Lately I’ve had O Danny Boy on my brain. A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled onto the melody while messing around with the blues scale in E-minor. I fleshed out the melody in G-major (same notes as E-minor; just starts and finished with G instead of E). Then came the hard part (at least for me): figuring out a pretty chord pattern. I managed to come up with some chords that work and posted them here. (For an alternative set of chords in G-major, click here.)
Since then I’ve been working on the next step: a solo arrangement. Most of it I figured out on my own. I took my work product to my weekly guitar lesson, and my teacher, Vince Marini, helped me with it.
This weekend I translated that combined work product into a this tablature (PDF). Mainly it’s playing the melody off the chords—mostly by strumming the chord, starting with the string playing the desired bass note and stopping at the string playing the melody note. I also tried to work in some bass fill with accompaniment I was hearing in my head (and had probably heard before in my ears). It’s simple enough that I can learn to play it, and (I hope) just complex enough to be interesting. If you play guitar, I’d be complimented if you’d download it, give it a spin, and tell me what you think.
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