wheresrhys

One of the perks of working from home is that if for whatever reason (and, let’s face it, if you’re in a procrastinative mood, any reason is good enough) you feel like a break you can take one. I don’t mean playing facebook scrabble, or checking the definition of a drupe on wikipedia, all the while trying to look busy and keeping a watchful eye out for your manager; I mean a proper break, maybe away from your desk or doing something not usually allowed in an office.

I’ve recently turned to the latter. Long-term readers (all 8 of you) will know that I have been accompanying an Irish fiddler on the guitar for about a year. Just before Christmas I got the urge to have a go at an instrument more traditionally associated with carrying the melody, so I got a tin whistle.

I can’t stress enough how important it is for every parent to campaign for their schools to teach the tin whistle instead of the recorder.

1. It has a much nicer sound, particularly when placed in unskilled sounds
2. It’s got a much more fun, unstuffy repertoire
3. Last, but definitely not least, a tin whistle has no wrong notes on it! It has all the notes of the D or C scale on it (typically) and though you still have to hit the right ones to play a tune it’s much harder to sound as disastrously wrong as you can on a chromatic instrument.

But back to the point. My current preferred displacement activity from work is playing the tin whistle, and I reccommend any home-workers who read this to try it out. Just get yourself a whistle for a tenner or so, read brother steve’s website to understand tin whistle technique, listen to some tunes on youtube (Planxty are a good place to start as a lot of the pipe songs are in the same key as a standard whistle and not too fast to hear the notes), and try and copy them (or if you read music find the score on the session).

As a warning though, it does become addictive. For instance, during the writing of this post I’ve played two reels and a hornpipe.

And I’m about to have a crack at a jig.

For the last 6 months or so I’ve been one half (rhythm guitar) of an Irish acoustic duo, now proud to go by the moniker The Hacketts (named after the malevolent Father Ted character, Father Jack Hackett. In fact, we could try and play Tedfest this year). 6 months ago I had barely listened to any Irish music, and that which I had heard I hadn’t listened to critically in order to understand what makes the music tick. My impression of Irish music was that it was a load of twiddle-de-dee tweeness.

How wrong I was.

It has a great range of moods and styles, from sombre reflective refrains to fired-up dances. When I first started playing the music I think my guitar playing was somewhat inadequate to the task; I mostly played ordinary open chords in standard tuning, and have since found out that open D tuning and Irish tuning (DADEAE) are far more common.

I’ve not yet made the jump to new tunings, but have discovered (for want of a better word) new chords which add a new dimension to playing irish rhythm guitar in standard tuning. Every time I discover a new chord I go to town on it, using it wherever I can, but after a while it calms down, and only remains seated in the places where it really works well.

For the benefit of others, here are those chords:

• Very open D : 5-0-0-7-7-x (sometimes with open top e, or fretted on the 5th)
  Great for really opening up the sound when playing a rousing dance (can also be adapted for Dm)
• High open A: 0-0-11-9-10-9
  Works really well with the chord above
• Em/G: 3-x-5-4-5-3
  Mostly I use it to have a more interesting bass line running through when moving through a  chord progression
• Open 3 string E5: 0-7-9-9-0-0
  Moodiest chord in the west
• Various open G’s: 3-5-0-0-0-x, 3-2-0-0-0-0, 7-5-0-0-0-x, 3-5-5-4-0-x
  So many Irish songs are in G or D that it pays to have a bit of variety to throw in
• Open bass A : 5-0-7-6-5-x
  Again, a great chord to go with the Very open D
• Open bass Am: 5-0-7-5-5-x
  Again, a very moody sounding chord
• Sus2 bar chords: eg 5-5-7-7-5-5
  I hate playing A -shape major bar chords, so this helps me avoid them, as well as adding a nice jangly sound which almost always sounds good
• C9: x-3-2-0-3-0
  I can’t claim credit for this one as Mike uses it all the time, but once you start using it a normal open C chord (unless playing in the key of C) will sound flat and uninteresting in comparison