Below is the lesson for “The Black Velvet Band”.

Helpful Tips

Learn a beautiful Irish folk song presented as a beginner-friendly fingerstyle arrangement. In the performance and throughout the lesson, Matt uses his thumb for fingerpicking and strumming. While this fingerpicking approach works well for the piece, feel free to experiment with using a 3 or 4-finger approach.

One challenging aspect of this piece is that it includes a few barre chords. If you need help with barre chord technique, check out this lesson and this one. Finally, as you perform the piece, focus on sustain. We want every note and chord to ring into the next one.