Parting Glass Instrumental Tutorial
Transcription pack for this is free for ALL Patreon followers! Download it here.
Now, in the interest of capitalizing on relevance and the almighty algorithm, should I have put this video out before St. Paddy's Day? Yes, yes, I should have. But this era of Lindsay has a harder time staying up late editing videos, so things come out on the timeline they come out on. And as my favorite meme this week goes, "An Irish musician isn't just for St. Patrick's Day...they're for life." This song needs no holiday to be relevant!
Anyways, all jokes about my laziness aside, I'm excited to debut this arrangement and this tune learning approach with you all! As I've been working with different students on chord-melody arrangements like this, I've seen how it can be difficult getting the hang of them. I wanted to find a way to make it more approachable and to help players develop the skills needed to get to a final version of the song.
It finally occurred to me to break it down for students the same way I break it down for myself: start with the melody, play around with phrasing and ornamentation, work out and drill the chords, and then mash it all together. So to that end, the transcription pack for this one has two sheets: the full arrangement, and the melody and chord progression broken down so they can easily be practiced separately. (Watch the video if you want to hear my soapbox about why I think you should try this!)
The beauty of this approach is you can dive in wherever your skill level is. More advanced players can skip to the full arrangement, while folks new to this can start with the melody and chord breakdowns and work on those skill sets first. I may not do a full breakdown video like this for all future tunes, but if folks find this helpful, I will take this approach with the transcription packs on all tunes going forward.
Curious to hear what you all think! Even if you don't plan to learn this particular tune, let me know if this approach is compelling to you and if you think it would be helpful in learning another tune.
Timestamps:
0:00 - Play through basic arrangement
0:56 - Intro/explanation
2:04 - Isolating the melody
4:05 - Basic melody play along
5:05 - Developing ornamentation by singing along
6:20 - Demonstration of singing melody while playing
7:37 - Isolating the chord progression
10:30 - Chord progression play along
11:45 - Closing thoughts
13:10 - Final play through with ornamentation
Patreon subscribers got first look at this tutorial and transcription pack. Subscribe now if you want early access, too!
