Folk Groups (Adding Guitars To Smallpiping)

[Davie Hunter (DundeePiper)]

Is there an easy way to add chords to pipe music (even though i know < nothing about playing the guitar)?

Sort of a standard note to chord e.g. LA = Chord of D for example :S


PLease Help

[sl8er]

Really doin 3rds or 5ths from either direction would do. Count up or down 3 or 5 including the note that is needing a chord. (eg. A-B-C. C is a 3rd)

This should sound fine and is how chords are built.

[Haukehaien]

A friend and I spent a fair amount of time playing recorders together and discovered something cool. A lot of medieval music uses intervals of a fourth (instead of playing A and C, it might use A and D, for example). The benefit was that if one of us missed a note, we usually wound up playing either a third or a fifth, so it didn't sound bad.

[Kilted Bandit]

Try to learn the melody, and make up an interesting beat. Then match up the beats where and the melody note, and play a chord there. Make any sense?

I find that a chanter tuned to A, and the guitar capo'd on the second fret makes it much easier to play. the G pattern would be your root, then C your second, and D your 3rd. You can always play octaves using power chords too, and throw in a touch of fingerpicking here and there.

[meryrose]

I like to use the DADGAD (as opposed to the standard EADGBE)tuning when playing with pipes. It works really well with the mixolydian pipe scale, and somewhat resembles power chords. Most folk groups (Tannahill Weavers, Battlefield Band, Bothy Band)use this tuning. It seems to fit really well with Scottish/Irish folk music in general. Their are several chord charts on the web.
You can also incorporate the standard guitar tuning. A great example of this is the guitar work on the Vicky police albums.

cheers

[PNB]

meryrose,
Could you please send me a couple of the sites that have the EADGBE tuning and chords. Thanks in advance. PNB

[toutie gallowa]

I would agree that DADGAD is the way to go, you can tie in nicely with the pipe scale for both the D and A smallpipe chanter.

The chords tend to be slightly non standard, but they give a modal or suspended feeling to the arrangements. As for which chords to use with which notes, the sky is the limit, but on the whole Chords I, IV, V, and vi (as well as VII for double tonic pipe tunes and sometimes iii, esp when going to/from IV) will be the most commonly used. I and vi are interchangable to nice effect when playing variation parts.

eg for A Chanter using Amix tonality- I = A, iii=C#, IV=D, V=E, vi=F# and VII=G

Dmaj tonality = I = D, iii=F#, IV=G, V=A, vi=B and VII=C and so on.......

Each bar tends to have a certain tonality and usually one maybe two chords, ie predominatly the notes A, C# & E in a bar you would use the A chord (AC#E) or the relative minor7(FAC#E)try to identify which notes are incidental to the bar and ignore them when choosing a chord.

I arrange a lot of pipe tunes for fingerstyle guitar to be played with smallpipes (just got my set from John Burke on Friday!!)and you just have to be careful to identify the tonality of the tune ie Dmaj (Barren Rocks...), Bmin(Paddy's Leather Breeches), Amixolydian(Father John McMillan of Barra) then apply the chords as above, using inversions sometimes to have a more intersting bassline etc.

Apologies for the bombardment, hope it helps

Some DADGAD chords:
http://www.modhran.com/chords.html

http://www.geocities.com/celtictunes/chords1.htm

http://home.hccnet.nl/h.speek/dadgad/