Guitar Noise

First, here’s the tuning we’ll use:

Next, a quick word: one of the things that initially kept me from trying this song was the arrangement of the original recording. The guitars in this song are very effects-laden, especially in the introduction and during the instrumental and I didn’t think I’d be able to reproduce this. I totally missed the song that was beneath all the glitter. If you want to get good at arranging songs, it is equally important for you to be able to hear a song “stripped down” to its bare bones as it is to be able to imagine dressing it up. Musically, Take It Back is pretty simple as you can see here in the first verse:

the song is in the key of G, but with this tuning we’ll play it in E with the capo on the third fret. This will allow us to play some very powerful first position chords with a lot of open strings (on the D chord I use my thumb to cover the second fret on sixth string):

You can already hear that we’re putting a lot of “oooommph” into our arrangement to compensate for the lack of both band and effects. To propel the song along in the absence of both echo and drums, we’ll use a double-time strumming pattern with a lot of sixteenth notes as well as flipping between the root chord, the “add 9″ and the suspended fourth:

Okay, ready? No, not quite. Remember what I was saying earlier about not seeing the song through the arrangement? Well, after having said that, I’m now going to say that we need to spruce up this arrangement a bit. Of course, I’m using the word “we” rather liberally here. When I first arranged Take It Back I wanted to somehow work the instrumental break (between verses two and three on the recorded version) into mine. I just like that lilting melody that seems so at odds with the lyrics. But when playing single acoustic guitar, I find that one of the worst things to do is to break up a fast paced song with a slower melodic instrumental break … no matter how beautiful it may be. There are, of course, exceptions to this, but I didn’t feel that this was one of them. So after thinking about it for a while and trying out a few ideas I came up with using it as an introduction instead. This actually worked out well on two counts: for me, I got the pleasure of playing with a little bit of a dramatic flourish. I could start out slow and pretty and then work up to the tempo I wanted … building in speed and intensity until I launched into the song, pounding out the rhythm like the rain and the crashing surf described in the first verse. “Spinning into darkness” indeed! Secondly, the listeners got to do the “I know this…I know I know this…” game; those who knew the instrumental melody were actually thinking, “Is he really going to play that?”

Here’s a transcription of my “intro.” Remember that you should play it relatively freely, trying to bring the “real” instrumental break to mind without hitting someone over the head with it:

Okay, now we’re ready. Don’t forget to use the E and A strumming patterns during the first four lines of the verse.

In case you’re wondering, I’m pretty sure that no one is born knowing this stuff. It comes from studying and then applying the things one learns to the situation. This is why it’s important to try new things. And to make notes of what works and what doesn’t. You’ll be surprised at how something that doesn’t quite fit the bill today will be exactly what you need a month or so from now. And speaking of new things, next time out we’ll use alternate tuning as a writing tool. It’ll be a lot of fun.

And as always, please feel free to email me with any questions, comments, and such. You can reach me direct at dhodgeguitar@aol.com or leave a note on the Guitar Forums. And speaking of pages (and alternate tunings!), check out the updated guitar tuning page! Paul’s put in a lot of work on this and I think you’ll find you can answer a lot of your tuning questions right there.