Stuart Ryan has a brand new series on Celtic fingerstyle guitar. This month: Morning Of Life.

Stuart Ryan shows you the slower side of the Celtic sound with a fingerstyle arrangement of a traditional Irish air, The Morning Of Life.

Think of the words ‘Celtic Music’ and it may conjure up shocking images of terrible pan pipe albums. However, while the genre has been besmirched by such muzak it’s actually a rich and powerful vein of music that encompasses the traditional sounds of Ireland, Wales, Scotland and beyond - including the Appalachian mountains of North-East America. Celtic music has a great depth to it and it’s haunting, lyrical nature has drawn legions of guitarists towards its repertoire over the decades. In the 1960s British innovators like Davey Graham, Bert Jansch and John Renbourn mined the world of Celtic music to create inspirational arrangements and compositions from the style. And of course it’s no secret that Jimmy Page was heavily influenced by these players and the Celtic genre in general, and some of Led Zeppelin’s best-loved tracks have the Celtic sound at their heart.

Celtic music was originally written to be performed by the voice and harp and latterly on instruments like violin, flute and tin whistle, so you may be surprised to learn that the guitar is not its natural home. However, as we’ll discover in this series this melodic music sits particularly well on steel strings.

And to that end this month’s piece is a traditional O’Carolan song called The

“Celtic music was originally performed by the voice and harp, and latterly on instruments like violin, flute and tin whistle”

Morning Of Life and the arrangement was inspired by GT’s much missed acoustic columnist and recording artist, Eric Roche.

The technique we need to focus on here is a classically inspired approach to alternating the ‘i’, ‘m’ and ‘m’ and ‘a’ fingers (first, second and third digits) on the picking hand. This means that, when you have several melody notes on the same string you must avoid the temptation to pluck them with one finger and instead ‘alternate flick’. Good luck.

NEXT MONTH Stuart continues his new series with a new piece to play in the Celtic Style

Eric Roche: perhaps the most musical of all the percussive acoustic guitarists

An OM body size or above is advisable for Celtic, due to the number of lower altered tunings required. Lowdens are particularly popular, due to their particularly rich, deep tone, but anything with the right body size and shape will be fine. Many Celtic players also like the classic dreadnought style acoustic, such as D-18 (mahogany) and D-28 (rosewood).