Danny Boy

Oh Danny boy, one for the Irish, uh this is uh an old Irish tune. uh or or any of you that are from Irish descent or just that wanna play this absolutely cracking melody. This is uh in the key of G, and we're using the G major scale. As I've mentioned previously, that G major scale is taught in a separate video, separate lesson on my website. Highly advise you have a look at it. And also here, we're playing notes on string 4, so I'm gonna encourage you to use the thumb to play those notes, which is the first note of the song. And then it's the 1st finger at the 3rd string. Open. 2 And then open is the start of bar two. We also have this little squiggly line um at that begins the tab, and that is a rest. That is a 1 beat rest specifically. So as a, as a count that that first bar starts 1234. And that's so um each bar adds, needs to add up to 4 beats basically, that's that's why that is done. So we begin on the thumb. First finger picking string 3. 2 to the open. Uh, string 2. The last note of bar 2 is the second fret on uh string 3. Back to the open string, and then to the thinnest open string. Then 3rd. Open. That was And that gets us to the end of bar 3. Bar 4 20. 2 Played with the thumb in this hand. So we've come from the thumb all the way down to the thinnest string and all the way back. And I really want you to begin to be more vigilant um than you have been so far, checking that you're using the right fingers because when we're going from string 4 to string 1 and back, it's too good an opportunity to work on that and we don't always have that opportunity. So if you learned this song uh properly, make sure you're using the right digits on your picking hand. That top line, one more time. 12. That is identical to line three, as has happened a few times in this course, you'll be spotting a theme by now. It's also half the reason that I chose these melodies, cause they do repeat. Line two though, begins with the open. Third string to open 2nd string. Again, a rest on beat 1, so it's 123. Then we have the 1st finger and 3rd. A little bit of oh when the Saints there. But it's open 0 13 on the tap. Then 0 finish string, back to 3. Open strings again. 00. 0, finishing on. That second line, 1. So starting with Owen the Saints. Then largely coming down our G major scale. Third line, the same as the 1st, starting with the thumb again. And then the final line, line 4, this is bar 13, uh, similar, but, but it is different from previous lines. It begins the same. This is Open. 0, like we've done previous. Walking down. 2, this is bar, hang on, bar 15. 20,200. And it has to be said, this is um I've actually just noticed this is using notes mainly from the G major pentatonic, G major pentatonic. That is taught in full at level 6 of my beginner's course. And again, pentatonic is just pent is 5, so it's the major scale cos it's G major pentatonic, but it's got 2 notes missing from it. Those extra 2 notes would be added in the full major scale to give us a 7 note scale, 8 if you include the octave. But um yeah, a bit of background on that G major pentatonic scale, Level 6 of my beginner's course. I think it's lesson 4, could be less than 5, something like that. Uh, that final line, one last time. One And then walking down from the finished string. 0 Again, Could also finish on a G chord. This is what I call the finger style G, cause we could. When we play this G, we can play the melody uh and the chord at the same time, cos we have this finger free. Uh I will be doing a chords melody arrangement of this one in the near future. Um, so check that one out. It should be from the summer of 2018 onwards, that, that it should be, it will be for free on the website and on YouTube. But let's have a full, um, look at this one from the top all the way through. Remember it is the joins that are always trickier. It's always trickier playing the full thing, you know, we got uh 16 bars here, 16 bars in this one in total. Um, so it's, it's one of those things. It's gonna take a a little bit longer to get that all. The way through than it is just to get um a few bars at a time. But here's an example of it from the top. I will again indicate when we change er line, when we're on a fresh line on the tab. Here we go. Second line. Third line, starting with the thumb again. Fourth line An optional end on the G chord. To make it sound like it's finished. That is how to play Oh Danny Boy. I hope you're enjoying learning these melodies along with me. Let's get onto the next one now.