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I was talking about this the other day, how it feels to be inside a traditional set while it unfolds, and you’re playing the guitar.  I remembered I had this version recorded and had sketched out the experience pretty much right away so it was still fresh.  I’ll likely do this again sometime soonish, but I still think this gives you an idea of what’s going on.

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It’s always a treat to sit in and play behind a set of traditional tunes. I’m often asked by fellow guitar players how I do what I do when the jigs and reels are flowing by. As luck would have it, piper Kelly Hood and multi-instrumentalist Pat Simmonds (from the band Spraoi) were on hand the other day and agreed to toss off a set. I played along, and this is the result, along with a few notes on what’s happening from the guitarist’s point of view.

Two jigs, one in E-minor, the other in G-major (if you’re the kind of player who follows that sort of thing).

First the tunes –> Killavel Jigs

You’ll notice that the guitar part has a skipping feel to it.  I set it up in the first section, then play the complete version once we get going.  There’s a technical reason for that skipping feeling.  Many guitarists (and mandolin players for that matter) approach jigs with a steady down-up-down, down-up-down rhythm in the picking hand.  It gives them an easy evenness that can’t be beat.  I didn’t know any better when I started to play jigs, so I fell into an opposite rhythm–the same down-up-down for the first three beats, but a reversed up-down-up for the next three beats.  It took a while to get it even, the key seemed to be making the upstroke which starts the second triplet as firm as the downstroke which begins the first triplet.  Once that happened the bonus was that all of the syncopations fell into place without even trying.  It’s those upstrokes which give the skipping rhythm.  It’s easy to get carried away, and you can lose the essential nature of the jig if you’re not careful.  But I’ve always managed to play with the melody firmly in my mind’s ear.  And I think that keeps me grounded enough that my groove becomes a counterpoint, highlighting the rhythm of the melody rather than obscuring it.

For me, part of the fun in a traditional tune session is helping shape the ‘arrangement’ as we go.  In a longer set (the length you’d play for dances or in a pub session, as opposed to the usually more focussed length of a concert set) I would probably take a little more time to set up the basic components before rolling into the full rhythm.  Somehow in my mind that gives the melody more time to present itself, which is nice for the listener.  It also gives me a chance to hear exactly what’s going on in the tune, which is nice for the other musicians.  Just because I know the tune (and I didn’t know these tunes before I played them) doesn’t mean it’s going to be played the same way I know it.

At a session I feel that it’s my job to compliment the melody players, rather than drawing attention to what I’m doing.  In this particular set I could have played more chords, but I was enjoying the feel of the rhythm so much that it didn’t seem to need much more.  In the first of the two tunes I move to a B-minor every once in a while, but mostly I’m rolling between E-minor and D.  Fancy chords just for their own sake has never really been to my taste.  I’m perfectly capable of making unusual chord choices, but the rhythm is my first love–probably comes from playing for so many dances.  Marshall Barron (that fine player of Playford dance tunes) once pointed out to me that if you didn’t actually play the downbeat the dancers would lift themselves up and supply the downbeat themselves.  She also cheerfully accused me of not being able to play a downbeat if my life depended on it.  Perhaps not completely true, but you get the point.

The second tune is in G, I fell into a fairly normal change to a D chord at the mid-point of the musical phrases (it’s probably worth pointing out that I didn’t want to rehearse a guitar part for the sake of the recording, I was looking for the same kind of looseness we get at a really good session).  The other chordal phrase is a C to A-minor change.  I was tempted to play what I call a ‘walking chord’ rhythm for this second tune, but the tempo was a little slower than I like things to be for that approach.  So I contented myself with making a little more rhythm on the bass notes, and gave a firm four downbeat chord progression at the end of sections.