Tune up

In Part I of this lesson on arpeggios and melodies we learned to use arpeggios to play the melody of "Walker Street," a traditional Irish fiddle tune. An arpeggio is the pattern you create when you break a chord into its constituent notes and play the notes one at a time. Most melodies incorporate some arpeggios, and many familiar tunes can be understood as strings of simple scale fragments and arpeggios. Guitar solos, hooks, and riffs in popular music frequently incorporate this principle, and arpeggios are especially common in traditional fiddle tunes from the Irish, Scottish, and Appalachian traditions.

In this part of the lesson we will learn to play another Irish tune, a lively jig called "Tripping up the Stairs." This is a tune you might encounter at a traditional seisun in an Irish pub, or on the dance floor at a New England grange hall during an old-time contradance. The bouncy 6/8 rhythm can be a lot of fun on the guitar, and structuring the tune with arpeggios helps make it easier to play. As in the first lesson, we will be alternating chord forms with linear elements. For flatpicking, I’ve found that using all downstrokes for the arpeggios with alternating up- and downstrokes on the scalelike sections makes it quite easy to pick.

To get the feel of the rhythm, try counting ONE two THREE, FOUR five SIX, with the pulse on the first, third, fourth, and sixth beats, with a little more emphasis on the first and fourth beats. Another vocal exercise that will help you get a feel for the groove is to string together a pair of three-syllable words—tunafish-mackeral, for example. This sounds goofy, but it works. Again, stress the first, third, fourth, and sixth syllables: TUnaFISHMACKaREL.