About Celtic Picking
Traditional Celtic music, arranged for fingerstyle guitar — with playability in mind.
Celtic Picking is a collection of fingerstyle guitar arrangements of traditional Irish and Scottish tunes, along with other melodies from the Celtic musical tradition.
The idea behind this project is simple: I want to make these beautiful melodies enjoyable to play on an acoustic guitar in standard tuning (EADGBE) or Dropped D (DADGBE).
My arrangements combine melody, bass notes, and occasional harmonies into self-contained pieces for solo guitar. Rather than trying to reproduce every detail of a traditional performance, I aim to capture the character of each tune while making the most of what the guitar has to offer.
Playability Comes First
A central principle of Celtic Picking is good playability.
An arrangement should feel natural under the fingers. This means paying attention to comfortable fingerings, manageable stretches, smooth transitions, and the balance between melody and accompaniment.
I prefer a relatively simple arrangement that flows naturally over a more elaborate one that is unnecessarily difficult to play.
This doesn’t mean that every piece is easy. It means that technical difficulty should serve the music, rather than become an end in itself.
Finding the Right Key and Tuning
Traditional Irish and Scottish tunes are often played in keys that work particularly well on instruments such as the fiddle, flute, or whistle. Those same keys are not always ideal for solo fingerstyle guitar.
That’s why I sometimes transpose a tune into a different key.
Changing the key can make a remarkable difference to playability. It may allow the use of open strings, create more natural bass lines, simplify fingerings, or make it easier to combine melody and harmony.
I also use Dropped D tuning (DADGBE) when it offers a musical advantage. Lowering the sixth string from E to D extends the bass range and provides a resonant low D, which can be especially effective in Celtic music.
However, I deliberately keep things simple when it comes to tunings. All arrangements use either standard tuning or Dropped D. No elaborate retuning is necessary.
My goal is not necessarily to preserve the original key, but to preserve the musical character of the tune while finding a version that works particularly well on the guitar.
Made for Myself, Shared with Others
Celtic Picking is a personal music project.
I create these arrangements primarily for my own enjoyment and musical exploration. I like working out how a traditional melody can become a satisfying solo guitar piece, experimenting with fingerings, harmonies, keys, and bass lines until the result feels right.
Once I’ve created an arrangement for myself, I might as well share it with other guitarists who enjoy this kind of music.
There’s no grand commercial ambition behind Celtic Picking. It’s simply a way of making my musical work available to others.
Free or for a Small Fee
My approach to sharing these materials is straightforward: free or for a small fee.
Some materials are freely available, while others come with a modest price tag.
These small fees are not about building a business or turning a hobby into a major source of income. They simply help me cover some of the ongoing costs of creating and sharing music — particularly the software I use and the hosting that keeps the project online.
I enjoy making these arrangements, and I enjoy sharing them. If a small contribution helps keep the project running, that’s a welcome bonus.
A Personal Approach to Traditional Music
Celtic Picking is not about producing definitive versions of traditional tunes. These melodies have travelled through generations, instruments, regions, and individual interpretations. Variation is part of their tradition.
My arrangements are simply my own way of exploring this music on the guitar.
I hope they offer other guitarists an enjoyable and accessible way to discover the rich world of Celtic melodies — one tune at a time.
