CELTIC FINGERSTYLE
This month Stuart Ryan gets jiggy on this DADGAD piece inspired by the legendary fingerstyle guitarist, Pierre Bensusan.
One of the world’s finest and most acclaimed fingerstyle guitarists, Pierre Bensusan is an acknowledged master who plays in DADGAD tuning extensively. Indeed, he has invested so much time here that he has adopted it as an ‘alternative standard tuning’. With his French-Algerian heritage Bensusan has an interesting range of influences, from North African and jazz to Celtic and, in his early days, bluegrass. He has arranged a wide number of traditional Celtic pieces for DADGAD guitar and some of his own compositions such as The Last Pint have become Celtic standards themselves.
This month’s piece is a jig in 6/8 time, a very common metre in Celtic music – each bar is split into two beats which are broken down into triplets so your count is ‘1 + a 2 + a’. Many Celtic tunes are played as ‘sets’ which often involves shifting metre so the second half of this piece moves to a march in 2/4 time. In addition this piece also serves as an introduction to how jigs are typically played in DADGAD guitar - with the melody line performed on the third, second and first strings, and a consistent bass pulse being provided by the thumb underneath. The important and possibly tricky technique to focus on here (if you’re not used to it), is that independent ‘pulsing’ thumb which must never lose the 6/8 feel.
The first half of the piece keeps the bass notes simple, while for the second half we discover how adding more bass notes provides a more tense, modern sound.
NEXT MONTH Stuart continues his new series with a new piece to play in the Celtic Style
For playing Celtic guitar music an OM body size or larger is advisable, owing to the amount of lowered tunings (such as DADGAD) required for the genre. Lowdens and other bespoke guitars are popular within this style but anything with the right body size and shape will be fine. I recorded the piece on a Collings OM1 Julian Lage acoustic with DPA and Royer mics.
“With his French-Algerian heritage Bensusan has influences from North African and jazz, to Celtic and even bluegrass”