Irish Bouzouki Lesson - Wild Mountain Thyme Part 1

Introduction hey this is Robin from Robin Jones music um and today we are doing a sample lesson on some crosspicking techniques on the Irish pizuki uh we're going to try and learn some techniques to help us accompany a famous traditional song called wild mountain time also known as um will you go Lassie go so you may know the song already U but if you don't this is what it sounds like Song Demo [Music] oh the summer time is coming and the leaves are sweetly blue in the wild mountain time go along the blooming Heather will you r as he go and we'll all go down together to P Wild Mountain T oh long all blo in he will you go lazy go okay so obviously it's not a singing lesson um but I just wanted to give you a sense of what the song is and how the bazooki can cooperate with that song so the first thing that we need to Cross Picking Pattern um think about is a crosspicking pattern so we're going to you'll notice I've got my cappo on my second fret um so you might want to do the same just to follow along with me here um if you place your first finger on second fret g string you're going to have um a d chord now once you've got your finger in that position I want to try this cross- picking pattern which goes like this you're going to pick g d a d a d right so you pick all four strings and then repeat the top two and that gives you a three four rhythm right so you're like one and two and three and one and two and three and one and two and three and one and two and three and okay one important point about that is that we are using alternate picking there because generally picking rules are you pick down on the beat and up off the beat so the way we pick these strings is going to have to respond to that so it's going to have to be down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up okay so you might want to take a little bit of time just to practice that maybe pause the video uh you're going for consistency in in the right hand there you want it to be doing exactly the same thing every time um g d a d a d um that's the name of the game consistency um and you know it's only as you're practicing it you're looking at maybe one chord the D chord you can look at your right hand make sure it's doing what you want it to do down up down up down up g d a d a d one and two and three and one and two and three Chord Progression - Line 1 and okay when you think you're feeling pretty good on that crosspicking pattern the next step is um to get our core progression for this song so there are four lines to this song um and we're going to learn them one by one so line one is bar of d a bar of G and then two more bars of d right so G chord which you may know um starts where you put your first finger on second fret a and that's a G chord so we can try that first line straight away it's going to be a d D and 2 and 3 and G and 2 and 3 and d and 2 and 3 and d and two and three and okay that's line one four bars if you want to kind of think about how that works in the song you know oh the summer pardon me oh the summer time is coming okay that's what we've just done there okay maybe take a pause um and just practice the smoothness of those transitions try not to let the chord change confuse what your right hand is meant to be doing there um so okay we'll Chord Progression - Line 2 move on to line two line two is two bars of G and then two bars of D so same chords as we already have we're going to go two G's g g d d okay so that's your second line of the song the leaves are sweetly [Applause] blooming okay so maybe just take a minute to practice that chord change make sure everything is staying as it should be in the right hand down up down up down up g d a d a Chord Progression - Line 3 d okay line three is probably the most difficult line it it's going to start on a g then we're going to go to an a chord this might be a new one uh this is second fret G second fret D open a and second fret top D so that's an a chord and then we're going to move up to this chord which is a B minor now the way we hold this is fourth fret G fourth fret D second fret a and open top D so this third line runs g a b minor B minor so you got two bars of B minor at the end this is a hard one to do in terms of your chord changes so it would sound like this g a b minor B minor okay and if you think about the song [Music] that's okay so maybe pause the video then and just have a little practice of those cord changes they are quite tough changes then fourth and final line uh of Chord Progression - Line 4 the song is going to be a g a g g so you got g a g g so with the cross picking that's going to sound like [Music] this and in the context of the song that's long the BL he okay so once you've remembered that chord progression you've actually got the whole song the verse and the chorus are exactly the same um and you can use that to accompany yourself singing or to accompany other people um the great Applying the Cross Picking Pattern Elsewhere thing about this crosspicking pattern that we're learning is that if you learn it really well you'll be able to apply it to other songs so um for example in the Craig and white hair by Derry Farrell a great performance um of his on YouTube um he uses this cross picking pattern but he does it very [Music] fast okay not perfect run but you can see what I mean right it's it's the same cross picking one and two and three two and and um but you know he's doing it at a much higher speed um and this cross piing pent would work for any song um in a three four time signature if it's a Walt yeah if you count in threes so another good example might be um of a folk song Something Like cadonia by douge mlan um you you know the courts the Rhythm uh that we're talking about here would work for that let me tell you that I love you and I think about you all the time calonia you're calling me now I am going on and two and and one and 2 and and down down up down up down up down up down down up down down okay I think I get you get the idea so if you practice that cross picking pattern thoroughly it will uh come in very very handy uh in many other places um so thank you for listening I hope you've enjoyed the lesson um the next Next Steps - Integrating Melody thing we need to do for this now is to learn how to integrate Melody into the chord progression um so something that's you know maybe an instrumental section which maybe sounds something like this [Music] okay so if you learned this lesson thoroughly you'll be able to move on to that um and if you'd like to learn the rest of that Arrangement um you can visit my website www. robobin jonesm music.com where you can download an online lesson um and for that you can pay me however much you think is fair uh it could be as little as a penny um so and I'm also always available for private lessons if you would like to send me a message I'd be happy to organize a one-on-one Zoom lesson um and uh yeah thanks for listening hope you have fun with this one