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Part 1 of the Sweet and Lockdown series of videos. This is a lovely, and short, instrumental version of I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles. As with all the performances in this series, there are some slight differences between the transcription – either for aesthetic or practical reasons. (Some phrases were too fast for me to play…
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(This is another one of the singalong videos I’ve been making for the Ballagh Choir of Ages, which features a short guitar lesson at the end of the song.) I’ve featured a Gilbert O’Sullivan song previously on the blog, in an in-depth look at We Will. This video, however, is probably much better-known (and certainly…
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I wrote earlier about the singalong videos I’ve been making for the Ballagh Choir of Ages throughout the lockdown period of 2020/2021. Some of these have included short guitar tutorials at the end of the video, because a couple of the choir members are guitarists, and I tend to lose the run of myself a…
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I mentioned in a recent blog post that I had been taking part in a 100 Day Practice Challenge, in which you commit to practicing a new skill, or developing an existing one, for 100 consecutive days. I was working on pieces from the Woody Allen movie ‘Sweet and Lowdown’, which tells the story of…
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I wrote about this song and my journey towards learning to play it in this blog post. Here’s a video featuring just the guitar part, for anyone who’d like to have a go at it. Transcription available here. This isn’t a note-for-note playthrough. I’ve altered some of the lines, and some of the transcribed positions…
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Rory Gallagher was a beast. Probably best known as an electric blues guitarist and singer, but he could also turn his hand to acoustic guitar, harmonica, mandolin and a host of other instruments. (Not unlike our own Seamie O’Dowd, who was heavily influenced by Rory.) This is a lovely little acoustic fingerstyle tune of his…
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A further exploration of the Travis style of fingerpicking. This tune uses the ‘alternating thumb’ throughout most of the piece, but the fingers deviate a lot from the typical patterns we have been using so far. I first heard this tune played by Doc Watson and his son Merle. (Listen HERE.) I worked out a…
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One of the first CDs I ever bought with my own pocket money was Pocketful of Kryptonite by The Spin Doctors. Two Princes was a huge hit at the time, and I wanted an album full of bangers just like that. I didn’t get it. The rest of the album was crap. The only other…
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A version of Mother Nature’s Son by The Beatles (well by Paul McCartney, really, John didn’t have anything to do with this one!) I’ve used the Travis technique in this playthrough. It’s not how Paul plays it on the original recording, but I think it suits the song nicely. At a few points in the…
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This is a playthrough of Dust In The Wind by Kansas. In the previous lesson we looked at the picking pattern used in the Intro of the song. You can use this right hand pattern for almost the entire song. The pattern changes slightly at bar 42, so keep an eye out for that in…
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