Play Acoustic Guitar 9: Advanced Style Diversity

I wrote this song in 1977 with Ireland in my heart, as I was on a ferry boat traveling from the harbor of Le Havre in Normandy (France) to Roeselare in the south of Ireland to do my first Irish tour. I've been performing there (south and north) every other year ever since.

"Le Voyage pour l'Irlande," from concept to structure, is a good starting point as it offers the opportunity for the player to see the basic structure and look at the development of the piece (i.e., Segment 7: "Concepts and Approaches: 5").

Melody is very important in the music that I play. Many guitar players focus on harmony first, often at the expense of melody. I always try to make the guitar sing, perhaps this is because singing has also been an important part of my musical experience. I often use the voice as a vehicle for the melody or a different harmony, improvising the vocal "colors." Sometimes the humming will be replaced by real lyrics later on, even though many of the tunes I write are songs without words or voice parts.

In this segment, we'll be working on developing a hierarchy of resonances. Here I'll show you that the fingers of our right hand (when the player is right handed) can be used to create sound but also to mute. In other words, the same finger can be used to pick a string and then to stop the resonance of that same string, letting the next string—plucked by another finger—ring by itself. Practicing this will help you discern what the essential notes are in your playing, better organize both their mixing and length of their resonance, and stop the overlap of undesired tones.

There are several different ways to control the notes' sustain. Here, each finger has a dual function: pick and stop or pluck and rest. Have your left hand mute all six strings at the seventh fret while your right hand plucks each string, creating a more rhythmic and drier sound that helps articulate what you're doing. For the next hand movement, you'll stop muting the strings with your left hand, having each of them resonate openly until you apply the resting/stopping technique I described.

The little triangle in the tab, next to a letter and arrow, indicates that the referenced finger comes down in rest stroke position on the string (with the triangle) at the same time as the other bass is being played. This way, it stops the resonance of the bass note on which that finger rests. This results in hearing only one bass at a time—no overlap, no undesired interval, more precision, clarity, more music, and less confusion. This technique, relevant no matter the tuning, will make your right hand much more capable and in control. It's even more crucial in DADGAD, where the tuning has a tendency to regularly drown everything out.

Here we'll be looking at the chords behind the melody of "Le Voyage Pour l'Irlande."

Now let's look at placing the bass line. The location of the bass often gives a clear indication of the tempo. Once you've established a tempo, we can change the placement of the bass notes to make it unpredictable, more exciting, and more musical.