I've played rock guitar (standard and drop d tuning) for years but am listening now to mostly Irish/Scottish trad. There is a session in the city where I live and I went along recently.
I'd really like to learn to play guitar so that I can join in also but I'm unsure where to start. I've always learned to play from tab so I'm not good at figuring out keys by ear.
I'm thinking about looking for a teacher but was wondering what tips you can give me so that I can begin teaching myself. Are thre standard keys, sets, and tunes which I should begin with? What albums should I try to play along with?
Well, if you’ve been playing rock, you probably won’t have any trouble catching on to the traditional use of the fuzz tone and wah-wah pedal in diddley music.
Another member AlBrown - http://www.thesession.org/members/display/7960 has some very handy and relevant information on his profile page - A Beginner’s Guide to Accompanying a Session, have a read through it.....
The usual advice - get a whistle, learn the tunes. Avoid the sheet music - if you're going to play at sessions, you'll have to be able to get them by ear, and fast. Learn to sing them. Learn the guitar - that is, be able to think a sound and grab it anywhere on the neck. Never play all six strings at once.
That sort of thing.
Sorry, Jon, I'm sure that approach works for you but it wouldn't do for everyone!
You don't need a whistle, you can just as well learn the tunes on guitar, especially if you already play it. Lots of people find sheet music helps as a shortcut to learning tunes you've heard. 'Be able to think a sound and grab it anywhere on the neck' is okay for a magician but not easy advice for most.
'Never play all six strings at once.' Tell that to Arty McGlynn or John Doyle who play tunes or chords with equal facility.
I'm sure your point is to start off simple, perhaps, and that's good advice.
Take 2; the computer ate my first words of wisdom.
Be aware that there are certain members of this forum who have a reputation as wind-up merchants; sometimes people accuse me of being one.
1) It's time to forget about the tab, if you have set your heart on this endeavour, and learn to use your ears.
2) Almost all of this music is played in only the three keys of D, G, and A, and their related minors, PLUS these tunes may be in modes; Aeolian and Dorian are essential just minors, Myxolydian may confuse as it has a strong flattened 7th chord to the key chord, ie C to a key of D.
3) Virtually no tunes have similar chord progressions to each other, you simply have to learn to pick them up and recognize them on the fly, or, alternatively, ask your local session for permission to record them, take it home, and try to work out accompaniment for the tunes they played THAT WEEK. Next week they may play a completely different set. Also go down the road to the next session and they may have a completely different repertoire again.
4), Remember, as a guitarist, unless you are going to learn to pick the tunes, that you are a part of the rhythm section in a tradition of melody-led music; your job is to maintain and support the rhythm, along with the bodrhan, bones, spoons, washboards, and shaky eggs, and other instruments of the devil; you are not there to lead or set the rhythm.
Good luck.
You should do a lot of listening before you go to the session and try to play.
Learning to play the tunes on the guitar will help you not only in this music but in everything else you play by getting outside of guitaristic shapes and developing a deeper sense of meldoic structure vs riffs.
Go to the session without your instrument, get to know the players (buy them beer) and tell them what you're trying to do and ask their advice.
This might seem like the long way around, but if you go in before you're ready you'll develop a poor reputation, have to go the long way around anyway and also work to disperse the stink you have put upon yourself. If there's only one session in town, you'll want to get off on the right foot.
There are some youtube videos of basic approaches to backing tunes and Kilkelly's book is a good one. I would listen to some good duo or trio recordings with guitar or bouzouki backing to get a sense of the style. If you've come up playing rock and pop music, it's a completely different sensibility
Listen, listen, listen, and then listen some more!
You can get chords on the internet or from books, but often the chords are not correct. Once you have developed your ear, you'll be able to figure out most tunes. That's the left hand.
The real artistry is developing you right hand and strumming patterns. I play both melody and rhythm, the strumming patterns are very important, and can add a great deal to the music being played or can totally destroy it.
Listen to as much Irish music as you can, that will show you how the strumming fits into the music.
Good Luck. Did I say listen? I can't emphasize that enough!
Jock, If you are going to discuss accompaniment on this site, start by developing a thick skin, or the 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' will get to you! The most important advice is to get to know folks, and hang around listening to local sessions before you jump in and try to play. And the other most important advice is to find a good teacher, they are worth their weight in gold.
You have lots of fun ahead, enjoy!
Rob - the advice I gave is the advice I meant. Five years ago, I would have agreed with you that sheet music is a useful shortcut. Today, I'm finally starting to get around the crippling effect that had on my ear. I don't recommend sitting down in the wheelchair if you have two good legs. I think Jock's testimony will confirm that this is not a bad analogy at all.
Being able to hear sounds in your head and find them on the neck is hardly magic, it's a perfectly ordinary piece of musicianship, expected of any serious musician in any genre. If your ear does not communicate with your instrument, you need to spend some time developing that facility, not finding ways around it.
As for playing all six strings at once, I'm not at all talking about picking the tune. I'm talking about playing partial chords, suggesting the harmony, or rather the various possible harmonies, leaving room for the other players, that sort of thing. Stuff that Arty McGlynn is very good at. John Doyle, I can live without. See Pete's Postscript if you haven't figured out why I say that...
Now, Jock might find that some of this seems reasonable, or not, but if he's asking for advice, this is the advice I'll give.
The best advice would be to learn the fretboard and practice picking out the keys the tunes are being played in. It will probably take years of practice to get really good at it but you can start working out keys by finding the root note on the bass string.
If you learn your fretboard and the different chords that are in each key then how to use the capo should become more obvious. If you are describing a tune or song as being in G3 then you have some way to go. If you know that is Bb then you are getting there.
Get a little digital recorder like the Olympus WS series, and record a local session, tune by tune, separate tracks.
This gizmo will slow the tunes down to half speed playback. Not very loud, but maybe it will accept speakers?
If not, still record the sessions, burn a CD, play back on something that can slow it down, or slow it down in Audacity or similar program. Play to it.
You really have to learn to hear the keys. You cannot rely on a melody player to tell you. They often get them wrong. Not because they are being mean, but they think in tunes, not keys. You too need to think like a melody player. Knowing the right key is good, but it's not going to tell you more than half the information you need to back any particular tune.
Do this a lot, You will learn the local session repertoire.
Be subtle. It's not rock music. Don't fill the spaces between phrases, it's not bluegrass where you stress the off beat. Don't try to do a strum for every melody note, give it breathing space.
Where are you located? If near NJ I will likely do a guitar intensive class in Spring. It will be suited to Dropped D, DADGAD, Strummed or fingerpicked. It will hopefully be a long day of it. Send an email if you can make it....ha ha...my class handout is now up to about 27 pages. A lot of ground to cover.
I started as a melody player, self taught as a kid by ear. I hadn't a clue there were such things as chords. Or that it was a backing instrument. It gets belittled but it is an extremely complex melody instrument that you can also accompany on.
Accompaniment is hard, and in some ways harder than playing melody. Get ready for a sometimes bumpy ride, they main thing, before you go out and play, be ready. Don't play on what you don't know. The irish don't hold back...they will let you know if you are messing up the music, and they may or may not be nice about it. I love the raw honesty of it all though! Most will give you good advice, some of the best advice comes from the melody players, not the other guitar players necessarily. Listen to them, what they like etc.
If you love the music, go for it! It takes a lot of work, even if coming from a different genre.
Just stay off your bass strings. I don't care how you do it. What makes Arty McGlynn nice is he doesn't kick the tune down with a beating bass line... if he does use those strings he does so art-fully and I don't notice. Even a good guitarist who pushes the tune from down low is irritating. Seconding Jon K, I think that is why I only sometimes like John Doyle.
Hi, Jon, not criticising your advice - it's yours to give - just quibbling a little. (Smiley face there if I knew how to put it!) Somebody new to the genre won't get tunes on the fly at a session easily and, of course you need to learn by listening but dots can help you along, as can slowing down a recording you have made.
Totally agree with 'Being able to hear sounds in your head and find them on the neck is hardly magic' but you originally said 'anywhere on the neck' and that is quite different, a tall order when playing an unfamiliar tune by ear.
Quite appreciate why you can live without JD's approach (from Pete's postcript) and I too like space in the music. Nice approach to harmony with variations he has and an excellent tune picker though!
How about this approach?
(pardon the redundancies)
Learn first a melodic instrument (whistle IS nice, and cheap).
Learn about playing in some of the various styles and rhythms and the swing of the stuff on it.
Learn, really learn, a bunch of tunes on it.
By ear.
Attend sessions.
Then, if you still have not learned your lesson, pick up the guitar and start applying what you have learned.
Remember, along the way with learning your chosen melodic instrument you will possibly be hearing a lot of backers at sessions who did not do this first, some good, some less so. You should have a good idea of what you want to do with your guitar long before you try it yourself.
Rook - I agree 100%. I think it's reasonable to start thinking about accompaniment while you're learning the tunes on a proper melody instrument, but probably better to have them down first and then move on to the guitar.
One advantage of your method is that at least some of the potential guitar players will realize that playing the tunes is more fun than playing accompaniment, and stop there.
The disadvantage is that this is Peter's Principle in action - those ones that stop there are probably the ones that would make good guitar players.
Well, you can't win, can you?
Gee Jon... I think accompaniment is more fun than playing tunes a lot of the time.... it has it's own pleasures. I do both though. I am not a strummer, but back using fingerstyle, and not at all wimpy fingerstyle, and work in lots of melody and counter melody bits. I use chords only where the melody player plays a stress note pretty much. There's a lot of room to improvise in accompaniment and you get to make it up as you go along. That is the fun of it. Just make sure it stays with, but under the melody player. They dictate where you go, but you have to sense it too. It is a lot easier if you know the person and play with them a lot.
One of the really challenging things about backing is learning to key into the phrasing of each new melody player you are with. You have to be the chameleon in effect, blend into them. That is very tricky and a rarely mentioned thing in these guitar or backing threads. It's an absolutely critical element of good backing. You wouldn't back Tommy Peoples the same way you'd back Kevin Burke for example.
It's just not all about "what key is it" or what chord should you play. You have to constantly reinvent it as you go and with each new melody player it changes. That's really the part that is difficult to learn, and it is extremely difficult to teach and convey. it's an instinct, and some have it and you can teach it to them, but even so with great difficulty at first, it's something they have to feel maybe a few times and then remember how they got there. It's when the connection between the backer and melody player gets so in sync that it's almost telepathic. It's an amazing thing when it clicks this way and the music comes so very much together. It's something way beyond chord charts and music theory. You can't put it on paper or read how to do it. Phrasing... listening for it, knowing the tunes you back... this is what makes a bunch of notes or a bunch of chords into real music.
All that is not meant to complicate and confuse you. You DO need to start with the charts and the keys. And learn every note on that neck as well as you can. More by ear than by this is an A, B or C. Good to know both though. You can do OK in a session playing three chords if they are right, they key is right and your timing is right. There is a whole lot more to discover though about it all. That's when the real fun of accompaniment begins. It's exhilerating.
Jon Kiparsky:
Sure you can win, just perhaps not ALL the time.
And BTW, I really do enjoy playing with a good (that is to say, agreeable) backer.
I love listening to Martin Hayes playing with Dennis Cahill, or Mr. Gavin Himself with Alex Finn - neither my style, I admit - for example, because their playing is agreeable and mutually supportive and complimentary. (I also love backers who can, at need, be a bit minimalist with the backing.)Two musicians CAN create music far greater than the mere sum of their combined skills .
As regards interpreting a tune well or in style, a backer either combines or clashes with a tune. I recall a backer at a session some years ago jumping in with myself and a another player, and trying to turn a march into a polka. Deaf or egocentric, I do not know, but it was outright murder.
One of the few times I have actually asked another musician at a session to please shut up.
Not proud of that, I admit.
I am far from perfect, I know.
Jon...I knew what you meant though. Many accompanists, even good ones, who do a few chords in each key.... and I by no means am knocking that, in fact some people think my playing is too complicated and prefer that, it's a taste thing.... what I guess I was trying to say is that there can be simple basic backing that works, but there are also some pretty intense depths in the art of backing (though few would call it ART! here LOL!).
For myself... starting as a melody player, then backtracking, pardon pun, when first asked to back the tunes in the mid 70s, the accompaniment style I sort of just made up as I went along, had a lot of melody elements. I actually find accompaniment more exciting that melody playing for that reason. I can really play around the melody, though always subtly, never taking over. It's like an undercurrent really.
If I were confined to strumming a few basic chords in each key, again, not knocking it, it works brilliantly if done well, but personally I would get bored... and I think that's what you were getting at about people maybe preferring to play melody if they tried. I like to go many places on that fingerboard, and the challenge is weaving in and out of the melody and getting that 100% link to the other player. You can also do a different thing each time through also. It's endlessly amusing.
Guitar can be a rhythm instrument, but due to the folk movement is thought mainly as one, but it really is a very intensive melody instrument. It's also one of the hardest instruments I believe to play well. If I hadn't started as a flexible and open little kid, I doubt I would have the patience to learn fignerstyle tunes now, nor have the time to get half decent at them. Though harp ( I am two years at it), for example, has many challenges I struggle with, mainly technique and making things sound like music... it is a very logical instrument, like the white keys on a piano. It's light years easier to find tunes on it than on guitar. I get frustrated at times with harp, though because I don't (yet, I hope, not never!) have the ease of playing as on guitar. Hopefully it will come. I still have to think while playing harp, which can get in the way.
As a backing instrument, I get insane pleasure with the harp as well. If going to a session, I often leave the guitar home...you can always borrow one for a few sets, but generally you can't borrow a harp. I get to missing the guitar though, because backing on it is infinitely more interesting to me...though the harp sound impresses people a lot more. With harp, you flip levers for different keys, but you do the same thing, just higher or lower. I love the variety of things in Dropped D backing and find it more challenging. I was advised by a great harper, to perhaps just do what I do on guitar, apply it to harp. So my backing on harp also is becoming more melodic based than chord based as well. Not sure if all like it... but it's a harp and no complaints thus far. They always seem to sound nice. Reconciling guitar technique and harp technique is at times rough though, it's getting easier to switch back and forth on instruments though. Sometimes I treat the harp as a large almost open tuned guitar in octaves. When I thought of it that way, backing became much less intimidating on it.
I am not in any way an accomplished trad guitarist. However my summary is
1. its all music
2. listen to music (recorded and live)
3. watch others playing music
4. try to play what you've seen and heard
5. repeat step 5 in public when (and only when) you are ready
Iris is full of good advice, some of which you will need to go back and read again when you have been doing this for a while, so that you have a background to help you understand what she has said in depth.
Unlike Iris, I suspect, I prefer to play the tunes if I can, and tend to drop back to accompaniment if I don't know them. This is, after all, a melody-line tradition of music, us accompanists are mere blow-bys.
If you could find a multi-instrumentalist, who is a melody-line musician as well as a guitarist, that would be the person who has the most to offer you, as they can see it from both sides.
Hi Pete....I like the backing better because of they way I do it. Backing/accompaniment is different from person to person, vastly more different than melody players are to each other.
I add melody lines a whole lot. Or counter melody where it doesn't interfere. I enjoy it more perhaps because you are free to improvise more. Also because of the adrenalin rush from having to 100% listen and constantly adapt to what the melody player is doing and how they may be improvising from moment to moment. It's just more interesting and more of a challenge this way somehow. it's surely to many an odd way of thinking about it, but it is lots of fun.
Sometimes the lines between melody and backing get blurred and people ask if I had been playing melody or backing. So I say both....it's a hybrid way of playing, maybe not exactly proper backing. Wonder if there is a category for that... or accompaniment of a kind rather than "backing". In ways, it seems more like "Undering", I like to be just beneath the melody player. No need to "drive the music" at all. It's a way of playing that some really good piano backers do, they don't rest on chords much, they keep it moving, with walking in and out of chords, adding melody bits and counter melody bits. Drifting in and out of the tune, and around it. I got intrigued by piano backers in the mid 70s, and soaked it in, finding it infintely more interesting than what most guitar players were doing. These player truly understood that you have to know the tunes to back them well, and were excellent musicians themselves, though only considered the "backer".
Getting started on Guitar
Getting started on Guitar
Hi there,
I've played rock guitar (standard and drop d tuning) for years but am listening now to mostly Irish/Scottish trad. There is a session in the city where I live and I went along recently.
I'd really like to learn to play guitar so that I can join in also but I'm unsure where to start. I've always learned to play from tab so I'm not good at figuring out keys by ear.
I'm thinking about looking for a teacher but was wondering what tips you can give me so that I can begin teaching myself. Are thre standard keys, sets, and tunes which I should begin with? What albums should I try to play along with?
I have a capo. How can I learn where to place it?
Thanks very much,
Big Jock.
# Posted on March 1st 2010 by JockMacCain
Re: Getting started on Guitar
Well, if you’ve been playing rock, you probably won’t have any trouble catching on to the traditional use of the fuzz tone and wah-wah pedal in diddley music.
# Posted on March 1st 2010 by Bob himself
Re: Getting started on Guitar
Also, you need at least three pedals. The Deluxe Moon Phaser, the Fuzz God II and the PT-9 phase shifter should be adequate.
On the other hand, you could try winding yourself down, as opposed to ...
# Posted on March 1st 2010 by MacCruiskeen
Re: Getting started on Guitar
check this out, it's pretty good.....
http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Rhythm-Guitar-Accompanying-Celtic/dp/B0002Y4TSS
# Posted on March 1st 2010 by shaneog
Re: Getting started on Guitar
Another member AlBrown - http://www.thesession.org/members/display/7960 has some very handy and relevant information on his profile page - A Beginner’s Guide to Accompanying a Session, have a read through it.....
# Posted on March 1st 2010 by markt123
Re: Getting started on Guitar
The usual advice - get a whistle, learn the tunes. Avoid the sheet music - if you're going to play at sessions, you'll have to be able to get them by ear, and fast. Learn to sing them. Learn the guitar - that is, be able to think a sound and grab it anywhere on the neck. Never play all six strings at once.
That sort of thing.
# Posted on March 1st 2010 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Getting started on Guitar
Sorry, Jon, I'm sure that approach works for you but it wouldn't do for everyone!
You don't need a whistle, you can just as well learn the tunes on guitar, especially if you already play it. Lots of people find sheet music helps as a shortcut to learning tunes you've heard. 'Be able to think a sound and grab it anywhere on the neck' is okay for a magician but not easy advice for most.
'Never play all six strings at once.' Tell that to Arty McGlynn or John Doyle who play tunes or chords with equal facility.
I'm sure your point is to start off simple, perhaps, and that's good advice.
# Posted on March 2nd 2010 by Rob
Re: Getting started on Guitar
Take 2; the computer ate my first words of wisdom.
Be aware that there are certain members of this forum who have a reputation as wind-up merchants; sometimes people accuse me of being one.
1) It's time to forget about the tab, if you have set your heart on this endeavour, and learn to use your ears.
2) Almost all of this music is played in only the three keys of D, G, and A, and their related minors, PLUS these tunes may be in modes; Aeolian and Dorian are essential just minors, Myxolydian may confuse as it has a strong flattened 7th chord to the key chord, ie C to a key of D.
3) Virtually no tunes have similar chord progressions to each other, you simply have to learn to pick them up and recognize them on the fly, or, alternatively, ask your local session for permission to record them, take it home, and try to work out accompaniment for the tunes they played THAT WEEK. Next week they may play a completely different set. Also go down the road to the next session and they may have a completely different repertoire again.
4), Remember, as a guitarist, unless you are going to learn to pick the tunes, that you are a part of the rhythm section in a tradition of melody-led music; your job is to maintain and support the rhythm, along with the bodrhan, bones, spoons, washboards, and shaky eggs, and other instruments of the devil; you are not there to lead or set the rhythm.
Good luck.
# Posted on March 2nd 2010 by Guernsey Pete
Re: Getting started on Guitar
PS. You are under absolutely no obligation to play on every beat of every bar. In fact, personally, I'd rather you didn't.
# Posted on March 2nd 2010 by Guernsey Pete
Re: Getting started on Guitar
You should do a lot of listening before you go to the session and try to play.
Learning to play the tunes on the guitar will help you not only in this music but in everything else you play by getting outside of guitaristic shapes and developing a deeper sense of meldoic structure vs riffs.
Go to the session without your instrument, get to know the players (buy them beer) and tell them what you're trying to do and ask their advice.
This might seem like the long way around, but if you go in before you're ready you'll develop a poor reputation, have to go the long way around anyway and also work to disperse the stink you have put upon yourself. If there's only one session in town, you'll want to get off on the right foot.
There are some youtube videos of basic approaches to backing tunes and Kilkelly's book is a good one. I would listen to some good duo or trio recordings with guitar or bouzouki backing to get a sense of the style. If you've come up playing rock and pop music, it's a completely different sensibility
Good luck.
# Posted on March 2nd 2010 by Steve L
Re: Getting started on Guitar
Listen, listen, listen, and then listen some more!
You can get chords on the internet or from books, but often the chords are not correct. Once you have developed your ear, you'll be able to figure out most tunes. That's the left hand.
The real artistry is developing you right hand and strumming patterns. I play both melody and rhythm, the strumming patterns are very important, and can add a great deal to the music being played or can totally destroy it.
Listen to as much Irish music as you can, that will show you how the strumming fits into the music.
Good Luck. Did I say listen? I can't emphasize that enough!
# Posted on March 2nd 2010 by Celtic Guitar
Re: Getting started on Guitar
Jock, If you are going to discuss accompaniment on this site, start by developing a thick skin, or the 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' will get to you! The most important advice is to get to know folks, and hang around listening to local sessions before you jump in and try to play. And the other most important advice is to find a good teacher, they are worth their weight in gold.
You have lots of fun ahead, enjoy!
# Posted on March 2nd 2010 by AlBrown
Re: Getting started on Guitar
Rob - the advice I gave is the advice I meant. Five years ago, I would have agreed with you that sheet music is a useful shortcut. Today, I'm finally starting to get around the crippling effect that had on my ear. I don't recommend sitting down in the wheelchair if you have two good legs. I think Jock's testimony will confirm that this is not a bad analogy at all.
Being able to hear sounds in your head and find them on the neck is hardly magic, it's a perfectly ordinary piece of musicianship, expected of any serious musician in any genre. If your ear does not communicate with your instrument, you need to spend some time developing that facility, not finding ways around it.
As for playing all six strings at once, I'm not at all talking about picking the tune. I'm talking about playing partial chords, suggesting the harmony, or rather the various possible harmonies, leaving room for the other players, that sort of thing. Stuff that Arty McGlynn is very good at. John Doyle, I can live without. See Pete's Postscript if you haven't figured out why I say that...
Now, Jock might find that some of this seems reasonable, or not, but if he's asking for advice, this is the advice I'll give.
# Posted on March 2nd 2010 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Getting started on Guitar
"I have a capo. How can I learn where to place it?"
If you don't know what it's for, you don't need it.
# Posted on March 2nd 2010 by gam
Re: Getting started on Guitar
The best advice would be to learn the fretboard and practice picking out the keys the tunes are being played in. It will probably take years of practice to get really good at it but you can start working out keys by finding the root note on the bass string.
If you learn your fretboard and the different chords that are in each key then how to use the capo should become more obvious. If you are describing a tune or song as being in G3 then you have some way to go. If you know that is Bb then you are getting there.
# Posted on March 2nd 2010 by No Cause For Alarm
Re: Getting started on Guitar
As far as the capo goes, put it on the dashboard and you can park your car in the handicap zone.
# Posted on March 2nd 2010 by old and in the way
Re: Getting started on Guitar
Get a little digital recorder like the Olympus WS series, and record a local session, tune by tune, separate tracks.
This gizmo will slow the tunes down to half speed playback. Not very loud, but maybe it will accept speakers?
If not, still record the sessions, burn a CD, play back on something that can slow it down, or slow it down in Audacity or similar program. Play to it.
You really have to learn to hear the keys. You cannot rely on a melody player to tell you. They often get them wrong. Not because they are being mean, but they think in tunes, not keys. You too need to think like a melody player. Knowing the right key is good, but it's not going to tell you more than half the information you need to back any particular tune.
Do this a lot, You will learn the local session repertoire.
Be subtle. It's not rock music. Don't fill the spaces between phrases, it's not bluegrass where you stress the off beat. Don't try to do a strum for every melody note, give it breathing space.
Where are you located? If near NJ I will likely do a guitar intensive class in Spring. It will be suited to Dropped D, DADGAD, Strummed or fingerpicked. It will hopefully be a long day of it. Send an email if you can make it....ha ha...my class handout is now up to about 27 pages. A lot of ground to cover.
I started as a melody player, self taught as a kid by ear. I hadn't a clue there were such things as chords. Or that it was a backing instrument. It gets belittled but it is an extremely complex melody instrument that you can also accompany on.
Accompaniment is hard, and in some ways harder than playing melody. Get ready for a sometimes bumpy ride, they main thing, before you go out and play, be ready. Don't play on what you don't know. The irish don't hold back...they will let you know if you are messing up the music, and they may or may not be nice about it. I love the raw honesty of it all though! Most will give you good advice, some of the best advice comes from the melody players, not the other guitar players necessarily. Listen to them, what they like etc.
If you love the music, go for it! It takes a lot of work, even if coming from a different genre.
# Posted on March 2nd 2010 by irisnevins
Re: Getting started on Guitar
Just stay off your bass strings. I don't care how you do it. What makes Arty McGlynn nice is he doesn't kick the tune down with a beating bass line... if he does use those strings he does so art-fully and I don't notice. Even a good guitarist who pushes the tune from down low is irritating. Seconding Jon K, I think that is why I only sometimes like John Doyle.
# Posted on March 2nd 2010 by SandyBottoms
Re: Getting started on Guitar
Hi, Jon, not criticising your advice - it's yours to give - just quibbling a little. (Smiley face there if I knew how to put it!) Somebody new to the genre won't get tunes on the fly at a session easily and, of course you need to learn by listening but dots can help you along, as can slowing down a recording you have made.
Totally agree with 'Being able to hear sounds in your head and find them on the neck is hardly magic' but you originally said 'anywhere on the neck' and that is quite different, a tall order when playing an unfamiliar tune by ear.
Quite appreciate why you can live without JD's approach (from Pete's postcript) and I too like space in the music. Nice approach to harmony with variations he has and an excellent tune picker though!
# Posted on March 2nd 2010 by Rob
Re: Getting started on Guitar
How about this approach?
(pardon the redundancies)
Learn first a melodic instrument (whistle IS nice, and cheap).
Learn about playing in some of the various styles and rhythms and the swing of the stuff on it.
Learn, really learn, a bunch of tunes on it.
By ear.
Attend sessions.
Then, if you still have not learned your lesson, pick up the guitar and start applying what you have learned.
Remember, along the way with learning your chosen melodic instrument you will possibly be hearing a lot of backers at sessions who did not do this first, some good, some less so. You should have a good idea of what you want to do with your guitar long before you try it yourself.
Good Luck.
# Posted on March 3rd 2010 by Piece
Re: Getting started on Guitar
Rook - I agree 100%. I think it's reasonable to start thinking about accompaniment while you're learning the tunes on a proper melody instrument, but probably better to have them down first and then move on to the guitar.
One advantage of your method is that at least some of the potential guitar players will realize that playing the tunes is more fun than playing accompaniment, and stop there.
The disadvantage is that this is Peter's Principle in action - those ones that stop there are probably the ones that would make good guitar players.
Well, you can't win, can you?
# Posted on March 3rd 2010 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Getting started on Guitar
Gee Jon... I think accompaniment is more fun than playing tunes a lot of the time.... it has it's own pleasures. I do both though. I am not a strummer, but back using fingerstyle, and not at all wimpy fingerstyle, and work in lots of melody and counter melody bits. I use chords only where the melody player plays a stress note pretty much. There's a lot of room to improvise in accompaniment and you get to make it up as you go along. That is the fun of it. Just make sure it stays with, but under the melody player. They dictate where you go, but you have to sense it too. It is a lot easier if you know the person and play with them a lot.
One of the really challenging things about backing is learning to key into the phrasing of each new melody player you are with. You have to be the chameleon in effect, blend into them. That is very tricky and a rarely mentioned thing in these guitar or backing threads. It's an absolutely critical element of good backing. You wouldn't back Tommy Peoples the same way you'd back Kevin Burke for example.
It's just not all about "what key is it" or what chord should you play. You have to constantly reinvent it as you go and with each new melody player it changes. That's really the part that is difficult to learn, and it is extremely difficult to teach and convey. it's an instinct, and some have it and you can teach it to them, but even so with great difficulty at first, it's something they have to feel maybe a few times and then remember how they got there. It's when the connection between the backer and melody player gets so in sync that it's almost telepathic. It's an amazing thing when it clicks this way and the music comes so very much together. It's something way beyond chord charts and music theory. You can't put it on paper or read how to do it. Phrasing... listening for it, knowing the tunes you back... this is what makes a bunch of notes or a bunch of chords into real music.
All that is not meant to complicate and confuse you. You DO need to start with the charts and the keys. And learn every note on that neck as well as you can. More by ear than by this is an A, B or C. Good to know both though. You can do OK in a session playing three chords if they are right, they key is right and your timing is right. There is a whole lot more to discover though about it all. That's when the real fun of accompaniment begins. It's exhilerating.
# Posted on March 3rd 2010 by irisnevins
Re: Getting started on Guitar
I can't see anything I disagree with in that, Iris. Good points all around, especially about the "chameleon effect" - well put.
# Posted on March 3rd 2010 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: Getting started on Guitar
Jon Kiparsky:
Sure you can win, just perhaps not ALL the time.
And BTW, I really do enjoy playing with a good (that is to say, agreeable) backer.
I love listening to Martin Hayes playing with Dennis Cahill, or Mr. Gavin Himself with Alex Finn - neither my style, I admit - for example, because their playing is agreeable and mutually supportive and complimentary. (I also love backers who can, at need, be a bit minimalist with the backing.)Two musicians CAN create music far greater than the mere sum of their combined skills .
As regards interpreting a tune well or in style, a backer either combines or clashes with a tune. I recall a backer at a session some years ago jumping in with myself and a another player, and trying to turn a march into a polka. Deaf or egocentric, I do not know, but it was outright murder.
One of the few times I have actually asked another musician at a session to please shut up.
Not proud of that, I admit.
I am far from perfect, I know.
# Posted on March 3rd 2010 by Piece
Re: Getting started on Guitar
Jon...I knew what you meant though. Many accompanists, even good ones, who do a few chords in each key.... and I by no means am knocking that, in fact some people think my playing is too complicated and prefer that, it's a taste thing.... what I guess I was trying to say is that there can be simple basic backing that works, but there are also some pretty intense depths in the art of backing (though few would call it ART! here LOL!).
For myself... starting as a melody player, then backtracking, pardon pun, when first asked to back the tunes in the mid 70s, the accompaniment style I sort of just made up as I went along, had a lot of melody elements. I actually find accompaniment more exciting that melody playing for that reason. I can really play around the melody, though always subtly, never taking over. It's like an undercurrent really.
If I were confined to strumming a few basic chords in each key, again, not knocking it, it works brilliantly if done well, but personally I would get bored... and I think that's what you were getting at about people maybe preferring to play melody if they tried. I like to go many places on that fingerboard, and the challenge is weaving in and out of the melody and getting that 100% link to the other player. You can also do a different thing each time through also. It's endlessly amusing.
Guitar can be a rhythm instrument, but due to the folk movement is thought mainly as one, but it really is a very intensive melody instrument. It's also one of the hardest instruments I believe to play well. If I hadn't started as a flexible and open little kid, I doubt I would have the patience to learn fignerstyle tunes now, nor have the time to get half decent at them. Though harp ( I am two years at it), for example, has many challenges I struggle with, mainly technique and making things sound like music... it is a very logical instrument, like the white keys on a piano. It's light years easier to find tunes on it than on guitar. I get frustrated at times with harp, though because I don't (yet, I hope, not never!) have the ease of playing as on guitar. Hopefully it will come. I still have to think while playing harp, which can get in the way.
As a backing instrument, I get insane pleasure with the harp as well. If going to a session, I often leave the guitar home...you can always borrow one for a few sets, but generally you can't borrow a harp. I get to missing the guitar though, because backing on it is infinitely more interesting to me...though the harp sound impresses people a lot more. With harp, you flip levers for different keys, but you do the same thing, just higher or lower. I love the variety of things in Dropped D backing and find it more challenging. I was advised by a great harper, to perhaps just do what I do on guitar, apply it to harp. So my backing on harp also is becoming more melodic based than chord based as well. Not sure if all like it... but it's a harp and no complaints thus far. They always seem to sound nice. Reconciling guitar technique and harp technique is at times rough though, it's getting easier to switch back and forth on instruments though. Sometimes I treat the harp as a large almost open tuned guitar in octaves. When I thought of it that way, backing became much less intimidating on it.
# Posted on March 3rd 2010 by irisnevins
Re: Getting started on Guitar
I am not in any way an accomplished trad guitarist. However my summary is
1. its all music
2. listen to music (recorded and live)
3. watch others playing music
4. try to play what you've seen and heard
5. repeat step 5 in public when (and only when) you are ready
# Posted on March 5th 2010 by harmonic miner
Re: Getting started on Guitar
Iris is full of good advice, some of which you will need to go back and read again when you have been doing this for a while, so that you have a background to help you understand what she has said in depth.
Unlike Iris, I suspect, I prefer to play the tunes if I can, and tend to drop back to accompaniment if I don't know them. This is, after all, a melody-line tradition of music, us accompanists are mere blow-bys.
If you could find a multi-instrumentalist, who is a melody-line musician as well as a guitarist, that would be the person who has the most to offer you, as they can see it from both sides.
# Posted on March 6th 2010 by Guernsey Pete
Re: Getting started on Guitar
Hi Pete....I like the backing better because of they way I do it. Backing/accompaniment is different from person to person, vastly more different than melody players are to each other.
I add melody lines a whole lot. Or counter melody where it doesn't interfere. I enjoy it more perhaps because you are free to improvise more. Also because of the adrenalin rush from having to 100% listen and constantly adapt to what the melody player is doing and how they may be improvising from moment to moment. It's just more interesting and more of a challenge this way somehow. it's surely to many an odd way of thinking about it, but it is lots of fun.
Sometimes the lines between melody and backing get blurred and people ask if I had been playing melody or backing. So I say both....it's a hybrid way of playing, maybe not exactly proper backing. Wonder if there is a category for that... or accompaniment of a kind rather than "backing". In ways, it seems more like "Undering", I like to be just beneath the melody player. No need to "drive the music" at all. It's a way of playing that some really good piano backers do, they don't rest on chords much, they keep it moving, with walking in and out of chords, adding melody bits and counter melody bits. Drifting in and out of the tune, and around it. I got intrigued by piano backers in the mid 70s, and soaked it in, finding it infintely more interesting than what most guitar players were doing. These player truly understood that you have to know the tunes to back them well, and were excellent musicians themselves, though only considered the "backer".
# Posted on March 8th 2010 by irisnevins