John Doyle – Irish Rhythm Guitar: Accompanying Celtic Tunes
Jul 22 2023

John Doyle Irish Rhythm Guitar Accompanying Celtic Tunes DVD. Videolessons of ex-guitarist celtic band “Solas”, he shares some secrets accompany Irish tunes on an acoustic guitar in drop-d (6-string I – 0.72 mm). The lessons describe a number of melodies and explains how to be different to play them. John Doyle’s style includes strumming patterns, moving bass lines, palm damping, backbeats, accents and syncopations that drive a tune forward.
This exciting lesson shows both simple arrangements and complex rhythms, chord shapes and progressions to enable you to get a traditional band to really rock! Using dropped-D tuning, John teaches rhythmic accompaniments to reels, jigs, slip jigs and hornpipes. With John Williams playing the melodies on button accordion, he goes over each tune both slowly and up-to-speed, developing dynamic chord progressions and rhythmic flourishes as he goes. You’ll learn the accompaniments to more than a dozen great tunes:
- Crowley’s
- The Mountain Road
- Graig’s Pipes
- The Gooseberry Bush
- Gallagher’s Frolics & The Mist Covered Mountain
- Langstrom’s Pony
- Humours of Whiskey
- Banks of Loch Gamhna
- Return to Camden Town
- The Fermoy Lasses
- The Girl That Broke My Heart
- Chief O’Neill’s Hornpipe
First off, John Doyle is an amazing guitarist. His signature style of backing traditionals is fantastic and he has a lot of tricks up his sleeve, which he manages to weave in throughout this DVD – think chord substitutions, added/substracted notes, multiple ways of playing the same chord, etc.
This DVD is great if you have even a rudimentary ability to play guitar. You’ll learn the D tuning that all the Irish guitarists (and lots of American rock n’ rollers) use, and a ton of ways to make your chords sound fuller and more interesting if you’re into rhythm guitar.
John Doyle have produced a very helpful guide to Irish rythm guitar. Doyle works in Drop D tuning DADGBE, a good tuning with the advantage of a drone, but with only minor alteration of fingering from standard tuning. Some of the chord shapes are difficult for guitarists with shorter fingers. John Williams plays the melodies very ably on concertina and button accordion at reasonable tempos.
John covers all the types of Celtic songs and gives you a real feel for them. Each lesson is geared toward bringing you forward in the learning process. However there are a few points that buyers should be aware of.
First, John is a lefty so when you look at his display of how to play the chords you are going to have to translate that into right hand play. Secondly, the chords, are difficult for those who don’t have a large hand span.
Doyle covers reels, jigs one slipjig and a hornpipe. Two great aspects: He talks about 4/4 and 6/8 and then he starts with the strum based on that- no chord, just percussion. Very beneficial. The second is the chord substitution approach, which in principle is simple (like relative minors) but he applies it so effortlessly.
There are a lot of tunes, here.
His buddy with the accordian is great and you can just listen to them play. Once you learn the tunes, it’s easier to back it up. He talks about partial chords and some voicings but overall he discusses the feel of the tunes, where chords fit in and change the mood.
Language: English
Year: 2004
Country: USA
Running time: 85 mins
Quality: DVD5
Video: MPEG2 NTSC 4:3 (720×480) VBR
Audio: Dolby AC3, 2 ch
Booklet: No
Size: 4.1 Gb
I too would love to see the booklet
Many thanks for a great blog
Thanks a lot! Been looking for it since long.
It’s a wonderful tutorial
is not easy to follow without the chords, if someone finds the booklet, please leave a notice
Cheers,
Rod
booklet is absent
is there a booklet with this?