentation. Ornaments in Irish music are used to embellish or decorate the melody. This adds variety and expressiveness to the music, which makes it more interesting to listen to. Unlike ornaments used in classical music, an ornament in Irish music is generally used to articulate a note instead of being perceived as a separate note on to itself. Irish ornaments tend to be more of a rhythmic device instead of a melodic one.

There are no hard and fast rules for ornamentation, and generally it is up to the player’s discretion and taste to dictate the number and type of ornaments to play, if any. Ornaments will be played slightly differently from instrument to instrument (mostly due to the physical differences in the instruments), but there is a known traditional method of ornamentation for the “core” instruments (fiddle, uilleann pipes, flute, and penny whistle) that most players are familiar with and other instruments typically emulate.

One of the most common ornaments used in Irish music is a single-note ornament called a “cut.” Though often notated like a grace note, the cut is played a little differently. A cut is played so quickly as to be barely perceptible and it differs from classical-style grace note in that a cut is played directly on the beat, not before it. A cut can be thought of as an articulation to the note it precedes and having no time value of its own. The cut becomes part of the “attack” of the note that follows, which will gives that note emphasis. The note used for a cut has a higher pitch than the note it is articulating, normally by one or two scale steps. On the guitar, the cut is played using a pull-off.

Another common single-note ornament is the “strike,” which is similar to a cut, except that it is lower than the note it is articulating. The strike can be played with a hammer-on on the guitar.

The main thing to remember is that the cut (and strike) should be played so quickly as not to be perceived as a separate note, but instead so that is has unidentifiable pitch and duration.

The cut comes from the piping tradition where it is commonly used to “cut” two successive notes of the same pitch. Highland bagpipes are played with a continuous stream of air and there is no way to “stop” the chanter to insert silence between two repeated notes (this isn’t true of all bagpipes, though). So to play the same pitch in succession, a cut is placed between the two notes.

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A cut can also be used to add emphasis to a particular note, regardless if it is preceded by the same pitch or not.

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Now on to the tune…

The bass line is fairly simple, with the right hand thumb playing steady quarter notes. The bass pattern changes in the B section, so that may be something you want to practice separately. Though I’ve notated several ornaments, remember, ornaments are entirely optional and it’s up to you if and when you want to play them.

The left hand fingering for this tune is fairly consistent, and once you place your fingers on the fretboard, you won’t have to move them much. I play the A on the second fret of the third string with my index finger, the D on the third fret of the second string with my ring finger, and the G on the third fret of the first string with my pinky. I play the fingered bass notes (G on the third fret of the sixth string, and C on the third fret of the fifth string) with my middle finger. I do play the F# in bar four with my thumb so I can keep my index finger on the third string. Doing this, you’ll want to play the cut (the B on the fourth fret of the third string) with your pinky. You could also use your middle finger, but that will require a little more finger movement.

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I hope to cover Irish ornamentation for guitar in much more depth in a future lesson. However, you should be able to get a lot of mileage from the cut and strike, as these ornaments are quite useful and commonly used in traditional music.

Once again, I hope you’ve enjoyed learning this lovely tune as much as I have.

Slán go fóill.

The Eagle’s Whistle was written by Doug Sparling for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Before we venture off to the world of jigs, reels, and hornpipes, we’ll start with some simple tunes based on traditional songs and airs. One of my favorite Irish songs, Buachaill On Eirne (Boy From Ireland), is often played on Irish uilleann pipes and I first learnt it from a book titled Learn to Play Uilleann Pipes with the Armagh Pipers Club by Eithne and H.B. Vallely. While this is a common tune that most Irish musicians will know, it is perhaps better known in it’s song form, sung in the Irish language. This beautiful song has been recorded many times, perhaps the most well known version is from Clanadd’s LP Macalla in 1985. Another popular recording is by The Corrs, who recorded Buachaill on Eirne on their CD Home, which was released in 2005.

This tune is typically played in the key of G, and though my arrangement is in the key of G, I’ve used a capo on the third fret, so it will sound in Bb. The entire arrangement stays in first position and should present little difficulty. While no ornaments have been notated, I normally use a few simple ornaments when I play it. I quickly arrpegiate some of the chords on the downbeats, usually the G chords. Another ornament I use is a hammer-on . One spot is in bar four, where I hammer on from the open D to the second fret E on the fifth string. Don’t fret (pun intended), I’ll be covering ornaments in detail in upcoming lessons.

I hope you enjoy learning this great Irish tune as much as I have…

Slán go fóill (goodbye for now).

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Buachaill On Eirne was written by Doug Sparling for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

One that really struck me was The Huron Carol, a Christmas hymn written by Jean de Brebeuf (1593-1649) in Quebec in 1643. This carol is based on a 16th century traditional French melody Une Jeune Pucelle (A Young Maid). Brebeuf, a Jesuit missionary at Sainte-Marie, wrote the lyrics in the Huron language so he could tell the story of the birth of Jesus to the Huron people. Originally titled Jesous Ahatonhia, the carol was later translated to French (Jesus est ne) by another Jesuit priest. In 1926 the lyrics were translated to English by poet Jesse Edgar Middleton (1872-1960), where it became known as ‘Twas in the Moon of Wintertime.

The Huron Carol was recorded by Bruce Cockburn on his 1993 Christmas CD, and is still commonly sung in churches across Canada. ‘Twas in the Moon of Wintertime is included in many hymnals, including the Methodist hymnal, which is where I first remember seeing it.

The hymn is in the key of G minor, and I immediately tuned my guitar to open G minor to see how well the tune would fit in that tuning. I was quite pleased to find that the melody fit perfectly, and my arrangement fell into place quickly. Though I had never used open G minor before, I knew that English guitarist John Renbourn had used it, and might be a good tuning for a 16th century melody.

Open G minor (DGDGBbD) is similar to the open G tuning you may already be familiar with (DGDGBD), except that the B is lowered a half step to Bb. To get into open G minor, lower your first and sixth strings down a full step from E to D, lower your fifth string down a step from A to G, and lower your second string down a half step from B to Bb.

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Like playing in DADGAD, this piece is best played by letting notes ring together when possible. The arrangement is pretty straight forward, but there are a few spots they might trip you up. In bars five and six, the melody is repeated but the bass notes have changed, and so has the fingering for the melody. On beat two of bar five, play the Bb on the open second string and play the C on the third string. This may feel a little awkward at first, as typically you play lower pitches when moving to a lower string. In this case the melody note is a step higher. However, this makes it easier to play the new bass notes. I finger bar five using the index finger on the Eb in the bass, the third finger on the A, second finger for the C on the fifth fret of the fifth string, and the third finger for the C on the fifth fret of the third string. If you like, you can play bars five and six using the same bass notes from bars one and two. The new bass provides a nice variation, though.

In bar 13, slide up to C and G with your second and third fingers. You can leave the open third string (G) ringing instead of picking it again. Slide from F to Eb with your first finger in bar 14. I move my right hand index finger back to the third fret for the F note in bar 15. In bar 16, play the C on the fifth fret of the fifth string so you can play the G on the fourth string with your little finger.

I hope you’ve enjoyed learning this new tuning as much as I have.

The Huron Carol was written by Doug Sparling for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

I’ve used the DADGAD tuning for this arrangement, and as it’s not too technically demanding, you can focus most of your energy on the feel of the piece. Play the tune at a nice moderate tempo and try not to rush. Allow the melody notes to sustain and ring together where ever possible, which will give the piece a harp-like sound. For example, in bar 2 I play the last two eighth notes of the measure using the open G and A strings, letting them ring together briefly. Hold each bass note for its full value, which will give the bass line a nice stately feel. I also let the bass notes ring together for the most part, but I do dampen the fourth string open D with my left hand ring finger when moving down to the C# in bars 2 and 6.

Feel free to contact me with any questions, comments, or suggestions. Just send me an e-mail via the contact form on my web site or directly at dougsparling@yahoo.com.

The King of Love My Shepherd Is was written by Doug Sparling for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

My favorite hymns have always been those that use traditional Celtic melodies for the hymn tune. In some cases, the melody may be an original composition, but based on a traditional tune or folk song. That’s the case with In The Bleak Mid-Winter, a well-known hymn from the British Christmas tradition.

Perhaps best known for his orchestral masterpiece The Planets, Gustav Holst (1874-1934) also left his mark on hymnody by composing the melody to the hymn In The Bleak Mid-Winter. Holst’s melody, Cranham (named after the town in which it was written), was set to a poem written by English poet Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), which had been previously published in her posthumous collection Poetic Works. In The Bleak Mid-Winter was first published in The English Hymnal in 1906, and has always been one of Holst’s most popular compositions.

The melody Cranham was based on a folk tune, which is not surprising as Holst’s music was influenced by English folk song (to which he was introduced by lifelong friend Ralph Vaughan Williams). The beauty and simplicity of folk song struck a chord with Holst, inspiring him greatly.

This simple arrangement uses DADGAD tuning and should be played in a harp-like manner, that is, allowing notes to ring together where possible. This ringing of notes and open strings is a common technique used with DADGAD and is part of the tuning’s great appeal. The four-bar introduction, which is a simple repeated arpeggiated chord, and the ascending lines in measure eight and sixteen should be played in a harp-like fashion, allowing the notes to sustain and ring together. Another spot where the notes should ring freely is in measure five, where I’ve placed the first three notes of the melody on three adjacent strings. The first note of measure five (B) could have easily been played on the second string, but playing it on the third string allows you to sustain that note as you play the C on the second string and D on the open first string.

This is a simple, beautiful melody, so I’ve left the arrangement quite sparse. Allowing the melody notes to ring together is what brings this arrangement to life.

In The Bleak Midwinter was written by Doug Sparling for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

And we’ll start off with Amazing Grace, a simple three-chord spiritual that I’m sure pretty much everyone knows. The song’s history is incredibly interesting enough to be a book of its own, which it is! John Turner has written a wonderful and insightful book called, appropriately enough, Amazing Grace, which traces the song from its African and Scottish roots all the way to modern recordings of it by artists such as Judy Collins, Elvis Presley, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Al, Green, Rod Stewart, Chet Baker, Tiny Tim, Destiny’s Child and Johnny Cash. By the way, if you want to hear what I think is the definitive arrangement of this song, get a copy of Jubilation by the Holmes Brothers and have a listen. Even better, see them live whenever you get the chance!

Our version, while much, much simpler, will have some charms all its own. We’ll first explore how to go about picking a key and then use the song as an exercise in developing the “voice” of your guitar. And, of course, we’ll also throw in a bit of theory, not to mention a look at chord voicing and a slightly altered tuning. After all, this is one of my lessons, right? Intrigued? Then, by all means, let us proceed…

Since Amazing Grace is a relatively short song, I think that the best approach will be to take it line by line. But before we even get to that, let’s decide upon a key in which to play. I’ve seen (and heard) this piece played in almost every possible key. Opening a nearby book (and woe to the guitarist who doesn’t own any books!), I see it done in the key of G. Let’s look at the melody in that key, broken down line by line:

This certainly seems simple enough. But if you’ve read my other pieces on arranging, you already know I’m going to have a problem with it. Namely, there’s too much of the melody going on below the G string. This will mean a bass-y arrangement, which, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing, but I’d like to get more of the higher strings of the guitar involved. Using this version, we won’t even touch the high E (first) string! And where’s the fun in that?

I’ve also got another bee in my bonnet. Somewhere, in a corner of the incredibly vast, invariably cluttered warehouse I call my mind, I’ve got a thing about bagpipes. Usually I can ignore it, but something about Amazing Grace triggers this reaction. It may simply be that I was exposed to way too many repeated listenings of that pipe band version of this song, which was a big hit when I was (somewhat) younger. I’m sure that I’ll get a lot of emails telling me the name of the band, so I’ll try to remember to pass the word along to those of you who might be interested in this sort of thing.

Be that as it may, I know that I have stumbled upon an idea that I’m not going to let go until I work it out of my system. I guess that means you’re stuck with it, too! Maybe it wasn’t the bagpipes at all as much as it was a rereading of an old article of mine, A Celtic Air, which gave me this craving. I don’t know.

But I do know, after spending the better part of the day trying out various permutations of this song, that there are a lot of fun things we can do with Amazing Grace. And the very first thing we’re going to do, as I mentioned before this digression, is to choose a key in which to play it.

And I’m opting for D major for three reasons. First, you might have noted that the melody line of Amazing Grace spans the range of one octave. In the example we just saw, it goes from D (open D string) to D (third fret on the B string). Since D is the fifth in the key of G and since I’d like to keep things fairly simple, using the key of D will mean our melody will range from A on the second fret of the G string to the A note on the fifth fret of the first (high E) string. We (hopefully) won’t be fumbling around looking for our melody notes! Here they are:

The second reason concerns my Celtic preoccupations. Being in the key of D, there’s no reason I can’t use Drop D tuning to create a cool drone on my lower strings. For those of you who may not be familiar with Drop D tuning, you can take a moment and go read another of my old articles, and one, I might add, with a terrific pun for a title, On The Tuning Awry. There you’ll find that changing from standard tuning to Drop D simply requires you to lower the tone of the low E (sixth) string down one step to D. You can do this with a tuner or even by ear.

Being in Drop D, your three lowest strings will now be tuned (low to high) D, A and D, which some of you might recognize as a D power chord. Power chords, as we’ve noted in many articles here at Guitar Noise, are chords containing two notes, the root and the fifth. This interval of a fifth is the basis of many an instrument throughout history, bagpipes being one of the many that’s been around a bit longer than the electric guitar. It creates a drone over which you can play a melody line. And having those resonating open strings as our bass notes will, no pun intended, give our guitar much more body than if we were in standard tuning.

But it’s the third reason for choosing this key that I’d like to dwell on for our lesson today. Playing in the key of D allows us to use a lot of flourishes, that is, hammer-ons and pull-offs, that will give our arrangement style and character.

And you can hear that right from the very first notes:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Quite a difference between those two styles, no? The first one is very much in the style of playing we’ve worked on in pieces like Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and it certainly will service this song well. But there’s a lot more movement, more drama, more panache if you will, in the playing of the second example here. We’re allowing our guitar to have a voice. We’re letting it sing ! We’re giving it some soul !

And it’s not all that hard to do! You can start out by fingering your typical standard open position D chord, with your middle finger on the second fret of the first (high E) string, your ring finger on the third fret of the B string and your index finger on the second fret of the G. Once you’re set, slightly raise your index and middle fingers off their respective strings, leaving the ring finger in place. Now, with your picking hand, simultaneously pluck the open A string with your thumb and the open G string with your index finger. As soon as you do so, hammer the index finger of your fretting hand back onto the second fret of the G string. You should hear the A and G notes start out together, with the G becoming an A (albeit an octave higher) almost immediately after.

This style of playing evokes many emotions, mostly because you’re giving your guitar an almost human-like quality by letting it have a “voice.” The notes aren’t spot on. They can seem either hesitant or confident, depending on how you strike the strings. So take the time to experiment with just this one set of notes. You’ll find that you can get a fairly wide range of expressions depending upon many factors such as how hard (or how softly) you strike the string or how “immediate” your hammer-on follows your initial striking of the two open strings. Chances are likely that you may not always be able to duplicate what you did the moment before and that is precisely the point! You and your guitar are becoming unique.

Let’s now add the next note. As soon as you hammer-on the A note with your index finger, slightly raise your ring finger from its place on the B string. We’re going to repeat what we just did, only this time the picking hand thumb will pluck the sixth string (and you do remember that we’ve tuned that down to D, right?) and your middle finger will pluck the open B string at the same time. And again, as soon as you’ve done that, bring down your ring finger of the fretting hand to its original position at the third fret of the B string.

I should note that you can do both of these hammer-ons while keeping your middle finger in place on the second fret of the first (high E) string, but I find my striking smoother and that I have more control over the tone by not planting it in place. You should try out both ways before making a decision about that yourself. And you should always feel that you are able to change your decision later!

Once I get that ring finger back down on the third fret of the B string, I raise my index finger again. This is like cocking my arm before throwing a ball. My next hammer-on will involve using both my index and middle fingers and I want to be ready! Fortunately, the second beat of the measure is merely a playing of the open D string with my thumb. We’ll discuss that more in just a moment. For right now, though, let’s concentrate on the task at hand, namely simultaneously picking the open A string (again with the thumb), the open G string (with the middle finger of the picking hand) and the open high E string. I recommend using the ring finger of your picking hand for this. Once you’ve plucked these three strings, you’re going to hammer-on to the second fret of both the G and high E string with their respective fingers. And then you’ve going to pull those fingers back off! This will sound the G and E notes of those open strings. And then you’re going to simply pluck the B string (where your ring finger is still sitting on the third fret) with your middle finger of the fretting hand. And if that wasn’t enough, you’re going to finish it off by repeating the G and E string hammer-on, only this time you’ll be striking the sixth (low D) string with your thumb.

I’m sure that this explanation wasn’t as clear as I’d like it to be, so let’s examine it in minute detail, just to be on the safe side:

Again, I truly can’t stress enough the importance of being patient with yourself in learning a technique like this. Even though this last example, with the two-finger hammer-ons and pull-offs only lasts for two beats, there’s still a lot going on as far as your fingers are concerned. But taking the time to work through it now will allow you to use this technique on command in the future. And, once you’ve gotten the hang of it, you’ll not only be amazed at how you can do it without thinking, but also at how many opportunities you’ll get to use it in countless songs.

So, just to get it into thoroughly into our systems, we’re going to play it to death during our arrangement of Amazing Grace. But before we get back to the rest of the first line, let’s first take a look at our bass notes. In this transcription, like most of our other lessons, I’ve indicated which notes are to be played by the thumb by giving them downturned stems. Whenever possible, I’m going to try to keep this little arpeggio going on in the bass:

With Drop D tuning, this should be a cinch. The first beat is the open low D (sixth) string. On the second beat, and this occurs in almost every measure, I’ll pluck the regular open D (fourth) string. Finally, on the third beat, I’ll hit the open A string. When we get to our final MP3, you’ll hear me do a few measures of this as an introduction. It helps me to get the beat set in my head as well as to establish the D tonality of the entire song.

And while I do try to do this throughout the whole song, at least the measure where the D chord is the accompaniment, sometimes I can and sometimes I miss. That’s life (at least that’s what the people say…)! As we work our way through the rest of Amazing Grace we’ll find times when it might become necessary to miss a note here and there in order to concentrate on what’s going on in the higher strings. In the measure where I think you might have a bit of trouble, I’ve made the second beat a half note (duration of two beats), usually on the open D (fourth) string.

So now that we’ve gone over the use of hammer-ons and pull-offs, as well as the use of our bass strings, what do you say about finishing off that first line?

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

After all that practicing, you should have the first part of this down cold. There are only a few small things to add in order to complete this line. Notice that on the third beat of the third measure, the melody note is the open high E (first) string. Instead of maintaining the D chord, as I have from the start of the song, I place my index finger on the first fret of the B string. This would allow me to make a D7, if I had the rest of my D chord in place. With the open first string, though, I now have a D9 chord, which creates a very pleasant transition from the original D to the G chord that marks the first beat of measure four.

When I place my index finger on the second fret of the B string to make the D9, I also place my middle finger on the second fret of the G string. This is just my being sneaky. Should I, by accident, strike the G string, there won’t be any “clunker” note. And more importantly, all I have to do now to get my G chord in place is to slide both fingers two frets farther up the neck (my index finger is now on the third fret of the B string and my middle finger is on the fourth fret of the G) and add the bass note. It never hurts to think ahead!

And now’s the time to remember that, being in Drop D tuning, our G note is going to be on the fifth fret of the sixth string, not the third fret as it is in standard tuning. Fortunately, because I took care to have my fingers set on the G and B strings, all I have to do is place my ring finger on the fifth fret of the low D (sixth) string and I’m set.

Since we’ve changed chords, I’m also going to change the bass notes as well:

But as I’ve noted here (and truly no pun intended there!), you can also maintain the D in the bass or even switch between the G note on the fifth fret and the open low D (sixth) string. Just don’t hit the A string! Please notice that I still use the regular open D (fourth) string as the bass note of the second beat. I like to do this because, in my ears, it creates a sort of continuity with the rest of the song. In fact, until the two times when we will later switch to an A chord, I always have the open fourth (regular D) string as the second bass note of each measure.

The last measure of this line is simply playing the A note on the second fret of the G string along with the bass. That puts us right back where we started. And now we can move along to the second line:

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This second line of Amazing Grace begins almost exactly the same way as the first line. The only difference is that we’re adding an adorned B note at the start of the melody. The next measure is identical to measure two of the first line. And at the end of measure three, in place of the D9 chord of the first line, we’re sticking in yet another hammer-on of the G and high E (first) strings. In this notation, I’ve omitted the bass note on the third beat, but with some practice, it’s easy enough to add. In fact, in the final MP3 of our lesson, you’ll hear me play it like this:

Please take the time to see and hear that this hammer-on in not a grace note, as all of the previous ones have been. We want to draw this out so that both the open strings and then the notes of the hammer-on are of the same duration, namely a half-beat each.

The last measure of this involves changing from the D chord we’ve been using pretty much throughout the song to A, with the A note at the fifth fret of the high E (first) string serving as our melody note. There are a couple of ways to do this. Let’s look at them both:

In the MP3 examples, I use the first version of this (the “either” as opposed to the “or”). We’ve discussed this particular voicing of A, which is used a lot by classical guitarists (and, for some reason, Pete Townsend), in some of our past lessons. While it may seem a bit of a stretch, it’s actually pretty easy to get used to with a little practice. I also like to use this voicing because it gives me something different to play in the bass, alternating between the open A string and the E note at the second fret of the D (fourth) string.

The second voicing (the “or”) is essentially your standard F chord moved up to the fifth fret. I don’t use a full barre across the fifth fret for two reasons: first, the open A string is going to be our bass note anyway and second, in Drop D tuning, barring the fifth fret will give us a G note on the low D (sixth) string, as we saw at the end of the first line. While this forces you to use octaves of A (the open A string and the seventh fret of the D (fourth) string) as your bass, that’s a perfectly acceptable thing to do.

With either or these methods, it is easy to change the C# of the A chord to D, creating Asus4 on the third beat, and then back again. I use this slight change of the A chord to bring a little variety to these two measures. Since the melody line is hanging on to that A note for a full five beats, it’s nice to have some movement in our accompaniment. If you opt for using the “F” style A, then you could do this instead:

In this example, we’re using the F# and G notes (located on the seventh and eighth frets, respectively, of B string) to create an ascending harmony line. The addition of the F# changes the A to A6, while the G creates an A7 chord.

The very start of the third line of Amazing Grace perhaps poses our biggest challenge. While keeping the high A (fifth fret of the high E (first) string) as our melody, we need to change from our A chord back to D. This is what I’ve come up with:

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Since the A note of the melody actually shoots off the F#, I’m using a voicing of A6 which is just a Dm chord positioned at the fifth fret. My index finger in on the fifth fret of the first (high E) string, my pinky (can’t forget to include the pinky!) plays the seventh fret of the B string and my middle finger gets the C# note at the sixth fret of the G string. Add the open A string in the bass and I’m all set. This voicing allows me to switch to my D chord by changing only one thing, placing my ring finger on the seventh fret of the G string. This is the same voicing of D we’ve used in songs like Silent Night.

Now, of course, there are other ways of doing this. If I’m using the “classical” version of the A chord from our last example, then I might consider doing this

And while this is perfectly fine to do, I think that some of you may find it a bit of a stretch (pun intended this time!) to make this chord. And, my ears prefer to hear that F# note as part of the D chord. So this is why I chose to change from an open position chord to one at the fifth fret. While it is a little harder, it comes at a point in the song where you can use the open strings in the bass to cover up your move up the neck. If you listen very closely to the final MP3, you’ll even hear the squeak of my strings as I do so.

The rest of the third line is a mirror image of the end of the first line. That certainly won’t do for us, will it? So when we get to the G chord, let’s try a new hammer-on and pull-off combination, this time alternating between the open G and B strings and the notes of the G chord that kicks off that measure. With all the hammering-on and pulling-off you’ve done up to this point, this should be a piece of cake!

Which brings us to the fourth and final line of Amazing Grace :

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And this is all stuff that we’ve covered up to this point. Except, and there’s always an exception, right, for the third measure where we’re throwing in an A6 chord. If you want to get technical, the F# in the melody line, when played over A, is what creates the A6. Be that as it may, this simply involves us coming up with still another hammer-on. What I’ve notated here is perhaps the easiest thing to do. On the first beat, strike the open high E (first) and B strings with your picking fingers while striking the open A string at the same time. Then hammer your ring and middle fingers on the first two strings. I wait until I have done that before adding my index finger to the mix, but you can certainly do it at the same time if you so desire. Then simply remove your ring finger from the high E (first) string to get the E note in the melody for that last beat in this measure.

If you want to get truly fancy, you can do this final bit as pull-off as well. And, what the heck, since we’re throwing in everything but the kitchen sink, why not add that G to D combo from the end of the third line? Something like this:

The possibilities, as the cliché goes, are endless. But seriously, by playing around with the technique of hammer-ons and pull-offs, you can come up with some very interesting effects. Not only in terms of your melodies, but in terms of dynamics and tone as well. Our final MP3 is of me playing through Amazing Grace twice. While this is chalk full of little mistakes, you can hear how smoothly and naturally the song flows from one line to the next:

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I hope you had fun with this lesson and that you enjoy playing, and playing around with, Amazing Grace. Getting comfortable with doing hammer-ons and pull-offs is essential for any guitarist and I hope that this particular arrangement will give you the confidence to use these techniques without fear. They can add a lot to the individual voice of your guitar, allowing you to give your playing a broad range of tonal qualities. You should find that it is possible for even a “strictly rhythm” guitar to “cry and sing.”

And, as always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or songs (and/or riffs and solos) you’d like to see discussed in future pieces. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forum page or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Amazing Grace was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

“Hi. This is my normal voice.”

“Hi. This is my sarcastic voice.”

Pretty wild, huh? I bring this up, as I said, because I do have this literal side to me. When someone writes to me asking how to achieve a “authentic” blues sound, for example, I am very likely to say get the cheapest beat up acoustic you can get your hands on and forget about any kind of amplification or effects, unless you happen to have a glass slide. This is simply because, to me, “authentic” blues is the sound you hear when you listen to Robert Johnson, not Robert Cray. Now don’t get me wrong, I love what we’ll call, for lack of a better term, “electric blues.” It’s just that I have a hard time willfully ignoring history.

And I bring all this up because today we’re going to discuss Celtic music. You see, if you think about it, traditional Celtic music is way older than the guitar. Really really, way, way older. So when someone is talking about playing Celtic style on the guitar, what exactly is that person talking about? Simply put, one is actually talking about playing the guitar in a way which makes your mind think of things Celtic. The guitar playing reminds you of other instruments that you would associate with Celtic tunes.

Before we get too much further, let’s take the time to dispel a few myths. Misconceptions more than myths, really. Contrary to what you might think, there is no such thing as a “Celtic scale” or “Celtic notes,” any more than there are scales or notes used exclusively by any genre. Think about this. There are only so many notes and so many ways in which they can be played. Nowadays, we pretentiously toss around terms like “blues scales” and the like without realizing that they’ve been around for a long, long time.

Certain scales and modes do, however, evoke various styles of music. A harmonic minor scale sounds Arabic to Western ears, mainly because of the use of the step-and-a-half interval between the sixth and seventh. We associate this with exotic near-eastern sounds. Likewise, a diminished scale sounds jazzy, if for no other reason than the only time we’ve probably heard it in our lives was while listening to jazz.

It’s how notes are played that is important. When we think of Celtic music, we tend to think of pipes (bagpipes or Irish fifes), harps, fiddles and voices. We also think a lot of drones. Drones, as we’ve discussed in past columns (On The Tuning Awry, But Then Again… and Sustained Tones), are a note or notes that are continually played and/or sustained while the rest of the song does what it does.

Think about the instruments we’ve mentioned. Fifes and pipes tend to be played with a lot of trills. Fiddles, having no frets, don’t always sound spot-on as far as tonality. Harps sound very resonant, which makes sense since one is essentially playing what we would call “open strings” on the guitar. And voices cover all this territory and more.

Putting On Your Disguise

Whether we realize it or not, the guitar has a distinct and identifiable sound to us simply because our expectations of its sound are based upon or past dealings with it. But we are suseptable to having those expectations challenged. Think about this. The classical guitar sounds strange to people who have only heard steel string guitars all their lives. Yet because it is tuned the same, it also sounds familiar. Something seemingly small, like playing the guitar with a slide or even using a coin as a pick, can create sounds that we do not normally associate with our instrument.

So you see, it is possible to change your guitar’s “appearance,” if you will. Or to do what Richard Thompson calls “disguising your guitar.” We want the people hearing us play to have Celtic thoughts, to be magically transported to far off Celtic lands. Our music should evoke thoughts and feelings that trigger this in our audience.

The easiest thing that we can do is to provide the droning sounds of the pipes. In Celtic music, drones tend to be in intervals of fifths. So you could play a lot of power chords, which are nothing but fifths, but that, at least to me. still sounds distinctly like a guitar.

If you tune your low E (or sixth) string down one whole step to D (and yes, you should be able to do this simply using your tuner – just set it for “D” when you tune that string as well as your normal D (fourth) string), you have now created the interval of a fifth between your fifth and sixth strings. Drop D tuning is great for creating an instant droning effect. Play your lowest three strings and listen to how they ring out. Now play a full D chord (remembering that you can now play that sixth string!) and hear how much bottom you’ve given your guitar. Very cool, huh?

Now, if I know how to play different forms of the D chord on first three strings, I can come up with all sorts of things. Here’s the first part of the melody from a traditional Scottish tune, “The Campbells Are Coming,” done with a minimum of finger movement:

Further tinkering with your guitar’s tuning can lead to other interesting effects. Since we’re already in drop D, I’m going to also lower the first and second strings down one whole step and get what we call DADGAD, or D modal tuning. Again, you should be able to do this using a conventional tuner. You see, a tuner doesn’t differentiate between octaves (which, when you think about it , is why you can use a guitar tuner on a bass guitar), so as long as you are tuning to notes that are used in standard tuning (E, A, D, G, B, E) you will be okay.

DADGAD tuning provides you with a lot of ringing notes from the open strings (the harp effect) and also the potential for lots of droning notes. Another added bonus you might discover is that it’s easier to bend strings since there isn’t as much tension on them. This provides you with nice vibrato, which helps the guitar to mimic fiddles and voices.

The use of flourishes, such as vibrato (and hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides and bends (which you can all read about in Tricks of the Trade) as well), also aids in disguising your guitar and creating an air of Celtic song. These flourishes show up in often show up in musical notation as grace notes:

Simply speaking, a grace note is like an accident. It doesn’t really have a “timing” to it, like other notes do, because you have to get from that note to your “real” note is quickly as humanly possible. We’ll discuss this in more detail in a little bit.

First, though, I’ve taken the liberty of “creating” a Celtic piece for you as an exercise. Yes, I made this up, but please don’t be too impressed. People, especially those who write those guitar books with the CDs in them, do this all the time. One comes up with an “original” song in order to get around copyrights but the “song” (technically speaking, it’s an exercise) always sounds suspiciously like something else. But, like it as not, this is how you learn styles. And this is actually what you do when you play with your friends. Someone knows a song and teaches it to you, but it may not be exactly the way it is on th recording. You pick it up and when you pass it along, the same thing happens.

Anyway, here it is. Give it a try:

Like anything we’ve done, take it slowly. Take it piece by piece, measure by measure if you have to. It starts out with two measures of the drone in order to give you a feel for it and then adds the melody on the first three strings. In measure three, where the melody starts, you see that I begin with a hammer-on the D note on the second string, followed by the D note of the open first string:

This gives the illusion of a “breathing” instrument, like a fife or a voice, which doesn’t always hit the same note accurately. This is a great technique to use in Celtic style playing. Likewise the various slides make you feel that you have to “find” the note instead of it simply being there.

And speaking of slides, let’s get back to that grace note business. We encounter the first of many of them here in measure four:

The way you play this, timing-wise, is to strike the string (finger on the fith fret) and slide up to the seventh fret at the same time. You want the first beat to fall (in this case) on the A note, but the reality is that the G is going to take up the fraction of a breath before you hit the A. This can take some practice but it is well worth it to have yet another wonderful skill to have at your beck and call.

Measure five, the first measure of the second line, contains another interesting effect:

In some Celtic music, it is hard to tell whether an instrument is playing the natural seventh of a scale or a flatted seventh. Often, especially again with a fife or a fiddle, it sounds kind of halfway between. A quick quarter-tone bend on the C note (which is the flatted seventh in a D major scale) provides us with the same tone. Quarter-tone bends are tricky, because you want to bend the string enough so that it is no longer, in this case, a C note but not so much that you end up with a C# (the same note as the fourth fret of this string). This trick is used a lot in lead playing of all genres, but is especially well suited to Celtic style.

The last measure combines both of these techniques:

Can you hear how you hit the D note three consecutive times, yet each time in a different way which provides a singular sound? It’s these types of subtleties that often differentiate one genre from another.

If you’re really interested in this style of playing, I would suggest two things: one, listen to a lot of Celtic music. And I mean old traditional stuff that doesn’t have any guitars as well as the “new” music that does. Hear the sounds, feel the music you are trying to evoke. Two, read all you can. Again, don’t limit your sources strictly to guitar-oriented material. And again, having said that, I would like to strongly recommend something extremely guitar oriented. It’s a “Guitar Listen & Learn” books with CD that is put out by Homespun Tapes (distributed by Hal Leonard) called “Richard Thompson Teaches Traditional Guitar Instrumentals.” There are pieces in there for guitarists of all ranges and you will find Richard Thompson covers a great many of the topics that we have in today’s column. One of the things he says on the CD about the style and the feel with which music is played is what often determines the “kind” of music you get (“…the feel is the music…”), pretty much sums up my feelings on the subject. And, oh yes, you also get to listen to him play which is always a delight.

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or songs (and/or riffs and solos) you’d like to see discussed in future pieces. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next lesson…

Peace

A Celtic Air was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise