Although Irish music, traditional and otherwise, was obviously something that had been around me from childhood, I, like many a young guitar student, was more interested in rocking out like my heroes: Jimmy Page, Rory Gallagher, Jimi Hendrix et al.
It was in some of these aforementioned Dublin bars that I was offered the opportunity to sit in with a guitar, and I quickly learned two things:
- Traditional Irish music deserved more than a passing glance, being endlessly fascinating and incredibly beautiful, revealing more and more layers the deeper I explored.
- I had no clue what I was doing.
Since then, though, and with the guidance of some very fine (and very patient) Dublin musicians, I developed an approach to Irish guitar playing (or Celtic guitar, as some like to call it) within the music that (I hope )serves the music well and has definitely served me well, affording me the opportunity to tour world wide and record in the guitar seat with some of the giants of the genre like Paddy Keenan,Tommy Peoples, Eileen Ivers, Cathie Ryan, Teada, to name a few. Yup, I’m a lucky guy.
I love to introduce these approaches to the music to other guitarists and beginners alike, because they invariably find out that the style offers a lot of creative freedom even in their role as accompanist, with endless opportunities for subtle improvisation.
I boiled down the initial steps into 3 fundamental points that, once internalized, open whole new vistas to explore. For handy tips delivered to your inbox, and to download those 3 tips FREE (plus a bonus), start the journey…….
I do get asked about which guitar is best for Irish music. All I can do is tell you about the ones I use. And so you know, the links below are affiliate links. You can rest assured I only endorse guitars I can get behind and vouch for. Anything else would just be bad karma.
Incidentally the guitar in the picture above is a mahogany-topped Taylor which, when I first saw it, I was totally intrigued by- really curious about how the tone would season over time. While I was shopping around I played a LOT of guitars at either side of the price point, and settled on this one. I’m glad I did.
My main road guitar for many years was a Larrivee which I love. These days I like to keep that at home just to divide the stresses of touring evenly, but man, it’s always a hard decision.