Lick of the Day: Irish Fiddle Jig

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This is an old Irish-jig-style fiddle melody I learned years ago. It's a fun, bouncy line and is surprisingly easy to play, incorporating flatpicked notes with hammer-ons and pull-offs used in combination as bouncy trills. It's played in drop-D tuning (low to high, D A D G B E) with a capo at the seventh fret. I play the melody as if it were in the key of D, but because of the capo transposition it sounds a perfect fifth higher, in the key of A.

I begin in second position with a hammer-on/double-pull-off combination on the G string, using my index and ring fingers. On the first beat, I also pick the open fourth string and let it ring as a bass drone to provide some harmonic self-accompaniment. I do this at a few different points throughout the melody, in some cases including the bottom three open strings, which produces a full, regal-sounding D5 chord.

For the last two notes of bar 1, I momentarily shift my hand back one fret to first position, using the index and ring fingers to fret the notes on the B string before shifting back to second position again at the beginning of bar 2.

On beat three of bar 2, I pick the open fifth string along with the melody note on the fourth string to imply an Am7 chord.

From bar 5 onward, I keep my fret hand in first position and bring my middle finger into play to fret the notes that fall at the second fret on any given string. I use the pinkie only once, to fret the F# note at the fourth fret on the fourth string in bar 8. I do this for the convenience of staying in first position.

Practice the lick slowly at first and observe the picking strokes indicated. You'll notice that sometimes I picked consecutive downstrokes, which I did for the sake of achieving a certain nuance of articulation. Feel free to employ different pick strokes as you may see fit.

The tempo is 117 beats per minute, 94 for slow practice.