An approach to playing backing chords for Irish Traditional Music

Irish Traditional Music (ITM) is a wide-ranging, beautiful genre of music. ITM "sessions" occur every week all over the world. It's a joyous tradition full of gracious players.

Some ITM sessions are slower, focused for beginners and those building a repetoire. Others are faster and come with an expectation of greater mastery of one's instrument. Most ITM sessions come with the expectation that one "woodsheds" their instrument, so that by the time the session comes around, it's more of a sharing of music than purely a practice session.

What to expect from reading this page

This page is a guide for musicians who already know how to play a backing instrument like guitar, and who want to learn more about playing in the genre of ITM.

It's very easy for a backing musician, whether on a guitar, bouzouki, bodhran, or other instrument, to accidentally set off as though on a single-person journey, obliviously playing in the wrong key, rushing the music and speeding everyone else up, or even playing in the wrong time signature compared with everyone else. I've been that person! With that in mind, the goal of this page – the goal that helped me feel more comfortable starting out – is to aim to "not sound bad" (or "do no harm") when playing chords to ITM.

I'm using that phrase flippantly, but I also think that it is actually useful to emphasize as a specific goal, at least to clarify this page's approach. In my mind, trying to "not sound bad" is a very different goal from trying to "sound good." "Trying to sound good" means that you might strive for flourishes starting early in your practice. "Trying not to sound bad," by contrast, means that you may make somewhat more conservative musical decisions, but those decisions are going to sound right every time. Trying to not sound bad means actively listening at every moment you're playing to watch for whether you've made a misstep, and thus results in catching and correcting those missteps earlier. Even if all of those features are part of "sounding good," too, the phrase "not sounding bad" appeals more to my inherent fear of disrupting other players, and so I offer it to you.

This page is about unlocking the general "rules" that are the mental "cost of entry" for starting to choose and play backing chords for ITM. My hope is that if you read this entire page (and pause and practice where it suggests), you'll hopefully come away with some new basic knowledge that will allow you to start playing along to recordings and building your musical chops.

About the author, in case it's useful to know

I am an amateur musician from the USA (i.e., I don't make my living off of playing music; I just really enjoy playing ITM in local sessions). I'm primarily a flute and low whistle player, but also play guitar and bouzouki. I learned some classical and some jazz music theory in secondary school, but I'd never understood anything substantive about chord theory. With that in mind, I spent 2.5 months just clicking on and staring at the wonderful "Interactive Circle of Fifths" by Rand Scullard until I started to understand some patterns. That, combined with explanations like this from Nye Farley at Finale Guitar, helped me to start understanding chords in a more consistent way.

What's below is certainly not the only way to think about any of this. It also draws a tremendous amount from others, to whose works I've linked throughout. This approach to understanding chords in ITM works for me, and a few others have said that it's helped them. So I'm sharing it in the hope that it might be useful for you, too.

If you have comments or would like to reach out to me, please feel free, via TheSession.org.

First thing's first: Play responsibly.

ITM is somewhat unique in that tunes don't have set-in-stone chord progressions. Because most musicians in an ITM session are playing the melody together, and harmony isn't commonly used, every tune just has a main melody of single notes, and that melody can't do anything more than imply different chords that could back it. This means that when you play guitar or other chord-based instruments to ITM, you are fundamentally going to be improvising which chords to play in a given moment (following certain music theory rules, described below).

This also means that, besides the bodhran, musicians playing the guitar or similar instruments are uniquely situated to single-handedly ruin the entire session. This high-stakes thrill makes playing backing chords especially exciting.

With this in mind, don't read this page and then immediately go bring a guitar to an ITM session. Give yourself time – as in, a couple months at minimum. If you're new to playing in ITM sessions, give yourself a chance to listen for a while before you take your instrument out. Get a sense of the other musicians and their musical landscape. When you do take your instrument out, if there's another guitar player at the session, don't both play at once. Listen and get new ideas from the other person. Unless you're carefully playing to complement the other player, two guitars can make the overall sound of a tune confusing.

Put differently, as backing players, we can be deeply valued housemates in the music, but we don't own the house. ITM music is totally fine and good to just feature melody players. As a guitar or other chord-backing player, we have the ability to elevate and enhance the music in a wonderful way. But we have to be careful to treat our role in the music thoughtfully, and to do the work.

This isn't meant to discourage! Instead, it's all to say, treat playing backing chords as the responsibility it is.

Prerequisites

If you're going to be playing guitar to ITM, you'll need to set up a few items:

A guitar, or other instrument that plays chords.

Many will advise that standard guitar tuning (from lowest string to highest string, EADGBE) is not well-suited to playing chords for the current "sound" that melody players expect for ITM. Other tunings more associated with that current "sound" share two characteristics: They make it easy to play many chords with just one or two fingers, making it potentially faster to switch between several chords quickly; and, relatedly, they tend to facilitate several strings ringing out openly as "drones" throughout one's playing.

One of the most common guitar tunings for ITM is (from lowest string to highest string) DADGAD. It's what many professional players whose playing you might enjoy probably use. However, it's not the only tuning in use. Jim Murray, for example, teaches using DADGBD tuning.

Because I got into playing ITM backing chords on the Irish Bouzouki, which is tuned (from lowest strings to highest strings) GDAD, I tune my guitar (from lowest strings to highest strings) to DGDAAD. The explanations below do assume this tuning, but you'll be able to apply the same concepts to whatever tuning you prefer.

Regardless of what tuning you use, if you can find an existing chart of example chords for that tuning, you'll be able to get started more quickly.

Steel vs. nylon string guitars

There are lots of opinions online about steel vs. nylon string guitars in ITM. Either will work. Steel string guitars are typically louder and are thus more often encountered in ITM sessions. However, for example, Jim Murray and Tim Edey are two guitarists whose playing on nylon-string guitars is entrancing.

A capo

If you are playing guitar to ITM, it can be really helpful to use a capo to switch between keys (e.g., if after reading this whole page, you're very comfortable playing in G major, and a tune comes up in A major, which you're not as comfortable playing in, you can use a capo at the 2nd fret and just play as though the tune is in G major). ITM "sets" typically involve moving seamlessly between two or three separate tunes, which may each be in a different key. It's important to be able to make the switch between tunes as fast as possible; a capo can facilitate that.

In my experience, the QuickDraw Capo is the fastest for switching between keys. Here's an overview video from Aodan Coyne:

A pick

Backing guitar for ITM is usually played with a pick, rather than doing some sort of fingerstyle picking. You can use whatever you like. See the "Strumming" section below.

The Amazing Slow Downer app

The Amazing Slow Downer app (for iOS or Android), or an app like it, allows taking sound recordings (e.g., made from a YouTube video) and slowing them down and/or changing their key. It also allows looping parts of the recording. This is hugely helpful for practicing. If you find a video you like, or a recording online, you just need to create a sound recording of it on your phone, and then you can practice over it at the pace and in the keys you're most comfortable in.

Time

As described above, if you already know how to play the guitar but are new to the genre, give yourself 2-3 months at minimum before you try applying this in a session. Give yourself longer if you're just learning to play the instrument to begin with. But in the meantime, go watch your local session to get a sense of it!

Mnemonics (memorization helpers)

You are going to need to memorize a few things before you ever pick up your instrument. These will come up repeatedly further below.

The "Circle of Fifths"

Don't run away – this needn't be scary. You need to remember the order of the "Circle of Fifths" in both directions.

First, moving left / counterclockwise on the Circle of Fifths: "BEAD G-C-F. Just say it repeatedly out loud as "Bead, G-C-F" 20-30 times, and it will stick well enough in mind.

Second, moving right / clockwise on the Circle of Fifths: "Fat Cats Go Down Alleys Eating Bugs."

The names of the "modes"

There are four "modes" used in ITM. They each have a name for an ancient city in Greece.

The first one is "Ionian," aka "major". (I.e., "D ionian" = "D major".) Just remember that "Ionian / major comes first."

After that, the Greek names are in reverse alphabetical order:

1. Mixolydian
2. Dorian
3. Aeolian (aka "natural minor")

Remember that order – Ionian/major, and then reverse alphabetical order: Mixolydian, Dorian, Aeolian.

Repeat all of the items above until you can say them out loud to yourself without looking. Have someone quiz you out loud on them. Pause here until you can do that.

Playing a scale for each of the modes

As you memorized above, there are four "modes" used in ITM: "Ionian," "Mixolydian," "Dorian," and "Aeolian."

The final thing you need to memorize is how to play a set of four scales, in a specific order. You don't need to concentrate on the individual notes of each scale – you just need to develop muscle memory to be able to play the four scales following a fretboard pattern.

Below are a set of scales in the key of D (i.e., D is the first note of each of them). Practice each with your instrument.

The tuning below uses (from lowest string to highest string) DGDAAD – but you can adapt this to whatever tuning you use.

Ionian (aka major) scale

Mixolydian

Dorian

Aeolian (aka "natural minor")

This fretboard shape, and this order of changes – that the 7th, 3rd, and 6th items in the scale fall, in that order – can be used up and down the whole fretboard on the string you just learned it on, and possibly on other strings.

For the fret pattern shown above, this pattern works with any two strings whose names are 5 notes apart, like G → D or D → A. If you are in DGDAAD tuning, in addition to trying this shape starting on the third-from-lowest-pitch string, try starting from the second-from-lowest-pitch string (the G string) – the exact same shape works.

As above, pause here until you can repeat the four scales, in order, without thinking about it. You should be able to play all four in quick succession from any starting fret on that starting string.

The Circle of Fifths

You have a whole bag of mental tools in the things you memorized above. Now, let's learn how to use them.

This is the "Circle of Fifths"

It's called the Circle of Fifths because every "click" to the right / clockwise / forward on the Circle goes up by 5 notes (if you count the starting note as the first note).

Some patterns to take note of in the Circle

• If you take any note, and skip two "clicks" to the right, you get to one note above it (e.g., from D → E). Skip another two, and you get one note above that (e.g., from E → F).
• Similarly, if you take any note, and skip two "clicks" to the left, you get one note below it (e.g., D → C). Skip two from there, and you get one note below that (e.g., from C → B).
• If you're going forwards around the Circle and get to the end of the "Fat Cats Go Down Alleys Eating Bugs" mnemonic, you can keep going forward by repeating it, just making each new note sharp.
• Similarly, if you're going backwards around the Circle and get to the end of the "Bead G-C-F" mnemonic, you can keep going backward by repeating it, just making each new note flat.
• The single most important thing to learn from this page: Every "major" key (e.g., "D major") has 3 major chords, 3 minor chords, and 1 "diminished" chord (which, for ITM music, essentially means, "Don't play that chord"). Select any note from the "Root note" dropdown menu above. The Circle's colors will change to show how to think about that note's Ionian (aka major) scale.
  • There are 3 major chords: The root note, and the note one click to the left, and one click to the right, of it.
  • Then, the 3 notes to the right of those are all minor chords.
  • Finally, further to the right, there's the "diminished" chord (the one to stay away from).

This is true for EVERY KEY. Every Ionian (aka major) key has exactly 3 major chords and 3 minor chords, plus 1 "diminished" chord to stay away from. If you can figure out what those six chords are, stick to them, and play with the humility to be actively listening for whether you mis-diagnosed something, you will never sound actively bad.

A tune in ITM = a root note plus a Mode

Remember how above, you learned that there are four "modes" used in ITM?

A "key" is the "home-base note" of a tune. It's what you could just drone on for the entire time and not sound bad.

Every key has those four "modes." To know the six chords for a tune – three major, three minor, plus the diminished one to avoid – you need to figure out both the key (the home-base note) and the mode.

How to figure out the key + the mode

When a tune starts:

1. Quietly, play individual notes up and down the fretboard until you find what you think is the root, "home-base" note. Play it quietly to yourself as a drone to see if it sounds good throughout the tune. If so, you probably have found the correct root note. This is the tune's "key."
2. Quietly, starting from that root note, play the four scales in order. Listen carefully for which one sounds best.
   1. If the first scale matches best, it's an Ionian (aka major) tune.
   2. If any of the other scales match best, count the number of extra scales you played to get to it (1 extra scale = Mixolydian, 2 extra scales = Dorian, 3 extra scales = Aeolian).
   3. Take that number, and use the BEAD G-C-F mnemonic to go back that number of clicks in the Circle from the root note. So if your root note is D, and the 3rd scale you played in order was what sounded correct, you'd count 2 "clicks" to the left. ^{Saying out loud to yourself, "(B, E, A) D, G, C"} This is the Ionian / major key you're playing as if you're in.
3. Now that you know what equivalent Ionian key you're playing in, use the BEAD G-C-F mnemonic a second time to figure out the 3 major chords in that key. ^{Saying to yourself, "(B, E, A, D, G,) C... Ok, G, C, F"}
4. Quietly, under your breath, say "I am playing as if in <other key based on the mode>, but rooted in <key>. X, Y, and Z are major chords; everything else is minor; don't play <the diminished chord>." ^{Saying to yourself, "I am playing as if in C, but rooted in D. G, C, and F are major chords; everything else is minor. Don't play B-flat chords."}
5. Double-check that you know what type of tune this is (Jig, Reel, Slip Jig, Slide, Polka, etc.) You'll learn that below in the "Strumming" section.
6. Start playing.

Interactive key + mode trainer

Here's an interactive helper to use to walk through that sequence of steps. You can click the play button to hear each of the four scales starting from the key / root note you select.

You'll need to get to the point that you can do this from memory. You don't necessarily need to mentally visualize the Circle, though – the "BEAD G-C-F" and "Fat Cats Go Down Alleys Eating Bugs" mnemonics will help you get there.

Practice

Let's practice with a few tunes. Go through the exercises above (preferably working towards just working from memory rather than relying on the interactive Circle). Then, you can click below to see what key and mode the tune is in, and see if that matches what you thought.

Choosing chords

This is where you can pick up your instrument and start trying out different progressions of chords to see what sounds best – knowing that if you stick to the six "in-scope" chords for the key + mode you diagnosed, you won't ever sound actively bad.

With that said, there are definitely patterns that sound consistently better than others. In general:

• For Ionian tunes, start by playing just with the 1, 4, and 5 chords – i.e., the three major chords / the root chord, and the chord one click to each side of it.
• For Aeolian tunes, start by playing just the root note's chord (e.g., for B Aeolian, B minor), and the 4 and 5 chords of the key you're playing as if in. (e.g., for B Aeolian, you're playing as if in D – for which we just learned, the 4 and 5 chord are one click to either side of D – G major and A major).
• For additional patterns, see the profile-page-writeup by the user "AlBrown" at TheSession.org. The write-up includes a detailed guide for understanding chord patterns in different modes. This is what I recommend you read immediately after the content above. The write-up also includes good information about ITM session etiquette, types of tunes, tune structures, and more.

Miscellaneous Tips

• When trying to find the root note of the tune, focus especially on the A part of the tune. Some tunes' melodies can make it harder to figure out the root note in the B part of the tune.
• When finding the root note of a tune, if the tune is Aeolian, it can be easy to mis-diagnose the root note (for example, in a B Aeolian tune, the root note is B) as being the equivalent major chord root note (i.e., the note three clicks to the left on the Circle – in this example, D). If you think you're playing an Ionian tune, just be sure to listen for whether the chords you choose sound off; if they do, check whether it's actual the equivalent Aeolian key (rooted three clicks to the right in the Circle).
• If you are not 100% sure what key and mode a tune is in, it's ok to not play. Even if you have to stop in the middle of the tune.
• Even when you are 100% sure of what you're doing, the backing instrument should (in my mind, at least) be behind the melody instruments in volume.
• Some tunes have different modes, or different keys and modes, for different parts.
• In choosing chords, you uniquely get to set the mood ^{(that's "mood," not "mode")} of the tune – is it happy? Is it sad? Is it bittersweet? Is it hopeful?
  • In an Ionian tune, you can make the tune sound bittersweet by playing the "relative minor" of the root chord – the chord 3 clicks to the right from the root chord – especially to begin the B part. This relative minor chord can be heard in the first tune of this recording, where the effect is used sparingly but super effectively. ^{(Do you find yourself feeling wistful for just a moment, particularly at 0:28, 0:52, or 1:32?)}
    
    
    
    ...or in the first tune of this recording, where the relative minor chord of the root (i.e., the chord three clicks to the right from the root) is used throughout both the A and B parts of the tune: ^{(In the A part of the tune, do you find yourself feeling a momentary sense of heartache at 0:39?)}
    
    
  • In an Ionian tune, you can make the B part sound hopeful by starting on the 4 chord and staying on it for a couple measures, then going up to the 5 chord, and then proceeding from there.
• If you learn 2-3 voicings of each chord (i.e., 2-3 different ways to play a D chord, a D minor chord, a G chord, etc.), you can switch between those voicings (e.g., staying on a G chord, but playing it in multiple different ways in quick succession as though you were switching between multiple chords) to make it sound like you're making more chord changes than you actually are. Lower below, you will see a video featuring Adam Brown that demonstrates this.
• Part of the specialness of ITM is that in a session, there is very little room for outward swagger. People can tell from your playing whether you've spent your time practicing; unlike in rock n' roll, posturing won't convice anyone of your competence. This cultural feature was lampooned in this music video by Cúig:
  
  
  
  It's all to say, one needn't be totally stoic when playing... but, an ITM session is typically not really a place for this sort of playing style:
  
  
  
  

Strumming

In addition to the key and the mode, you need to be very careful about figuring out what type of tune you're playing. Here are some common types of tunes:

Jigs vs. Reels

The Gothard Sisters band has a useful mnemonic for distinguishing jigs ("strawberry strawberry strawberry strawberry...") vs. reels ("rutabaga rutabaga rutabaga rutabaga..."):

Jigs

The most common jig strumming pattern you'll see is "Down Up Down Down Up Down", like in this video by Craig Irving:

This pattern is explained by Aodan Coyne here:

Reels

When playing reels, modern ITM guitarists often make their arms go Down-Up-Down-Up, rather than doing a "Boom-Chucka, Boom-Chucka" (Down Down-up Down Down-up) rhythm as you would see in American Bluegrass music.

You can see this Down-Up Down-Up movement in this video by Craig Irving:

Slip Jigs

Slip jigs are like jigs, but in which instead of saying "Strawberry strawberry strawberry strawberry...," it matches better to say "Blueberry strawberry strawberry Blueberry strawberry strawberry..."

You can see the core idea of the "Down Up Down Down Up Down" rhythym from the Jigs section above applied by Dónal Lunny to a slip jig below. It's almost the same pattern as when playing a jig – but it has 3 "berry" beats instead of two (Down Up Down Down Up Down Down Up Down...):

Slides

Slides are often going to have the same feel as Jigs, but be really fast to play. So you may have to adapt the Down Up Down Down Up Down rhythym. They feel like jigs you could march around to.

Polkas

Unlike Reels, where we move our strumming arm "Down Up Down Up Down Up Down Up," Polkas can often be played by just strumming "Down... Down... Down... Down... Down" and adjusting the rhythym around.

But there are other ways to approach it, in a more "Down Up Down Up" way, as in this video of Steve Cooney.

Hornpipes

You can tell hornpipes because you can slowly say, "Dum, Dum." over the last two notes of the melody.

You can strum them like slow reels, with a bit more of a jangly / bouncy feel.

Next steps

At this point, you're ready to start finding recordings of tunes you like, and playing along with them, to see what sounds good and what doesn't. This is where choosing chords becomes improvisational: As long as you are playing one of the six chords that are "in-scope" for the tune's key + mode, are are able to move between chords quickly, you won't ever sound actively bad.

This video of Adam Brown illustrates jumping between different voicings of "in-scope" chords very quickly:

Further reading

Having read the above, you may next benefit from several additional resources:

1. The profile-page-writeup by the user "AlBrown" at TheSession.org was mentioned above for learning about chord patterns. In addition, that write-up also includes good information about ITM session etiquette, types of tunes, tune structures, and more.
2. This blog post by Nye Farley at Finale Guitar introduced me to the idea that ITM only uses four modes (Ionian, Mixolydian, Dorian, and Aeolian).
3. Under the name FolkFriend.co.uk, Nye Farley also has a number of YouTube videos, and has published several downloadable books on playing guitar in ITM. These helped me. They also include information about playing more "jazzy" chords, with which I'm not yet well-versed.

Following up with me

As mentioned above, if you have comments or would like to reach out to me, please feel free, via TheSession.org. In addition to constructive comments, please do let me know if this is helpful, too! I'd be happy to hear from you.