Guitarbench.com article. 

Thanks for the insight Fab.

Anton

I should have another article or two going up there this month, they cover arranging celtic tunes for guitar, and feature some example pieces.

Anton

I love everything Tim O'Brien does.  He can play straight up bluegrass, writes great tunes and songs, and really seems to bring folks of different talents together to create something.  The first album of his that caught my attention was The Crossing.  Its a mixture of instrumental tunes and songs, combining irish, bluegrass, and appalachian influences.  It has the arranging and hot picking that I like in modern string band music, combined with the modal and ancient sound of celtic music that has always appealed to me. 

Lately I have just not been feeling much inspiration when playing solo celtic guitar.  Perhaps its from spending the last year working on this cd, and really arranging and getting these tunes down tight.  But it just doesn't excite me like it used to.  Not that I am going to stop playing, I think I just need to move some new things into my practice routine to break up the staleness.  Here is what I have been working on lately.

• Warm Up/Technical Exercises. These come mostly from the Pumping Nylon book, and are aimed at improved technical facility in the left and right hand.  Its oriented towards classical players, but I think anyone can benefit from alot of it.
• Learn to flatpick some fiddle tunes. I'll dabble with flatpicking occasionally, but never really with enough focus to get a bunch of tunes down.  I would like to be able to flatpick more celtic tunes in the CGDGCD tuning so i can work them into live shows, as well as perhaps the next cd. I have been working on learning a few blugrass tunes in standard tuning.  I have some friends that play bluegrass, and it would be nice to become a more well rounded guitar player.  So if i am hanging out with a bunch of musicians that don't play irish music i can still contribute, have fun, and jam.
• Improvise more.  This is kind of connected to the bluegrass thing.  I miss improvising.  I used to do it some when i first started playing guitar, then more or less stopped when getting into celtic music, as that is not part of the genre.  The musical high from a good solo and flying by the seat of your pants approach is fun.  At the moment i am mostly doing this with bluegrass fiddle tunes.

Something i have trying to keep in mind with all this is to be flexible with my approach.  I will plan things out for a certain practice, but i won't hesitate to scrap the entire thing or move onto to secondary goals if what i am presently playing is not inspring me.  I think in the end picking up the guitar as much as possible is what matters.

I recently got the video footage from the show, and will posting it to my Youtube account over the next few days. Here is the first one, a tune i like to open shows with, Inion Ni Scannlain, written by Donogh Hennesy.

When I first started gigging occasionally several years ago I would always get nervous.  What do I say between tunes, is the audience going to like my music, am I to boring, etc?  The more I have done it the less nervous i get, though I still get that little tightness in my stomach, especially if I am going on solo at a bigger venue. I wanted to put down some thoughts that I have had after the last few gigs.

• What to start with. I like to start with a piece that I am really familiar with and can play in my sleep. For its best if this piece is of moderate tempo, so I can burn off some of the nervous energy that results from getting on stage. If I start with something difficult I won't be able to manage it, and believe it or not, slow pieces are actually harder at this point in a show.  With more space between the notes, my fingers have to be in exactly the right spots, which is kind of hard to do after just going up on stage and being a bit nervous.  So i generally start with something of moderate tempo, and then pace the set from there to what feels right.

• Talking between tunes. When first playing out I found this the most difficult part, and it still generally gets me more nervous than actually playing the music. Thats the fun part. I think the only way to get better at this is to do it more. Usually before each tune I will try to talk a bit about, perhaps relate some personal story as to who I learned the tune from or something like that. Sometimes if a joke or something funny occurs to me I will try it, and if I get a good reaction I mentally file that one away for next time. I have seen professionals who will use the same jokes and stories year after year at gigs. I think you just figure out what works over time for you and your personality. 

• Losing your place. This is a scary one.  It has almost happened to me a few times but I managed to recover, and hopefully no one in the audience was the wiser.  With alot of these tunes I have played them for years, so there are times I will zone out mid tune, and start to think about what I am going to say or play next, what such and such person in the audience things about my music, where I am going to go after the gig, etc.  Then all of a sudden I snap back to the moment, and realize my fingers have been on autopilot and I don't know where I am.  Both times this has happened it was during a slow air, and I just fumbled my way back to the main theme, and hopefully it sounded like a variation. To avoid this I just try to not let my mind wander when playing.  I keep my attention focused on the music, trying to execute it well, just like practicing at home. If my mind starts wandering to something else I bring it back on the task at hand. 

So there you have it, some things I have been thinking about after the last few gigs. Hopefully they help some folks out.  If you have any other tips for live let me know in the comments!

Anton

This is traditional irish music played at this finest, just the melody instruments with no accompaniment.  I highly reccomend it.  The rhythm and groove these three musicians generate playing together is rock solid.  In the past cds like this were often only available in Ireland, so shipping was pricy for us folks here in States. Thankfully this album is on iTunes, as well as CDBaby.

Anton

Casey on zouk, me on flute

I had a nice gig today with my buddy Casey Dyer at the Willamette Lock Festival.  There is a river lock in West Linn just south of Portland, and every year they have a festival to raise money and keep it running.  We had an hour set in the afternoon, playing a variety of tunes on flute, guitar, whistle, bouzouki, and mandolin. The weather was great, and they were bringing some boats through the lock, which is pretty cool to see.  In addition I had the greatest piece of marion berry pie along with a generous helping of vanilla ice cream. Not a bad afternoon. 

I am really enjoying playing with Casey.  We do a variety of things, fast tunes on flute and whistle, flute with bouzouki accompaniment, mandolin with guitar backup, as well as some fingerstyle guitar arrangements along with mandolin.  Its nice having different options with the instrumentation, and lets us vary the sound.  We have a few more gigs lined up, and are fine tuning and expanding our material.  I am looking forward to playing more.

Anton

Recently shakuhachi player Larry Tyrrell contacted me about collaborating on some music together.  He lives here in Portland, had come across my website, and was looking for a guitar playing to accompany the celtic tunes he plays on the shakuhachi, the traditional japanese flute.  So we got together and played through some music, mostly airs and slower tunes.  It went pretty well, so we are putting together some material for possible gigs later in the summer.  The shakuhachi has a beautiful haunting tone, and coming up with guitar parts that don't distract from the music has been a good challenge.  Often times this slower stuff is actually more difficult, as all my notes have to be spot on. 

So look out for me to be at some more 67Music events in the coming months, as well as some gigs with Larry.

thanks

Anton

Sorry this blog post is a bit overdue.  Its more time consuming than i thought to notate all the parts of the arrangement, then record it, and make sure everything matches up.

I found some mistakes in the Tobin's part 1 post, sorry for that.  I had forgotten about the capo at the second fret when i notated some up the neck positions.  In addition, i am playing around with SoundCloud.com to host my audio files from.  That way you get a player here in the blog post, and if you want to download the file just click on the little downward pointing arrow to the right of the player.

So to start you will want to download the PDF's for this lesson.  There are two, the B part of Tobin's Jig and then the full tune.

Tobin's B part
Tobin's Full Version

 One of the nice things about alot of celtic tunes is that sections of the A part may also come up in the B part.  So once you have learned the A part you almost know the whole thing.  Tobin's is one of those tunes, the B part only contains two new measures, everything else you have seen in the A part.  So this should be pretty easy. 

So take a look at example one on the PDF and give a listen to the track below

Pt2Tobins1 by AntonEmery

I play it pretty simply, all in first position, using the basic bass notes that correspond with the chord changes of the tune.  As i did with the A part, often times this is a good place to start when outlining an arrangement of a tune.

Next comes example 2. I have added a B note in the bass on the first measure for some harmonic variation. In addition, i got up the neck like i did in the A part. Pay attention to the second to last measure.  I have phrased a bit different, adding in a three note ascending triplet by hammering on.  It adds some nice variation, and is common in celtic music.  There are often times small variations between players for a given tunes.

  Pt2Tobins2 by AntonEmery

Then we have example 3.  Rather than play the first phrase on the first string i have opted to play it on the second string higher up the neck.  I feel this adds a bit of richness and fullness to the tone.  Be sure to catch the two string barre in the that measure, as well as grabbing the F# with your pinkie, its neccessary for that phrase.  Or feel free to play it differently, and let me know! 

  Pt2Tobins3 by AntonEmery

Example uses alot of the up the neck voicing we saw in the A part, as well as some varying bass notes in measures 5 and 6. Pay attention to the G note triplet in measure 3.  There are a variety of ways to play this with the right hand.  I play it ring, middle, and index finger, or in classical guitar terms, A M I. Steve Baughman often interjects his thumb in there, and i am not sure how Tony Mcmanus does it.  Find a way that works for you, and feel to comment if you have a question about that. 

Finally we have the full version of Tobin's Jig.  This is both the A and B part, as i would play it on a cd or in concert.  I can't say this is how i would play it every time, I will often play certain bits differently depending on what i am feeling or where i want to play on the neck.  I have combined some different aspects from the various examples we looked at.

  Pt2Tobinsfull by AntonEmery

So thats it for this two part blog entry on arranging Tobin's jig.  I hope folks enjoyed it, and got something out of it you can apply to your own playing.  Feel free to get in touch or leave a comment with feedback.

Anton

CD Review

I am glad folks are enjoying the music.

Anton