In last Tuesday’s class, we added some new fingering patterns to the basic D scale progressions we learned last week. Below are some of the fingerings for those chord positions.

Note that although I didn’t include it in the above image, an “A” chord is the same pattern as the G chord shown, but moved up the neck two frets. Also, recall that another very similar approach is to leave the lowest D string open and move the two fingers that are close together (ring and pinky / 3 and 4) one string higher for an alternative voicing.

Next we saw how using the capo made it very easy to play in different keys. In our class we placed the capo on the 5th fret to play in G. To play in A, we could put the capo on the 7th fret. G and A are the two other most common major keys. The other fairly common capo position is on the 2nd fret to play Em tunes, though we will cover another approach next week in class.

The last thing we covered was an introduction to the jig rhythm. Jigs are in 6/8 time, which means beats are grouped in 3’s, which some people refer to as deee – ya – das or pine-ap-ples. While different guitarists use different strum patterns to play jig rhythm, we all started with a down-up-down down-up-down approach as shown below (note, I’ve also created a diagram for the reel pattern we covered in the previous class).

You’ll want to practice this pattern a fair amount. If you haven’t done new strum patterns much in your guitar playing, playing a jig pattern can take a little while to get down cold.

To practice jigs, try playing along with Claire and Breda again this week with Mulhaire’s jig, one of my new favorites!

Play along with Mulhaire’s Jig