Learn to Play "Rocky Road to Dublin"
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"Rocky Road to Dublin" is an instantly recognizable and rousing Irish song. Play through the first few bars with this excerpt from Irish Songs for Guitar.
Posted by Danny Carnahan
Excerpted from Irish Songs for Guitar
“Rocky Road to Dublin” is probably more often performed as a dance tune than sung. With that in mind, the arrangement here is really just the tune, fleshed out with some implied and fragmentary chords. When you sing it you’ll be singing mostly in unison with the guitar, which can be great fun. And you get an instrumental session tune as a bonus.
Each verse is made up of a pair of four-bar phrases that repeat, followed by the five-bar chorus and as long a diddly-diddly D vamp as you like before the next verse. In the audio, you’ll notice variations in the repeated phrases that may deviate a little from the written notation here. Not to worry. Hitting a different note in the arpeggio won’t hurt a thing as long as you keep the rhythmic pattern grooving along.
Excerpted from Irish Songs for Guitar
