“Rights of Man” is one of the tunes that always sticks out to me when I’m at an Irish session. As all the melodies go by I find myself thinking “that one is cool!” When arranging this version my goal was to make it easy. One could easily cloud the arrangement with ornamentations. Once you get the timing and feel of the melody you can always go back and add in the fancy ornamentations.

If you are familiar with this tune you will note the some folks include the “triplet” run in the first two measures. While this is flashy, I personally find it subtracts from the feel of the melody. It’s almost a corny run to me. I was torn whether or not to include the “Rights of Man” triplet opening lick in this arrangement. I will not be offended if you throw the triplet lick in there but I really like this eighth note version for some reason.

When playing backup to Irish melodies there are always several chord options. What is presented here is just one possible way to play the chords to “Rights of Man.” I may have gotten carried away with too many chords but even still they are very straight forward. If you don’t feel confident in playing the dreaded Bm chord at measure 14 you can play D instead.

Make sure to click on the included lesson mp3 to hear the melody and chords in action. As always, if you have questions or comments on this e-lesson just drop me a line at [email protected]

Rights of Man

Arranged by Mickey Abraham