This is one of the reasons that first few of Guitar Noise’s easy songs for beginners lessons use songs that  involve just two or three chord changes, and relatively easy chord changes at that. It’s also why that songs have been of a moderate tempo, as well. The most fundamental thing you can learn when you start to play is how to make smooth, confident and correct switches between chords, and then to make sure you can perform those chord changes in rhytym while playing the song in question.

Liner Notes: The Wallflowers

Hailing from Los Angeles CA, The Wallflowers are fronted by singer-songwriter Jakob Dylan, the son of Bob Dylan. The song Three Marlenas is from their 1996 album Bringing Down The Horse.. The band is reportedly in the studio working on a new album as recently as January 2012.

If you enjoyed this lesson you will also like learning some of the other songs from our Easy Songs for Beginners Lessons.

In this lesson, we’re going to up the ante a bit but not in a scary way. In fact, what we’re going to do is essentially let the guitar transform a two chord song into a three chord song for us! I know this sounds a bit weird, but I think you’ll catch on fairly quickly.

The song is Three Marlenas, written by Jakob Dylan. You can find it one the Wallflowers’ 1996 (man, was it that long ago?) CD, Bringing Down The Horse.

On the disc, the song is in the key of Eb Major and, before we go any further, let’s talk about that! If I happen to say a song is in, say Eb Major, for instance, this means that this is how I have worked it out on my guitar (standardly tuned) playing along with my CD player. I have seen this (and many other songs) tabbed out in various keys using various voicings of various chords. Please understand that I am showing you how I understand the song to be played and I am not in any way saying (in my best James Earl Jones’ voice), “THIS IS HOW IT IS DONE.” Those of you who have read my columns for any length of time know that (no pun intended) this is not my style. Not at all. If you have another interpretation of this or any song we go over that you like better than the one I demonstrate, then by all means, please use it. None of our lessons here at Guitar Noise is meant to be THE authorized of anything. These are just arrangements, ways to play the song as you would if you were performing by yourself or playing it with another person singing.

So, moving onward, by playing along with the CD, I’ve found Three Marlenas to be in the key of Eb major and also that the two prominent chords are Eb and Ab. Just reading that gives me the heebie jeebies! So, without a second thought about it, I decide to use my capo and find a better key in which to play this song, rather than to subject myself to these particular chords. If you’re not familiar with what a capo is and what it can be used for, I suggest you take a moment and read the column I wrote about a year ago (the one with the incredibly long title(The Underappreciated Art of Using a Capo)) on this subject. It also would be worth your while to check out our article on transposing, Turning Notes into Stone.

When I see the signature of Eb major, my usual choice is to think about playing in the key of D major instead. The key of D is simply a half-step lower in than Eb, so if I put my capo on the first fret of my guitar and strum a D major chord, I am actually playing an Eb major chord. Using the same logic, I realize that a G major chord, played with the capo on the first fret, is now an Ab chord. Our crisis, brought on by the prospect of playing Eb and Ab chords throughout the song, has been averted.

And for the sake of simplicity, we will now discuss this song in terms of the key of D Major. I know that this may be a bit confusing to some of you, especially those just starting out, and I apologize for that. Please feel free to write me and I’ll be happy to go over it in greater detail.

I’m sure that most of you know how to play both the D and the G chords, but I’m going to throw you off a bit here by introducing a different voicing for the G chord that some of you might not be familiar with:

My suggestions as to which fingers to use where on these chords are as follows:

Okay, now let’s take a quick moment and look at this “new” G chord.

As you can see, the only difference between the “standard” G and this particular voicing is the use of the D note (third fret on the B string) instead of the open B string itself. Since we know that the G chord is made up of the G (the root), B (the third) and D (the fifth) notes, you can see that all we’re really doing is changing the number of D notes we’re using in our chord. Some people like to call this a “G5″ or a “G add 5″ but neither of these names makes sense. “G5″ usually means playing what guitarists think of as a G “power chord,” namely, just using the G (root) and D (the fifth. or “5″ if you will) and “add 5″ makes even less sense since the normal G chord already has the D note in it. This new chord voicing is still just a G chord, pure and simple.

But why play this voicing of G in the first place? Well, if any of you have read the column I cowrote with Abel Petneki concerning sustained tones, you might already have a good idea. But I also have something a little more fun and practical in mind.

If you listen to the song on the CD, you could with me that it sounds like there are more than two chords in this song. And you would be right to do so. There is indeed another chord. You can hear it in between the D and G chords, both from D to G and then from G back to D again. It’s a rather peculiar chord at that, isn’t it? It sounds very vague.

What is going on here is we are letting the guitar do some of the chord changing work for us. If you look at the fingering of our D and G chords, you see that, because of this new voicing of the G chord, we don’t have to change the position of our ring finger when we change chords. It stays in one place. So, we’re going to start out with our D chord and then simply remove our index and middle fingers from the strings (all the while keeping the ring finger firmly in place) in preparation of placing them on their new positions on the G chord. And if we strum the strings while doing this, we end up with the following chord:

Do you hear and see what we’re doing? The D note, here being played on the third fret of the B string, is our sustained tone. It links all three of these chords together, serving as an anchor amidst all the changes. And this third chord, the “A7 sus4″ is nothing more than us strumming the guitar in the middle of a chord change! And the cool thing is that it works both ways – from D to G and from G to D. Because the notes involved not only form a chord, but a chord that perfectly fits in as part of the song, it carries us along these changes while creating a transition chord at the same time.

Now, I could call this chord by other names as well, but I am going with “A7 sus4″ because naming it so gives me, in essence, a variation of a I – V – IV chord progression. This is a fairly common progression and it easy to explain to someone playing along with me on an instrument other than a guitar. Now, having explained that, I’ll change my mind (and simply for a selfish reason!) From here on out, and simply to keep me from writing out “A7 sus4″ all the time, we’ll just call it A. But we all know it’s not really an A chord, okay? Here, then, are all the chords we are going to use:

When you play this progression back and forth, D to A to G to A to D, etc., you should note two things. First, it sounds very smooth and flowing. Second, the reason it sounds so smooth and flowing is not only because of the chord voicing (owing to the fingering), but also because you should be able to play it that way. By releasing your fingers (but not the ring finger!) to get the A chord, you are sort of giving you guitar and yourself some breathing space between the two main chords. And you should also find, even with a minimum of practice, that your changes will come very naturally. You should be able to play this along with the CD (or “at speed,” if you prefer) in no time at all!

Another thing I especially like about this song, from a beginner’s standpoint, anyway, is that it gives you a chance to work on the “range” of your strumming. Each chord has its bass note on a different string: the open D for the D, the open A for the “A” and the G note on the third fret of the low E string for the G chord. As you’re strumming the chords, it’s a good idea to work on concentrating on just how many strings you’re playing with each successive chord.

As for a strumming pattern, this is a fairly easy one to get you started. I also took the liberty of tossing in a percussive stroke (designated by the ” * “ ):

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

A very important thing to notice here is that, after the initial first beat, we’re jumping the gun a bit – changing the next measure’s chord on the half beat before the one. This is called an “anticipation.” You can read all about those in the ”Music Guide Mini-Lesson” that will be up online in the next few weeks or,  if you’d like a head start on the subject, might I suggest reading Dan Lasley’s bass guitar lesson, Playing Along.

Remember that if this particular strumming pattern seems difficult at first, slow everything down and count it out as deliberately as possible. This song, like the others we’ve done up to this point is of a medium tempo. It really won’t take you long at all to get up to speed.

Oh, that strumming pattern and that chord progression is the entire song, music-wise. Here’s the lyrics:

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns,  or even a song, riff or lead you’d like to see covered in a future “Songs For Beginners” article. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next time…

Peace

Three Marlenas – The Wallflowers was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

But at some point, the individual personality of the fledgling guitarist starts to emerge. It may be in very minute details, like a favorite picking pattern or a fill that he or she does extremely well and (consequently throws in wherever the situation allows). From these basic riffs, fills and rhythm patterns will blossom leads and more complex techniques. We call this growth a musician’s style.

Liner Notes: America

A Horse With No Name by America is a classic folk-rock song written by Dewey Bunnell. This song bears some resemblance to Neil Young’s folky acoustic rock. Ironically, back in 1972 “A Horse With No Name” is the song that replaced Neil’s “Heart of Gold” as the number one single in America.

Learn the basic chords and strumming of this song in Part 1 – The Simplest Song.

If you enjoyed this lesson you will also like learning some of the other songs from our Easy Songs for Beginners Lessons.

So how and when does one start to develop a style? Well, personally (obviously), I think that one’s style starts at day one. When you learned your first song, did you copy the strumming pattern right off the recording? Maybe you followed your guitar teacher’s suggestions. Maybe you came up with something all your own. And maybe you did all of the above.

It’s like cooking or telling a joke. You get the basics from somewhere and then you add your own touches (or not) to make it fit your tastes (or to cater to someone else’s tastes). Well, that’s essentially the same thing that happens with your playing.

In our lesson on “Horse With No Name,” you learned the basics of the song along with some simple strumming patterns. Today we’re going to work on adding a bit of accessories to the basic model. Feel free to use any of the ideas, riffs or leads we develop here or use them as a foundation on which to create your own musical ideas.

Picking And Choosing

It amy seem that I probably never play the guitar ’cause I seem to spend so much time thinking about things. The reality is that there are a lot of things to think about before (and while) playing. Most of it takes less time to deal with then you will spend in reading this sentence. Do I know the song? How well do I know this song? How many people are playing the song? What instruments are they going to play? What sort of role should I play? What role do I want to play? Do I intend to sing? What key is the song in? Do I want to play it in that key or use a capo? What chords changes are there going to be? Will those chord changes affect the scales I plan to use? Do I need to rethink my fills or leads? What sort of tone or effects do I think will work? All this (and more) passes through my head when I’m getting ready to strum the first chord or join in with a fill or sing a harmony part or whatever.

Let’s start with the obvious things first. As we discussed last time, the song is in the key of E minor and consists entirely of two chords: the aforementioned Em and the mysterious Dadd6add9. Each chord lasts for four beats; there is no variations to the pattern. It truly doesn’t get much simpler than this.

You’ll also recall that last time, we came up with this simple strumming pattern:

Listening or playing the song again, I realize that virtually all the singing takes place in the Em measures of any given verse. The last two beats of an Dadd6add9 measure, except during the chorus, are usually free of vocal traffic. This makes those spaces particularly attractive spots to throw in a fill. I don’t have to worry about stepping on the vocal line (which could be bad) or trying to sing and play something a little complex at the same time (which, in my case, could be really bad!).

Now a fill, as we discussed in Tricks Of The Trade, need not be some flash of technical wizardry. It can be something as simple as a well placed hammer-on:

I could easily use either of these fills while playing the song by myself or while playing with someone else. If I trust my fellow guitarist(s) with the rhythm, and if someone else were singing the lead, I might attempt something slightly more complicated, like any of these:

Again, there’s nothing phenomenally complicated here. Fill A is an “expanded” version of our first fill. Fill B utilizes a slide from the A note to the B and then some pick-offs to get us back again. More (and simpler) pick-offs are used in Fill C while, a combination of slides, pick-off and hammer-ons is used for Fill D. Fill E is something I might use if there is no bass player and I want to give a bit more interesting bottom to the song.

Mood is important, too. If I think it’s important to have something to steady the beat, then I will not only play something simple, but play the same one over and over again. If I’m being a bit playful, then who knows what fill might pop up at its designated place.

Let me stress that these are not “be all and end all” transcriptions. Any riff or fill you learn is meant to be played with, to be tinkered with so that you can use it when and where you think it might add a bit of zest to a song. Add an additional note or two here or there. Stretch or shrink the timing to your liking. Think of a fill as silly putty, if you will. But above all, have fun.

The Origin Of The Species

Ah, but I hear someone asking the age-old question, “Where do they come from? If I only have notes, how do I turn them into a fill or a lead?” This answer is going to really disappoint some of you (and really excite others). There is no “formula.” You simply arrange the notes into a way that (A) you can play, (B) that sounds good, to you at least, and (hopefully) (C) that fits the song.

Points A and B are almost constantly evolving as you learn to play. By starting out with riffs and fills, you subconsciously develop playing patterns, just as you do with strumming patterns. As a consequence, certain things might be easier for you to play than others. Some people learn “the box” and work it to death. Eric Clapton has mentioned in interviews that he tried to learn as many riffs and leads as he could off records and then worked on incorporating them (or altered versions of them) into the music he was playing.

Notes (and the patterns in which we play them) are often dictated by scales. The scales are (again, usually) determined by the tonality and the modality of the song itself. This is where things can get a bit confusing. Take Horse With No Name, for example. The song is in E minor. E minor is the relative minor of G major. So if we were to look at the music for this song, it will undoubtedly be written with one sharp (F#) on the staff. And this is indeed the case.

But, as we’ve read in Scales Within Scales, there are many E minor scales and it is conceivable that we don’t want to even work with any of them. How do we choose what to use? In most cases, the music will initially do that for us. Since there are only two chords used in the song, let’s look at the make up of each:

Remember, too, that we do not play all the Dadd6add9 notes on the guitar. With the fingering used in the song, the G# and C# are eliminated from the chord.

Technically, we can make the case that a G could easily stand in place of the G#, especially if we call decide to call our Dadd6add0 an F#m (b)13. This would be much in keeping the center of the song in E minor and that is something that is not open to debate. Everything about the song – the chords, the melody and the harmonies – dictate that the tonality of this song is E minor. The Em chord (with its notes of E, G and B) is its tonal center.

But the “flavor,” or modality, is still up for grabs. Looking at all these notes (and eliminating the G# for the reasons we’ve discussed), I see that there are two sharps (F# and C#) to deal with. Two sharps dictates the key of D major. Again referring to Scales Within Scales (or to our soon to be new-and-improved scales and modes page), I know that in this scenario I can use an E Dorian scale in order to get the notes that I want.

Another question, though: Why can’t I simply use the D major scale? What is the difference between the D major scale and the E Dorian scale? And the answer to this is probably as close to Zen as any answer I’ve ever given you: There is no difference between the two and there is every difference. Here’s why:

Each note in the E dorian scale has an exact counterpart in the D major scale. But because you start (and end) one scale on D and the other on E changes the whole color of the scale. If you refuse to believe that, try singing each scale note for note (and use an instrument to accompany you). Sing “do, re, mi…” if you like or simply to phrases. By making E the focal point (the “I,” “do” or root) of the scale, by making E the “center” of tonality, you change how each and every note corresponds and interacts. Yes, for all intents and purposes, you are playing the notes of the D major scale but they no longer have anything to do with that particular tonality. This is a difficult concept to grasp and we will be devoting more time to it this winter, but I hope this gets you started to think in the right direction. You can check out any of our many articles on the subject here at Guitar Noise, such as Part 6 of our Turning Scales into Solos series.

Take a look at the lead from the original recording and you should see that it’s pretty much created from simply going up and down the E Dorian scale:

It’s important to point out here that this lead finishes with three different acoustic guitars playing lead in the final two measures. One trills away on the E note at the twelfth fret of the high E string (as shown in the last example) while the other two play a series of descending triplets like this:

It’s close to impossible to play all three of these guitar parts at once on a single guitar, which is one of the reasons why you shouldn’t worry a lot about playing everything according to the original recording. However, you can use the open high E string as a droning note and play one of the other two guitar sequences an octave lower as well, las in the first two of the following these examples:

The last line of the above example uses the original “3rd Soloing Guitar” line from Example 5 and pairs it with the open high E string. You might find this the easiest of the three to play.

Making adjustments of this nature is part of how you develop your own style. It’s also a perfect example of what I told you at the beginning of this section. Point A, being “what I can play,” will (hopefully) always be improving and, because of that, my leads will become more interesting (technically and musically) as I evolve as a guitarist. And as I expand my musical tastes (and abilities), “what sounds good” (Point B) will also change radically. It’s up to me to make sure that Point C (“fitting the lead to the song”) follows suit.

This is how your “style” develops. It is a natural process that will occur as fast or as slow as your musical abilities do. Let it happen.

Sharing The Wealth

And then share it with the world. I can tend to go on and on about things, but this will always bear repeating: music is meant to be shared. It is its nature. The high that you get from playing is amplified enormously when playing for and (more so) with others.

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or topics you’d like to see covered in future columns. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

More in this series

Learn the basic chords and strumming of this song in Part 1 – The Simplest Song.

A Horse With No Name – Adding Some Personal Touches was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Really and truly, you can learn to play a song in less time than it takes to talk about doing it. But the problem comes with trying to figure out what you have actually learned and whether or not you will be able to apply that knowledge down the road. In my mind, simply copying something rarely teaches anyone anything. Oh, there will always be exceptions, the geniuses who will take the time to figure things out for themselves, but most of us tend toward the lazy. Better to start in learning the “whys” along with the “hows” than to try to piece it all together later.

Liner Notes: America

A Horse With No Name by America is a classic folk-rock song written by Dewey Bunnell. This song bears some resemblance to Neil Young’s folky acoustic rock. Ironically, back in 1972 “A Horse With No Name” is the song that replaced Neil’s “Heart of Gold” as the number one single in America.

Spice up your strumming and learn the solo from the original recording in Part 2 – Adding Some Personal Touches.

If you enjoyed this lesson you will also like learning some of the other songs from our Easy Songs for Beginners Lessons.

This lesson, our very first Guitar Noise “Easy Songs for Beginners” lesson is meant to help you do both – learn a song and learn about the music that goes into it so you can actually play it and use what you learn in other songs you play. After we pick up the basics of the song, then we’ll have some fun “really playing” it by adding some strumming variations (including a very basic bass part) and in the lesson, Adding Some Personal Touches, we’ll also add some rhythm riffs (fills) and some leads (ranging from easy to intermediate). You didn’t think I was going to let you get away and not learn something, did you? It should (hopefully) be harmless…

The Absolute Basic Model

Say you’ve never played the guitar before? Well, step right up here and I’ll make you a guitar god for only $49.99 or my name ain’t…

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It gets really crazy sometimes, doesn’t it? Well, in order to proceed, I am going to (gasp) assume that you’ve held a guitar before and that you are somewhat familiar with the terminology. If not, then you need to start out with our Absolute Beginners Chords lesson. Just get to the E minor chord (it’s the first one) and you’ll be all set. No lie!

Because this lesson’s song is Horse With No Name, written by Dewey Bunnell of the group, America. The entire song consists of two chords, one of which (E minor)  you know and the other we can argue about almost forever:

The E minor chord is, as you’ve discovered, one of the simplest to learn, but how on earth did Mr. Bunnell come up with the second chord? Well, I certainly wasn’t there when he did it, but I think it’s a pretty fair guess that it was either the result of a mistake or just exploring the fretboard. Either way, I’m sure he looked up and said to himself, “Hey, this sounds pretty cool!”

Both chords are easy enough to do. An Em requires you to use the second fret on both the fourth and fifth (D and A) strings while the Dadd6add9 simply has you move your two fingers to the next outer strings, the third and sixth (or G and low E). It’s not a hard change and it requires little thinking. Use whatever finger is on the second fret of the A string (it will probably be the index or middle) to play the second fret of the low E. Likewise, simply shift whatever finger is on the second fret of the D string to the second fret of the G. It’s kind of like doing jumping jacks with your fingers!

(And yes, we’re going to discuss this “Dadd6add9″ later. If you can’t wait, just skip down to the section entitled, “What is that chord really?”)

The rhythm of the song is in 4 / 4 time (four beats per measure) and the chords change each and every measure. For starters, do a simple downstroke, either on all four beats or, if you’d like a little variation, on the first, second and fourth beats. Remember that this song is moderately paced – it’s not really fast and not really slow. When you’re first learning a song, go as slow as you have to in order to make comfortable chord changes while keeping the overall beat smooth and steady. This is where a metronome can come in very handy.

Here’s a cheat sheet of how verses and chorus should shape up:

Nothing to it, right? Okay, let’s move on, then…

Tinkering

Usually the first thing a beginner needs to work on is chord recognition and formation. You need to know the chords you want to play and how to finger them on the fretboard. Your next concern will be about being able to change from one chord to the next smoothly and cleanly. With this particular song, both of those concerns become almost minimal and, because of that, you can work instead on your strumming.

You might think I’m a bit nuts about this, but I really can’t stress enough how important it is to work on your rhythm. Not only the fundamental task of keeping a steady beat, but also creating patterns that make the song better, more fun to play and interesting to hear.

But hey, it’s just hitting the strings, so how hard can it be?

Well, not hard at all if you’re aware of it from the start. This is the suggested rhythm I gave you.

An symbol indicates an upstroke and a denotes a downstroke.

Now this will work but it’s hardly interesting except as a tool for helping us to keep time. A rhythm that would be closer to the original would involve working on our upstroke (coming up the strings, toward your head). It would also involve working on the beats in between the beats. The length of a note can be divided almost infinitely, but we’re going to just work with eighth notes for now. So instead of us counting, “1, 2, 3, 4,” we would want to count, “1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and…” The four beats per measure have not speeded up in the slightest. You will probably think that they have, though, if you’re not familiar with this. Don’t worry. It’s not that hard to catch on.

So here is an alternative strumming pattern, complete with the appropriate chords:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Again, start out very slowly if this is new to you. As slowly as you need to in order to count out each beat and to get each stroke in its proper place. You’ll be surprised how easily it will come to you, even if you’ve never tried an upstroke before.

Filling In The Bottom (and sides!)

Once you’re feeling up to speed we can tinker a bit more and add a bass part. Granted, it will not be the most exciting bass line in the world, but if you’re a beginner, it should impress you with how easy it is to add a lot more texture to your playing with such a simple technique.

Here’s how we’ll do it. Whenever we hit the first beat of any given measure, we will strike only the sixth string (which will be the lowest tone on either chord). Just that string and nothing more. When you add in the chords (upstrokes and downstrokes), it should be something like the following example. With this Finale software notation, I indicated downstrokes with “D” and upstrokes with “U” just to make things a little easier:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Using this pattern as a starting point, you can then start to really have fun. One thing I like to do is to play an upstroke on the second beat of the E minor as close to the bridge (as far from the neck as the strings allow) as possible and let it ring through the remaining three beats of the measure, like this:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

You can also pick out individual strings instead of strumming. In the following example, the three highest strings are all picked as upstrokes on the last beat and a half of the measure:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Once you have a couple of patterns that you like and can do without thinking, you’ll find yourself playing “mix and match,” throwing “E minor pattern 1″ with “Dadd6add9 pattern 4″ and what have you. It can become a lot of fun as well as a challenge to see what you can come up with next.

You see, even the simplest of songs can provide you with a lot of interesting opportunities if you are willing to put the time and effort into finding what can be done with it. Or you can simply learn the chords and then move on to your next song. As always, the choice is yours.

What Is That Chord Really?

Okay, let’s look at that second chord. If we examine the notes on each string, this is what we would find:

Last time out (Building Additions and Suspensions) we learned that we could, if we so desired, call this chord by a lot of different names. Who wants to start? Bm7 (add 4)? D6 (add 9)? Hey, how about E9 (sus4)? Those are all viable answers, given the notes of the chord.

We also touched on the fact that the context of the chord (how it is used in a progression) can be vital in helping to determine which chord name we will give it. An important factor in determining the context is the voicing of the chord, meaning not only which notes of a chord we use but where we play them on the guitar. Let’s take another look at both of our chords in this song:

Okay, first let’s establish the key of the song. Now we could do this the easy way: “Gee, David, it starts with an E minor chord and it ends with an E minor chord. Why don’t we just say it’s in E minor?” And I could live with this approach. But take a listen to both chords. Another reason for coming up with the same answer is simply by hearing how much more at ease the Em chord makes us feel. In contrast, the Dadd6add9 sounds unsettled, like it’s got to be going somewhere. Play the chords in reverse order and the Dadd6add9 still doesn’t sound like a resting point, like “home.” It’s just begging for a resolution.

Now, having just played the song to death, one thing that I can tell you is that I like the F# in the bass. It fits well, much better than having a D or E or even an A serving as the root. This, more than anything else, is what makes me decide that F# is going to be the root note on which to build my chord. So if I build a stack of thirds on top of my F# and fill in the notes I have from the chord (using a “-” to indicate a missing note), this is what I get:

You can see that the fifth (C#) and the ninth (G#) are not among the six notes in the chord. Instead, we get a second A. So we can call it F#m13 if we want to stay reasonably simple. Or F#m7 (no 5)(add 4)(add 6) if we want to be absolutely looney about it. But there is a lot to be said for simplicity when trying to write something out. As I mentioned earlier, people can (and do) argue about this sort of thing for ages.

But it does bring up an interesting thought – if you’ve got a chord that has seven notes what do you do? After all, you can only get six notes out of your guitar at a time, which one goes?

Traditionally, the fifth would be the note left out  but, believe it or not, there are instances when the root is the “missing” note (and we’ll be examining chords like this in other Guitar Noise song lessons). But the real determining factor is what notes you are able to finger (or not finger) on your fretboard. For instance, if you strum your guitar (standard tuning) without putting any fingers on the fretboard at all you would have an A11. The notes, from low to high, would be E (fifth), A (root), D (eleventh), G (seventh), B (ninth) and E (fifth again). Here the third (C#) is the missing note. You could always add this by playing it on the 1st (or 6th) string but it sounds perfectly fine as it is. Generally a good rule of thumb with 9th, 11th, and 13th chords is to really try to include the seventh along with the root in order to give it some sense of identity.

Is any of this really that important? Like any knowledge, it all depends on what you want to do with it, and that’s what next week’s topic is all about. You’ll see that by giving our second chord an identity of Dadd6add9, we are helping to determine the modal centers of our harmonies. This is ultimately where our fills and leads will come from. And no, it’s nowhere near as complicated as it sounds!

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or topics you’d like to see covered in future columns. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next week…

Peace

More in this series

Spice up your strumming and learn the solo from the original recording in Part 2 – Adding Some Personal Touches.

A Horse With No Name – The Simplest Song was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

And if you have read any of our “Easy Songs for Beginners” lessons here at Guitar Noise, you have hopefully learned (or at least strongly suspected) that we would like you to learn things besides the songs being taught in these lessons. The songs are usually, in fact, delivery vehicles for the use of music theory or various guitar techniques that you are encouraged to use in all your playing.

Liner Notes: Plain White T’s

Plain White T’s are a power pop band from Chicago. Their infectious punk-pop roots formed while the band was still playing cover songs in suburban basements. Since then they’ve played on the Warped Tour three times. They are best known for “Hey There Delilah”, an acoustic song performed by singer Tom Higgenson originally released in 2005 and later hit #1 in the US in 2007.

If you enjoyed this lesson you will also like learning some of the other songs from our Easy Songs for Beginners Lessons.

I guess the upshot of all this, big surprise, is that some things a beginner goes through are going to be harder than others. Some people pick up on some techniques and ideas faster than others; it stands to reason that some “Beginners” lessons will be harder for some people than others. And some that may seem beyond one’s grasp may come fairly quickly with a little bit of (gasp!) practice and work. There’s a cool flip side to this – when you start playing what some of you may consider to be “Intermediates” songs, they may prove to be nowhere near as difficult as you may have thought them to be.  This is one reason why I always encourage students to reach out and try songs and techniques that might be currently beyond their levels. As long as one doesn’t get frustrated in the attempt, it almost always yields positive results, although those results may be a bit down the road.

And that bring us to this Guitar Noise song lesson, Hey There Delilah by the Plain White T’s. As a song lesson, this tune gives us a chance to develop some picking techniques that will be very helpful to beginners whether they use fingers or picks. Plus there are a few tricky chord changes that, once you’ve gotten them into your fingers, can give you a lot of confidence for trickier ones that you’ll undoubtedly come across at some point in your guitar lives.

This might be a good time to mention that another reason this song is a good exercise is that the rhythm is constant throughout. Every measure, with one or two exceptions, will be filled with eight eighth notes that alternate between a bass note and a partial chord using just the G and B strings. That means it’s also a good way to work on your string-picking accuracy.

Hey There Delilah starts out with a short introduction and then has a fairly standard song structure of verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, final verse and chorus. It’s in 4/4 timing and it’s played in the key of D major. The verses themselves are easily broken down into two sections of chord progressions. The first section, which is a measure of D and then one of F#m, is also used as the introduction:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

And, as you can hear in the first MP3 file, it sounds fine whether you use your fingers or a pick. Some people may like using both thumb and fingers on the partial chords, some may like the “one finger sweep,” that is, using one finger and striking both the B and G strings on the upstroke. In the following MP3 sound files I’ll be using the “two fingers” approach for the rest of this lesson, simply because I prefer the way it sounds.

Another thing to mention here is that, technically, we’re playing a D5 chord instead of a full D, so you don’t have to finger the entire open D chord and can leave the first (high E) string open.

Speaking of fingering, this simple progression might prove to be one of the more challenging parts of this song for some of you. And if you don’t mind a suggestion, try laying your index finger flat in a “mini-barre,” covering the first three strings at the second fret. This way you won’t have to move very much to make the change between these two chords. I usually use my ring finger to get the D note (third fret of the B string) on the D5 chord and then my pinky to get the F# note (fourth fret, D string) on the F#m. Those of you with larger hands may prefer to employ your middle and ring fingers, respectively, for those tasks, but since this progression lasts a while, I find it helps to have my middle finger help support the index finger in the barre by lying on top of it!

I really want to stress that even though this progression may seem hard at first, you will get it with practice, persistence and patience. And there’s every reason to get good at this as you’ll find this particular fingering shape used a lot, both in chording and lead guitar work, not to mention many chord melody arrangements. So please keep at it!

But if you want immediate gratification, then you can use the “alternate F#m choice” shown in Example 1A. Wrapping your thumb around to get the F# bass note at the second fret of the low E (sixth) string is probably the easiest way for most folks to get this.

The second section of the verse is four measures long and moves from Bm to G to A, and then back to Bm and A again. The good news here, because of this particular picking pattern, is that we don’t have to deal with any type of barring in regard to the Bm chord. Oh! There’s also a slight descending walking bass line at the end of the first measure, which most guitarists prefer to think of as Bm/A;

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And it’s really interesting to wonder why we’d call it a Bm/A at all since we’re only playing the A note in the bass instead of playing both the bass note and then the rest of the chord! Of course, you’ll hear me make the mistake of playing the rest of the chord anyway on one of the MP3 files. That’s why it’s always a good idea to have your chord shapes in place even if you’re not planning on hitting those strings.

The trickiest part here is the final A5. Since you’re all into reading music and / or you know your fretboards fairly well, then you already have figured out that the E note on the fifth fret of the B string is the same E note as your open high E (first) string. So you can certainly just hit that note if you’d rather. But going with that mini-barre on the second fret will allow you to both get the fifth fret of the B string with your pinky and still be in great shape for when you get back to the D5 that starts the second half of the verse.

And speaking of the second half of the verse, why don’t we put an entire verse together so that you can see how they work:

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So far, so good! The chorus consists of a two chord progression of D5 to Bm and tosses in some bass movement to make things a little more interesting:

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Using just the open A note in the bass for the D5/A is as convenient a gift for your fingering that you could ever hope for! Plus, it gives you a nice quiet moment in order to get your fingers set for the two upcoming Bm chords.

Here, I’d like to suggest not using the mini-barre on the D5. Fret the D note (third fret of the B string) with your middle finger and play the A (second fret of the G string) with your index. When you hit the open A string, reposition your index finger to play the B note in the bass (second fret of the A string) and also get your pinky set to play the B note on the fourth fret of the G string. This will free up your ring finger to get the C# note in the Bm/C# that’s coming along. There are certainly other ways to try this, but I think most of you will find this to be the easiest.

This two-measure chord progression is played four times in the chorus. The first time through the chorus ends with one last measure of D5 (along with the D5/A) before going back to the verse chords.

The second time through the chorus there is a slight change at the end of it, using Bm/A instead of Bm/C#. This leads us from B down to G, which happens to be the chord that starts out the bridge:

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The bridge of Hey There Delilah is an excellent example of the sort of simple bass lines you add to almost any song in the key of D major or B minor. Those of you who’ve read our articles on walking bass lines here at Guitar Noise (which you can find on our “Hot Lessons” page) probably recognize this as what I like to call “connecting the dots,” simply moving from one root note to the next. Be careful, though! Notice that while the first shift from D5 to Bm involves the same D5/A used in the chorus, the second time D5/C# comes into play. This might be another good time to use your mini-barre, which should give your pinky ample room to get that C# note in the bass.

I’m beginning to wonder if I should have made the mini-barre itself the focal point of the lesson! Especially since you’ll probably want to use it again at the end of the third verse. As mentioned earlier, the last verse is slightly different in structure than the others. It’s nothing you can’t handle, though, as long as you read it carefully:

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Here we go through pretty much the first half of the verse only to get caught in a Bm to Bm/A to G to A loop for a little bit. Finally, though, we get out to the Bm, A and A5 progression that ends the verse. Be sure to notice that both the last A and A5 get a full four beats each instead the two they had in the previous verses.

The final chorus is also longer. It starts out the same but continues on for an additional five times while the vocal is singing a lot of “ohs” and “whoas” and whatnot. In addition, occasionally the guitarist throws in a bit of a string mute on the last half of the fourth beat of the first measure, where the D5/A is played:

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Not every one of the last five times, but a few of them. You truly don’t have to play them at all, but it’s also a cool little technique that you should get into practicing sooner rather than later. And the whole thing ends on your regular garden variety open position D chord.

I hope you’ve had fun with this lesson. There is a bit to digest here and some of it is going to require some work and patience, not to mention practice! But these are the sort of techniques and little touches that you’re going to run into time and time again in your adventures with the guitar, so having a cheerful little pop song to work them out with isn’t all that bad of a thing, is it?

As always, please feel free to post your questions and suggestions on the Guitar Noise Forum’s “Guitar Noise Lessons” page or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Hey There Delilah – Plain White T’s was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Dealing With The Obvious Question

If you look up a tab or chord chart for Man on the Moon on the Internet, the first question that you usually ask comes very quickly. The second chord, depending on who wrote the tablature, is usually listed as “Dadd4add2.” Sometimes it’s listed as “Dsus2sus4.” Every once and awhile you may even see “D11 (no 7).” Any of these chords certainly deserves a cock of the eyebrow.

Liner Notes: R.E.M.

R.E.M. formed in Athens, Georgia in 1980. Following years of underground success, they entered the mainstream with the top ten hit “The One I Love” in 1987. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. In September 2011, they announced they were breaking up after 31 years together. Their last album Collapse Into Now was released in 2011.

Beginners will enjoy learning the following songs by R.E.M. from our Easy Songs for Beginners lessons:

• Man on the Moon
• Losing My Religion
• Driver Eight

Complete artist information for R.E.M.

The reality is that what we’re dealing with is what I consider a “guitar-centric” chord. Kind of like the second chord of Horse with no Name, the one that’s not Em. Basically, you’ve taken a familiar open chord guitar shape and simply shifted it someplace else on the neck of the guitar.

Do me a favor and participate in this demonstration: Play your standard open position C chord. Your ring finger is on the third fret of the A string, your middle finger sits on the second fret of the D and your index finger plays the first fret of the B. Are you with me so far? Good! Now slide each finger two frets up the neck. Should look like this:

Congratulations! You have just formed the “Dadd2add4″ chord. That’s all there is too it.

Well, there’s always more, if you want there to be! So let me add that some folks find this optional fingerings a bit more pleasant to their ears:

To get this voicing, start with your basic C chord, but use your pinky in place of the ring finger on the third fret of the A string. When you’ve done this, put your ring finger on the third fret of the low E (sixth) string. Technically, this is what most people would refer to as “C/G,” that is a C chord with the G note in the bass. Let’s not waste a lot, or any, time on this today, though, okay? To get the “bassier” Dadd2add4, slide all four fingers two frets higher.

For the sake of our lesson today, we’re going to call this pesky Dadd2add4 chord by the name of “D!” Is everyone okay with that? Good. Then here’s a cheat sheet for our song. I’ll meet up with you on the other side:

Strumming and Verses

You’ve probably already noticed that there’s nothing here you can’t handle, especially now that we’ve dealt with the whole “D!” chord thing. How about a nice strumming pattern and you can get going on things:

Of course, you’re probably already thinking that this hasn’t been all that much of a lesson. And you’re right. So let’s take a look at some of the things that we can do, incredibly simple, almost casual, touches that add magic to a song. Why not start with the verse strumming we just looked at?

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This touch is so minor you may not have even seen it, but you can certainly hear it in the MP3 sound file. All we’re doing it lifted our middle finger off the D string for the fourth beat of the third measure. That’s the third “yeah” of the “yeah yeah yeah yeah” if you’re singing along. This creates a “Cadd9″ chord, which some folks will call “Cadd2″ or even “C2″ (for some reason, you see a lot of “C2″ and other “2″ chords in the sheet music of contemporary gospel music – not really sure why) and, while I’ve noted it as “Cadd9″ on the example, I’d like you to start getting in the habit of thinking of it as “keeping busy during a lengthy C chord.” Seriously. While it’s important to know music theory (and I hope to heaven that everyone who reads any lesson at Guitar Noise knows that this is a bit of an understatement, especially coming from me), it’s also important to start going beyond what you’re given in any chord sheet. Don’t always wait for direction when it comes to chords; don’t be afraid to try things. If you’ve not been listening to our Guitar Noise Podcasts, which deal a lot with this sort of thing, then you might want to give one a try.

Back to our Man on the Moon. The verses pretty much consist of this same chord change over and over again. And the first verse is six lines long, while the second and third are both four lines long. Michael Stipe, who sings lead for R.E.M. was smart and made small variations on the melody line in the verses, so why not take a cue from him:

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Here we’re playing a different voicing of our open C chord by adding our pinky to the third fret of the high E (first) string. That G note being prominent on the high string definitely gets a bit of notice. We follow that up with a regular open position D for the second measure. Because we’ve not used a regular D chord yet (they’ve all been “D!” chords up ‘til this point), it doesn’t sound the least bit mundane. If fact, it’s kind of downright refreshing!

We’re back to the regular C chord in the third measure, but we even change this by going with a “Cadd4″ during that last beat. Easiest way to finger this is to just add the pinky to the third fret of the D string. If you want to try something even wilder, might I suggest this:

In case you’re wondering why I didn’t just call this “Cadd4add6″ an Fmaj7, consider that I’m simply having a weird day.

Anticipation, Melody Lines and the Pre-Chorus

When we get to the gorgeous “pre-chorus” of our song, the part that starts, “…Andy did you hear about this one…” we get to do some fun, although slightly complicated things. First off, I should explain that I came up with this particular arrangement when I was performing this song solo. When I play it with other people, or when I hear it being played, my initial tendency is to sing (attempt to sing) a harmony part here. This section just demands harmony. But when you’re doing a solo act, there’s no harmony. Worse, if you start singing the harmony, there’s no guarantee that you’re going to get back to where you want to be later.

So, rather than abandon the melody, why not reinforce it?

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There are a lot of things going on here, so let me try to tackle them one at a time. First and foremost, there’s the melody line. You’ll notice that even on the first chord of the pre-chorus, the Am, I only strum down to the B string, where my finger is sitting on the first fret. That C note is the melody note. I stop my strum there to emphasize the note and then also play the rest of the melody line on the B and G strings of the guitar.

This is certainly not something you have to do; you can just strum the whole song the way you’ve been doing during the verse. But it isn’t all that hard to do. It just requires taking a bit of care in your strumming. In fact, it’s very much like we did in our lesson on Silent Night. Take your time with it and remember two things: work within the chord shapes and take it as slowly as you need to start. Worry about speed once you’ve got the fingering and the notes down.

The thing that may truly take a little getting used to is the sense of timing. The first and third lines each hang on for a half-beat longer than you might think, while the second line ends a half-beat sooner. These are all forms of anticipation, a topic that we’ve covered in many a lesson here at Guitar Noise.

Also notice that in the second measure of the first and third lines we add a C note to the mix, in essence creating a “Gsus4″ chord. This is a tiny touch and (again) one you can certainly do without. But it does add more to the general strumming, as does the quick use of the G note (third fret, high E (first) string) on the D chord in the last measure. And yes, you can think of that as Dsus4 if you want to. As I mentioned earlier, these are little things that can help make normal strumming more interesting. It’s not so much a change of pattern as it is a subtle change of the chord itself. We’ll see more of this in the section ahead on the Interlude.

The “Quick Change” Chorus and The Interlude

The chorus provides us with the quickest chord changes of the song, coming at every two beats throughout most of this section. But it also provides with a “guitar-centric” way of dealing with them as well:

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This is a great example of how reading tablature can lure you into all sorts of traps. Could you tell, just with a glance at the first two measures, exactly what’s going on? It looks like a lot of movement. But look again after I tell you this: You’re going to play the chord twice. Downstroke on the first beat. Then downstroke on the second beat. When you come up on the second beat, just take your fingers off the strings and hit some of the open ones. Use that moment to change your chord for the next downstroke.

Okay, look at the tablature again. Can you see this? It certainly makes the quick changes a lot easier, especially for a beginner, doesn’t it? One of the reasons this works is because this song is in the key of G and if you hit the open B, G and D strings, well that’s a G chord. Those notes are also extensions of other chords in this particular progression.

But you’ll find this technique used by a lot of artists even in songs that aren’t in the key of G. Jack Johnson, just to name someone off the top of my head, does this sort of thing a lot in his music, even in keys that kind of sound weird when you rely on open strings to help you through a chord change.

In the second measure of the second line, you’ll find us using an “uncredited” Dsus4 right before the fourth beat. Then, in the second measure of the third line, we do a descending walking bass line from C to C/B to the Am which begins the fourth line. This might remind you of the same sort of short bass lines we worked on in the lesson on As Tears Go By.

That Am starting the fourth line, by the way, leads to another round of “follow the melody line.” When you start the Am chord at the third beat of that measure, leave your index finger off and then hammer it onto the first fret to go from the open B string to the C note. From that point, it’s just a matter of keeping the rest of the Am chord intact and opening up the G string at the right moment.

Finally, there are two “interludes,” if you will, in Man on the Moon, where there is an instrumental break. This is where the slide solo takes place between the second chorus and the third verse, as well as between the third chorus and a closing two repetitions of the chorus. The final chorus, by the bye, ends on a resounding Em chord. Make note of that.

For the solo guitarist, there’s not a lot of time to do very fancy playing, so going with some chordal variations seems to be a simple way of having something interesting to play during these sections:

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Here we’re adding a D note to the Em chord, creating an Em7, and we’re also using the open high E (sixth) string in with the D chord to produce a Dadd9 or “Dsus2″ if you prefer. We’ve also done a slight variation on our strumming between these two chords so that the slight changes of the chords occur on different beats in their respective measures. Is that absolutely necessary? Of course not, but it does make things sound a little more interesting. And since we’ve an additional measure of D to deal with, it kind of made sense to use a totally different voicing than any of the others we’ve used up until this point. The easiest fingering for this is to use your index finger on the high E (sixth) string, your pinky on the B string and your ring finger on the G.

Another thing you can do to make this transition a little smoother, and this isn’t notated in the example, is to hit the open strings on the final beat of the D chord to give yourself the time to get further up the neck.

Okay, let’s hear all the different parts played together, shall we?

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I hope you’ve had fun with this lesson. Some of it is going to require some work and patience, but I’m sure you can pull it off. We’ll be using this song in the future when we start looking at adding second (or third or fourth) guitar parts when playing in a group situation.

As always, please feel free to post your questions and suggestions on the Guitar Noise Forum’s “Guitar Noise Lessons” page or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Man on the Moon – R.E.M. was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Which is not to say that beginners won’t be able to play it. Au contraire! In many ways, this is a great song to further develop some of the arrangement ideas we continually touch upon many of our Guitar Noise song lessons. And I think you’ll find it’s been planned out in such a way to make things easy regardless of whether you consider yourself a beginner or an intermediate. The key is to go through it step by step, taking your time.

Liner Notes: R.E.M.

R.E.M. formed in Athens, Georgia in 1980. Following years of underground success, they entered the mainstream with the top ten hit “The One I Love” in 1987. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. In September 2011, they announced they were breaking up after 31 years together. Their last album Collapse Into Now was released in 2011.

Beginners will enjoy learning the following songs by R.E.M. from our Easy Songs for Beginners lessons:

• Man on the Moon
• Losing My Religion
• Driver Eight

Complete artist information for R.E.M.

When I listen to this song on the CD, I’m struck by a couple of things. First, the song is in A minor, a fact born out by (a) playing along with the recording with my guitar and (b) looking at a copy of the sheet music in a local store, not to mention all the TAB versions on the internet. Secondly, the guitar part (played by Peter Holsapple, one of the founders of the dBs, who played guitar and keyboards with R.E.M. on their Green Tour)  is fairly buried in the mix. The “highlighted” instrument is the mandolin, setting the tone of the introduction and also getting the focus of the short instrumental in the bridge (just before the last verse) and again at the very end of the song.

As a simple guitar song, you can probably already play it and it won’t sound all that bad. It’s just a simple here-are-the-chords-so-strum-along song in the key of A minor and the chords are Am, F, G, Em and Dm. But, truth be told, I find I’m not happy playing it as a “strum along.” It sounds way too bottom heavy and (again) truth be told, it’s because I’m still hearing mandolins in my head. After telling you time and again that I don’t think it’s important to sound like the recording, I definitely want this song to sound a little more like the recording than it does as a strum along number. I guess there is no pleasing some people!

So I look again at the chords I have and do some quick thinking: will it benefit me to transpose this song so I can move it up the neck? Playing higher up the fretboard will certainly give me more of a mandolin sound to start with. The fact that Losing My Religion is in A minor is a bit of a help, as there are not many minor keys in which I feel comfortable. I decide to take a stab at E minor, which means that I’ll need to put my capo on the fifth fret. Here are our transposed chords:

E minor turns out to have some unexpected plusses. Not only can I imitate the mandolin riff in the introduction with ease, I also discover that I can fashion the short instrumental sections (again, that also feature the mandolin on the original recording) in such a way that I can use my whole guitar instead of going with single notes. That pretty much clinches it for me. E minor it is!

One last thing before we get going: ideally, this would be a great song for two guitars, one with the capo and one without. Playing together, they will definitely cover much more of the nuances of the whole song. My decision to arrange it this way comes, in part, from knowing that this lesson is meant to be a single guitar arrangement. Therfore, I want to incorporate as many of the mandolin parts of Losing My Religion that I can into this arrangement. And, being a twelve string guitar player from day one, helps. There’s a lot of similarity between the two instruments and using a twelve-string to mimic the mandolin parts, especialy with the capo on the fifth fret, really makes a cool sounding arrangement. As always, you should feel free to play it in any manner you choose.

The Intro and Verses

As the song goes, “Let’s start at the very beginning…”

Losing My Religion kicks of on the third beat of the pick-up measure with a short riff from the mandolin. After listening to it, I’ve determined that these are the notes in the riff:

You’ll note (no pun intended) that I’ve mapped the TAB of this riff both in open position and also with the capo on the fifth fret. This is where I get my first “bonus” for playing this song with the capo. When I am playing an arrangement for one guitar, simplicity is vitally important, especially so if I am singing as well as strumming and playing a riff or two. Looking at the notes of the intro, I realize that I can finger this as an Asus2 chord (002200) and let the notes ring until I am ready to switch to the C that starts the first full measure. Let’s try the whole intro:

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Can you see how easy this is going to be? Fret the Asus2 and let the first four notes ring out. Then switch to the C chord. You then go back to Asus2 to repeat the riff and follow that with Em. I find that anchoring my middle finger on the second fret of the D string (the E note) allows me to switch between these three chords. You’ll hear on the sound file that sometimes I’ll hit the bass note and then the chord instead simply playing the full chord. That’s just me.

Add a little flourish on the D chord that finished the intro and you’re on your way!

The verses are simply strumming the chords. You can hear my basic strumming pattern for the verses at the end of the introduction sound file, which is a lot like the strumming in the introduction. Essentially I’ve chose to play the verse strumming like this:

The only thing to note here is the Bm chord. Depending on your taste (and finger ability), there are numerous ways of playing this:

In the sample, I’m using the first voicing. To my ears, this gives me the mandolin feel I’ve been using as a guide to this arrangement. Sometimes though, I will switch to the Bm7 (the fourth voicing) in order to throw in a bass note or simply to give my fingers (and listeners) a change.

The Chorus

The chorus is the part of the song signaled by the line “I thought that I heard you laughing…”

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As I get into the chorus, I bring back the mandolin riff from the intro. Essentially, it is the same as the intro – until we reach the Em chord. Here I decide that I’ve had enough of being the mandolin for a while. Now I want to be the bass. And the mandolin. I can be such a pain sometimes…

And, not to beat a dead horse or anything, once again my capo placement allows me to do this with ease. You can see that even though we are going to play an Em in the fourth measure, we don’t have to fret a single string! I hit the open sixth string hard on the downstroke and then pick the first three strings (all open!) on the upstroke. Then I walk the bass note up the scale – sixth string, second fret; sixth string third fret – alternating with my upstroke arpeggio on the open three strings.

In the last half of measure five, I have to quicken the pace of my walk. While the first three steps took two beats (four eighth notes) each, here they have to be one beat. That means throwing the arpeggio out the window and simply hitting a group of strings on the upstroke. As they say, “crude but effective.”

The Bridge and The Outro

It’s during the bridge section and again at the very end of the song that our choice of capo positioning will truly shine through. Here the mandolin takes center stage with a single note solo. But guess what? With our capo, we can play full and partial chords to totally flesh out our parts and not suddenly lose our “band” because we’re only playing one string. This is pretty important for the single-guitar performer.

We do this by use of creative chord voicing and strumming. Since the mandolin riff (on the recording) pretty much plays out over an Am chord (Em with our capo, remember), we can use the guitar’s tuning to play the melody of the riff and the rest of an Em or Em7 chord at the same time. Check it out:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Covering the first and fifth strings at the seventh fret, we make the first two eighth notes downstroke and upstroke. We hit the middle open strings on a down once again and slide our fingers from the seventh to the fifth fret for another full downstroke. The remaining strokes in the measure are short downs. Another added bonus, we find, is that the “seventh” fret (with the capo on) turns out to be the twelfth, so we don’t have to hunt around for it!

Using the same rhythm pattern, we then switch to a regular Em chord, adding the G note (first string, third fret) for the melody and then the open E (first) string. Play this twice through for the solo and then jump in with the lyrics. I like to jump on the final Em and D, making the chords sharp and staccato, before going back to the final verse.

The outro, or coda, if you will, is almost a combination of all the other parts we’ve learned. Take a look:

Coming out of the final chorus, we continue with the chorus progression, complete with the intro mandolin riff. Even though I didn’t do so, you can feel free to use the bass part of the chorus as well. Trust me, it will fit.

When you get done with the vocals, the first notes of the mandolin solo from the bridge reappear. We play this pattern seven times (a total of twenty-eight beats if you’re keeping count). Then we once again do the slide from the seventh fret to the fifth fret on the first and fifth strings and then, releasing the fifth string, slide on the first string from the fifth fret to the third fret and then release the first string. I do these four chords as a downstroke followed by three upstrokes.

Then, forming a D chord and using my pinky to fret the fifth fret of the first string, I again repeat the down, up, up, up pattern. With each stroke, I move my pinky – first from the fifth fret to the third, then removing it altogether and then fingering the third fret yet again.

All the while, I am gradually slowing down the tempo, making a grand finale out of the whole series of cascading, descending chords. I end with a long sweeping downstroke on an Emadd9 chord (024000), which, in case you’re interested, you won’t hear on the record. I just think it’s cool.

Okay, let’s do it. As always, remember that I am old and senile and probably don’t have all the words right! I’m sure you’re all capable of dealing with that:

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A few quick notes: this is the first time we’ve tried a “live” sound file on our lessons. Yes, that’s me playing. No, it’s NOT always precisely what I’ve written out. But it will (hopefully) give you a very good idea of what you should sound like. And if there’s too much derision, we can always go back to MIDI files. Not that I get hurt feelings or anything!

I hope you enjoyed this lesson and that you have fun with this song. Those of you who play twelve string guitars should find it a lot of fun as well. And, as I mentioned earlier, Losing My Religion sounds great with multiple guitars. Teach it to one (or more!) of your friends and have a great time working out your own arrangement.

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or songs (and/or riffs and solos) you’d like to see discussed in future pieces. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next lesson…

Peace

Losing My Religion – R.E.M. was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

But even the simplest of songs can be made more interesting by spending a little thought and effort in arranging it. Conversely, a song that seems too hard to play can be made to sound perfectly suited for the single guitar. It doesn’t always work out that way, but more often than not it will. Also, even if you ultimately decide that you don’t like the arrangement you’ve come up with, you can learn a lot just by trying.

Liner Notes: R.E.M.

R.E.M. formed in Athens, Georgia in 1980. Following years of underground success, they entered the mainstream with the top ten hit “The One I Love” in 1987. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. In September 2011, they announced they were breaking up after 31 years together. Their last album Collapse Into Now was released in 2011.

Beginners will enjoy learning the following songs by R.E.M. from our Easy Songs for Beginners lessons:

• Man on the Moon
• Losing My Religion
• Driver Eight

Complete artist information for R.E.M.

Today we’re going to look at an old REM song, Driver Eight, and come up with an arrangement that you’ll (hopefully) find both fun and easy to play. Oh yes, I suppose we’ll also have to learn a few things… How about incorporating a riff into the strumming and just generally switching our strumming around with different patterns for different parts of a song? Are you okay with that?

In terms of structure, Driver Eight is very formulaic. There’s an intro, then a verse, a chorus, a second verse and chorus, a bridge, a short instrumental break (which is a repeat of the intro) and then a final verse and chorus. The last chorus is slightly different than the others in that its length is expanded a bit. Let’s set to breaking it down, shall we?

The Verses

The intro and the verses use the same chord progression and the short instrumental, as mentioned earlier, is actually a replay of the intro, so you can get most of the song into your head very quickly. Here are the chords to these sections, as well as a basic strumming pattern to use as a template:

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Let’s take a quick moment and note the third and fourth chords. When I first tried figuring this out (many years ago), I thought that the progression was Em, Am, G and Dsus4. I came to this conclusion by listening to the bass line which at that point was descending from G to F# to E for the Em at the start of the next phrase. Since I could also hear the G on the high E (first) string, I thought this was a reasonable guess.

Subsequent listenings led me to change my thinking to the chords I have here. The difference between the G/F# and the Dsus4/F$ is subtle, but I think it helps make the progression more interesting to listen to than the one I initially had.

For this strumming pattern, no matter which chord we’re playing, you hit bass note, which will be either on the low E (sixth) string or the A string and follow that with a stroke of the G string and then the D. We then finish up the measure with three upstrokes of the chord.

By now, it should go without saying that these strumming “patterns” (or any strumming patterns, for that matter) are merely suggestions. You can decide to strum straight chords throughout or do arpeggios or whatever. But whatever pattern you choose to use, it’s going to be vitally important to have the feel for the rhythm of this portion of the song down pat. So take however much time you need to do that before moving on. Whenever you’re ready, we’ll move on and tackle the intro.

The Introduction / Instrumental Break

While the chord progression for these parts of Driver Eight is the same as those in the verses, there’s something totally different going on. On the recording, you can hear the electric guitar come through with what we’ll call the “signature riff.” It looks and sounds like this:

Our problem with this riff is not in playing it – I’m sure you all can do that very well with a minimum of practice. We start out with a simple run of notes in the G major scale – beginning with the open E on the sixth string and ending with the C on the third fret of the A string. This takes up the first two measures, which are when we’d be strumming the Em and Am chords. The last two measures consist of a descending series of notes in the G major scale, alternating with the open G string (that old pedal point thing yet again!). Big bonus points if you recognize this as example #3A from the America lesson. You’ll find this technique used in a lot of songs. If you used an F (third fret of the D string) instead of the F#, you’d think you were playing Last Train to Clarksville.

Anyway, as I mentioned, playing the riff itself shouldn’t present much of a problem. But going from strumming into a string of single notes is going to sound pretty thin. We came across something like this in our lesson on Like a Hurricane. What we want to do is to add some depth to our riff, and we have to do it ourselves, since there’s no one else in the band!

Because this riff is a lot busier than the melody of Hurricane, we have to think a minute. Obviously, what we did with the Neil Young song won’t work as well here. For starters, this riff takes place in the bass and mid-range of our guitar, so it might get lost in the background if we tried a straight-chord approach.

The thing to do is to look again at the riff and fill in the space as it allows us to. What do I mean by that? Well, logic dictates that the fourth measure, as well as the last half of the first measure, will be hard to add to since they are already filled up with eighth notes. But the first half of the first measure is a single half note. That’s two beats of space. Likewise, the second and third measures have a lot of breathing room. This is where we’ll flesh things out:

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Do I have to tell you to start slowly with this? I hope not! In the first measure, we’re simply going to add two eighth notes (down and then upstroke) of the Em chord. Then we continue with the rest of the riff until we reach the second measure. Here, we’ll switch to arpeggio strumming. The first set of three eighth notes is from your Am chord. The second set of three, as well as the final set of two, are the notes of the riff accompanied by some open string playing. Using the full Em chord and the open strings in measure two give us some ringing, resonating notes which will fill out the sound. We still will hear the riff very clearly, particularly since, for the most part, we’re accenting it with downstrokes.

I’m not even bothering to fret a chord in the last two measures. Our open G and B strings pretty much shout out “Hey! G major chord here!” without our help. For good measure, I add the open B string to the pedal point in the final bar of the intro.

Once you feel you have the intro under control, practice going from the intro to the strumming pattern of the verses. This will happen twice in the song: at the beginning (obviously!) and again between the bridge and the final verse. Sometimes when I play this I will start with the strumming the chords of the verse, maybe two lines, as the intro and then go into the riff before coming back to the verse with the singing.

Chorus

Driver Eight’s chorus gives us a chance to play around with the rhythm pattern even more. The majority of the chorus is a measure of D alternating with a measure of C. I tend to play it like this:

In the first measure, let’s use a very simple technique that carries a surprising amount of punch. We’re going to put our emphasis on the second beat! Play the open D string and then cut it short (you’re creating a rest of about an eighth note in duration) and then come crashing down with a full chord (downstroke) on the second beat. We’ll follow this up with three eighth notes (up, down, up) to complete the measure. This will work very well with the lyrics of the chorus and create some dynamic tension in your arrangement.

We’ll then switch to arpeggio and broken chord strumming for the measure of C. To make it even more interesting, I’m using the Cadd9 chord instead of our regular C. This voicing adds some dissonance (but of the pleasant kind!) to the proceedings.

For the end of the chorus, I’m going to reintroduce to a chord I’ve only used in one other song, Horse With No Name. It’s one of those “guitar-centric” chords that are easy to finger on the guitar and sound perfectly fine but are simply just a means of “passing” from one chord to another. Most other musicians would think of it as a passing tone. Technically, you could call it E7sus4/F#, or D11/F# or even D6 9 /F# or something equally outrageous (which is why we just called it “F#m” in our first beginner’s lesson). But for the sake of this song we’re going with just D11/F# for the sake of simplicity. I should go back and just call it the “horse chord” but this software won’t let me do that!

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Anyway, this is probably the trickiest part of the song. What we want to do is to recreate the guitar riff on the recording without sacrificing any of the momentum of our strumming. I’ve seen a lot of different TABs for this particular part of Driver Eight and, as always, please feel free to go with whatever one pleases your ears most.

This particular strumming works for me. By using chord shapes as the basis for this riff (instead of arpeggios, as most TABs use), I can have a pulsing, driving riff on my single acoustic guitar without losing any steam. Yes, I know… “no pun intended!”

I find that a strict alternating picking pattern works well here. Another thing that plays well, for me anyway, is not hitting the high E (first string) in this sequence. Keeping things low and rumble-y adds to our whole “train” atmosphere.

It’s important to note here that the last chorus of this song differs from the first two in that there are more alternating measures of D and C. This section is twice as long in the third chorus, so please do remember that when you get there!

Bridge

In the bridge, I have thrown together almost all the strumming techniques we’ve used in our arrangement so far. Since each chord (Am, C, G and D) is played for two measures, I’ve created a kind of rhythmic “call and response” sort of thing:

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Our “call” (the first measure of each chord change) is identical, rhythmically, to the D measures of the chorus. What can I say? I liked it so much that I had to use it again! And again and again and again!

The “responses” change with each chord. In the second measure of Am, we bring back an echo of the introduction with the walking bass line from the open A string leading to the C that starts measure three. This is strict arpeggio picking and, again, I find that straight alternating picking works very efficiently.

Our second response, in the second measure of C, probably requires the most attention. What I have here is a fairly standard fill, but you’re going to want to pay attention to the hammer-ons that act as grace notes before the second, third and fourth beats of the measure. I play these all with the middle finger of my fretting hand, moving it from the D string to the G string and then back again. If you keep the rest of your hand in the C chord shape (index finger on the first fret of the B string and ring finger on the third fret of the A), you’ll find that even if you mess up, you’ll only hit another note of the C chord. So it’s highly unlikely that anyone besides you will even notice that you’ve goofed!

For the G chord, I choose to slightly change the rhythm from the straight eighth notes we’ve been playing. But not all that much! We start with an arpeggio of three eighth notes, and then play a quarter note on the open B string and then three more eighth notes to round out the measure. It’s a subtle difference, to be sure, but your ears will definitely catch it. Picking, I use down, up, down for the first set of eighth notes, up on the quarter note and then up, down and up on the last set.

In the final measure, I use the time honored tradition of embellishing my D chord with the suspended fourth and suspended second. In other words, I play a regular D chord, then add my pinky to the third fret of the high E string (Dsus4), remove it (regular D again), play the D chord with an open high E (Dsus2) and then finish with a regular D again. I like to really play with the timing here as it creates a nice little “stagger” before barreling onward again. As far as the strokes, it’s down, up, up, up and down. You’ll see that I’ve included a D note (open D string) in parenthesis. I hit that sometimes in my haste to get my hand back in position for the upstroke on the Dsus2. Since it is part of the chord, it won’t stand out as a mistake.

And to prove that you don’t have to play everything letter perfect, let me give you this final MP3, which starts with the bridge and then goes into the intro (it would be the “instrumental break” at this point) and then into the verse and chorus:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

If you listen carefully, you’ll find quite a few mistakes here. I don’t catch the verse strumming immediately after the instrumental break and I practically drop it outright on the end of the second time through! I miss a couple of notes here and there. The point is that when you’re playing and you’re moving along, most people aren’t going to start pointing each time you make a mistake. It happens in the blink of an eye. As far as I know, there’s only one sure way to play a song totally free of mistakes – don’t play it. And I don’t know about you, but that’s not an option open to me.

Alright, then, let me give you the chart for the complete song. It goes without saying that since this is an early REM opus I am not going to vouch for the validity of any of the lyrics! If you like yours better, by all means use them and with my blessing! By the bye, I’ve also taken the liberty of calling our Dadd6add9 by the label “F#m” simply to save space on this chart.

I hope you had fun with this lesson and have fun with this song. Being able to switch from one rhythm pattern to another, even from one measure to the next, is, like everything we do, a matter of our “three P’s.” You may not think so, but with practice and patience and perseverance, you will start to incorporate this sort of playing (and thinking!) in all the music you do. Often without being conscious of the fact that you’re doing it! One day you’ll just take it for granted that this is how you’ve always played. Write me if this doesn’t happen!

Speaking of which, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or songs (and/or riffs and solos) you’d like to see discussed in future pieces. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums page or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Driver Eight – R.E.M. was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

And believe it or not, I got some help with my arrangement from Pink Floyd! I’d been playing around with their song Welcome to the Machine from the Wish You Were Here album and was marveling at how the acoustic guitar part takes a simple line that’s been used countless times and provides more interest to the basic Em chord that the song centers around. Much in the way of Scarborough Fair, I thought.

So, using no capo and working in the key of Em, I came up with the following simple arpeggio to serve as our “theme” for this arrangement:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Essentially, this is a very easy chord arpeggio played in a very similar fashion to the basic picking pattern of House of the Rising Sun. It’s meant to give the beginner more practice with using all his or her fingers to pick. You want to play the first two notes (on the low E and the D string) with the thumb,  then use your index finger to strike the G string, your middle finger to pluck the B string, your ring finger on the high E and then your middle finger again on the B. This is a very basic picking pattern that most people can start playing very quickly.

To make it more interesting, we’re shifting the second note of the arpeggio higher up the D string each time, moving from E (second fret) to F# (fourth fret) and then to G (fifth fret) before descending to F# again. Essentially, you’re changing the Em to Emadd9 each time you play the F#. And alternating measures of Em and Emadd9 is a lot more interesting than just playing Em over and over again.

Again, I have to stress that this is a simplified version of what happens in Welcome to the Machine. If you’d like to have this sound more like the Pink Floyd song, then you want to drop out the note of the low E string after the first strike and instead substitute a slide along the D string from the first note to the next in the sequence, like this:

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As I mentioned, this is a time-honored technique used by guitarists for ages. In addition to Welcome to the Machine, it features prominently in Joan Baez’s Diamonds and Rust as well as Sad and Deep as You by Dave Mason. And it definitely makes any guitarist sound better.

You can use either of these versions, the “Basic Em Arpeggio” of Example 1 or the “Em Arpeggio with Embellishment” of Example 1B whenever you’ve a few measures of Em to play through. It will repeat at various points during the song. It’s good as an introduction and it will appear at the end of the first two lines.

Speaking of the first two lines, let’s take a look at how they play out:

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The first two measures of this part begin the exact same way as the first two measures of the Introduction. If you use your middle finger to play the F# at the fourth fret of the D string, you can keep it right in place for the Dadd4add9 chord in the third measure. That chord may have a fancy name, but it’s just an open position C chord moved two frets up the neck. You’ve run into that before in many of our Guitar Noise lessons, such as Man on the Moon.

The fourth measure marks the start of a very short and simple walking bass line. Keeping your finger on the E note at the second fret of the D string (and again I recommend using the middle finger but others will work, too), you play the basic Em arpeggio and then move the bass note up to the F# on the second fret of the low E string (use your index finger for that). You then wind up on a G chord to begin the “parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme” line. The G becomes your basic Em again and then at “rosemary” you slide your middle finger up to the seventh fret of the D string and place your index finger at the sixth fret of the G, which gives you a haunting Aadd9 chord. You finish the second line by returning to the four-measure “basic Em arpeggio” of the Introduction.

The third line is fairly simple, just Em, G and D arpeggios, so I threw in a more interesting and complicated arpeggio, which probably should be called a riff or a lick, right at the end:

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Since you are playing a D chord right before this happens, all you have to do initially is remove your middle finger from the high E string for the first three notes. Then remove all your fingers from the neck to play the open B and G strings. Use that free time to get your ring finger or pinky on the fourth fret of the D string.

Then when you start the last line, use the striking of the low E string to reposition yourself for another go at the “basic Em arpeggio.” There isn’t anything here that should give you trouble at this point:

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In order to give this arrangement something more striking, I came up with an outro that is played with only natural harmonics:

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Again, playing the open low E string provides you with more than enough time to position your finger at the twelfth fret to begin this short melodic phrase. You want to practice this section separately (and very slowly!) if you’ve not done a lot of work with harmonics before. Get them to ring cleanly and clearly at a slow pace and you will probably find that playing them at tempo will come with relatively little repetition.

And just to give you a special treat, here’s an MP3 of the first verse of this song sung by Nick Torres. When we recorded this for The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Guitar our thoughts were to try to make it very different from the Simon and Garfunkel arrangement everyone knows. I had done my part with the sparse and simple arpeggio arrangement. Nick did his by delving deeply into the historical soul of the song. When you think about it, giving someone impossible tasks in order to prove his or her love is a bit on the same level as the story of Rumpelstiltskin. So Nick channeled his best Boris Karloff and came up with a very unnerving take on the song, which I hope you find as mesmerizing as I do:

Download a PDF of the complete arrangement (Right-click and “Save as”)

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this lesson and both the “old school” and the “easy beginner” arrangements of this wonderful song. Scarborough Fair is an excellent exercise in fingerpicking as well as chord shapes. Using the Carthy-based arrangement keeps your fingers on their toes, so to speak, as you have to constantly change picking patterns. And while the picking on the easy version is certainly less complicated, you also get a chance to work in one challenging riff as well as a harmonics-based melody line.

As always, feel free to write me with any questions, comments, or concerns you might have. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

And until our next lesson…

Peace

Scarborough Fair was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

For those of you who have always thought fingerpicking guitar might prove too difficult for you, delude yourselves no longer. Like anything else, it simply takes time, practice, and a good push in the right direction. And while the first two items are pretty much under your own control, I can at least try to help out with the third.

And here to assist with the pushing is another old chestnut, The House Of The Rising Sun, a Public Domain song performed by the Animals waaaaaay back in the sixties (background info on the song here). It’s also been covered by Bob Dylan, Dolly Parton, Woody Guthrie and many other artists.

To prep for this lesson, you might want to read (or reread) Picking Your Poison, or at least the first part, which deals with fingerpicking. Okay?

Just to make matters even more interesting, we’re going to learn two different fingerpicking patterns for House of the Rising Sun. The first will be very straightforward, simply arpeggiating the chords in a very easy finger style. Then we will go on and doctor that version up a bit, throwing in slightly more complex picking which will include a bit of a moving bassline as well as using a standard alternating bassline (which we learned about last time) in a few spots. Are you ready?

Okay, first the chords for the song. And there are five of them! We are progressing right along, aren’t we?

Some people play this song with a regular F major chord instead of an Fmaj7. I have chosen the Fmaj7 chord for two reasons: first, I prefer the way it sounds and, second, it is easier for a beginner to play than a regular F.

Marking Time

And now I also want to say a word about timing. I’ve written this song out in what is known as 6/8 timing. Don’t freak about this. There is a simple explanation and it’s just another one of those things where you’re going to wonder “So what was the big deal about, anyway?”

The time signature (along with the key signature) is one of the first things you encounter when you read music, so you might as well learn just what it means at some point, no? The time signature usually consists of two numbers written one on top of the other, almost like a fraction except there is no line (other than the lines of the staff and that doesn’t count). These provide you with two important pieces of information about the song that you are going to play. The top number tells you how many beats are in a measure (and we learned about measures in Before You Accuse Me). The lower number (lower in position, not (necessarily) the lower number in terms of value) indicates which note is going to count as “one beat.” The vast majority of music you are likely to encounter will be in 4/4 timing:

Sometimes you will see “4/4″ timing written out as “C.” This is short for “Common Time.” As well as “C” there is also a “C”with a vertical line slashing it. It looks like the symbol for a penny and, of course, my keyboard does not have one! This is known, appropriately enough, as “cut time,” or

There are also songs, many marches, in fact which are in 2/4 time. And you have undoubtedly heard songs that use 3/4 timing as well. Waltzes are in 3/4:

Probably eighty-five to ninety percent of all songs are written in either of these two time signatures. 6/8 timing is very similar to 3/4 in that it has the same kind of “triplet” feel. It’s easier to count in groups of threes rather than sets of six, isn’t it?

For right now, all you have to worry about is getting the right count. Later on this year we’ll examine the whys and wherefores (and isn’t that totally redundant?) behind various time signatures. For now, simply notice that each measure is six eighth notes strung together – so your count will be very smooth and totally without incident. There is nothing at all here to trip you up in any way. Promise.

Up And Down

Now, if you’ve read Picking Your Poison, I am going to ask your indulgence as I (momentarily) tell you something different than what I did in the article. The easiest way to start learning to fingerpick is simply to get your fingers going using the simplest pattern possible. We’re going to start the same way I suggested in my earlier article, by making an up and down arpeggio of our chords. To start with, begin with your bass note and play three strings in a downstroke with your thumb (yes, even though I told you to just use your thumb on the lowest three strings! Hang in there with me on this!), then play the first three strings in an upstroke with your fingers. If you can, try to use the following fingers:

on your upstrokes. Getting used to using all of your fingers is usually the hardest part of fingerpicking. Many people seem to have a natural tendency towards just using one or two. But if you get yourself into the habit of employing all of your fingers early on, you have a great chance to find that playing finger style guitar is nowhere near as hard as you thought it might be.

Let’s look at each of the chords and practice picking each of them. Play each chord until you feel comfortable with it. Don’t move on just for the sake of moving on. This will take time for some of you, yes, but the time you spend on it now will pay all sorts of dividends down the road. You will notice that the picking pattern is simply straight eighth notes and that I’ve set them up into groups of three notes apiece, two groups per measure. You’ll also note that I’ve tried to denote the “thumb” notes with downward flags and “finger” notes with upturned flags.

How is it going? If you’re feeling okay with your progress, then the next step, believe it or not, is to go right ahead and play the song! Take your time and just get used to using your fingers and thumbs in a coordinated manner. You will be surprised at how quickly it comes to you.

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See? That wasn’t so hard at all, was it? Are you ready to try it again with a (slightly) more complex fingerpicking pattern? Sure you are!

Getting Back Into Position

Okay, now that you’re used to getting all of your fingers in on the action, let’s tackle this song again. This time, we will concentrate on using our fingers in the more “traditional” way, which means that we should try to keep our fingers on these “targeted” strings whenever possible:

The best way to proceed from here is to take this a measure or two at a time. Remember, whenever possible, make things easier on yourself by taking something that looks very difficult and breaking it down into smaller, manageable pieces. Measure by measure, note for note if you have to.

You’ll notice as we progress that I’ve given the strumming a more interesting bassline. Here, in the first two measures, you can see (and hear) how the Am arpeggio smoothly melts into the C chord:

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Again (and yes, you will get tired of me saying this) take your time with this. Do it as slowly as you have to in order to work all your fingers into the mix. This is not that fast of a song to begin with! But speed without clean and clear notes sounds like so much mud. When you’ve satisfied yourself with the first two measures, move on to measures three and four:

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In these two measures you will notice that since your bass note is on the 4th (D) string, you have to immediately switch to your fingers. Measure four is a particularly good one with which to practice your fingerpicking. You will repeat this pattern (albeit with a different string for the bass note) in the last four measures of the song:

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The only other challenge is in measures seven and eight, which is where the E chord appears for the first time. And now you can see why I had you practice it in the last set of measures. If you spent some time working on that E arpeggio pattern, then you will not find it too difficult to add in a bass note with your thumb on the fourth beat of the measure. Yes, you will be playing two notes simultaneously on that fourth beat – the bass note (B – second fret on the A string) with your thumb and the open high E string with your ring finger. The “trick,” if any, is to be certain to have your E chord formed on your fretboard right from the start. This way you have only one hand to worry about! As you can certainly hear, this particular picking pattern involves an “alternating bassline,” just like the ones in Margaritaville. Here you are alternating between the root (E – second fret on the D string), the fifth (the aforementioned B) and the root again, only an octave lower (the open low E string). And then back up again. You will find you can play this E chord with the alternating bass in a lot of other songs:

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Well, that should take care of everything, I think. Why don’t we put together the whole song?

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I hope you’ve enjoyed this introduction into fingerpicking. Next time out we will dust off another classic and learn another picking pattern, this time concentrating on playing two notes at the same time.

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or even songs, riffs, leads or techniques that you’d like to see covered in future Songs For Beginners pieces. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodge@guitarnoise.com.

And stay tuned for some upcoming Songs For Intermediates which will delve into more fingerpicking as well as theory, chord voicings, open and alternate tunings and arrangements.

Until next week…

Peace

House of the Rising Sun was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Author’s Note: My upcoming book, the entirely new The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Guitar, which hits the stores (hopefully) on October 5, 2010, uses much the same method and philosophy that I’ve used in my lessons here at Guitar Noise for over ten years now. Songs are used to demonstrate various rhythms and picking and guitar techniques. They also serve as examples of how music is arranged for the solo guitar player, so you get to learn little bits of theory without even realizing that it wasn’t all that hard to do.

Because of copyright and licensing, all the songs used in the book are Public Domain. Yes, that means you get to learn songs like Oh! Susanna and Tom Dooley. But by now you should know me well enough to know that you’ll be getting some cool arrangements of these songs so that you’ll hopefully find fun to play and great to listen to. And you’ll hopefully also learn a thing or two (or three). The songs in the book have been recorded by artists as diverse as Paul Simon, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Led Zeppelin, Metallica, Johnny Cash, his daughter Rosanne Cash, Leadbelly, Mick Jagger, Tori Amos, David Bromberg, Eva Cassidy, Steve Winwood and Traffic, the Animals, the Grateful Dead, Peter, Paul and Mary, the Kingston Trio, Harry Belafonte and more.

A big thank you has to go to the many readers of Guitar Noise who helped immensely with this book by offering song suggestions, and an even bigger thank you goes out to Leslie Ann (“Elecktrablue”) Maxwell for doing a lot of research for me that helped lead to the selection of material.

This lesson uses one of the songs you’ll find in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Guitar, but you’ll be getting a more involved description than I could write for the book, owing to space needed for everything else in there. I hope you enjoy it.

Case in point, many people are familiar with the song Where Did You Sleep Last Night because Nirvana performed it on their MTV Unplugged performance (it’s also on the album issued from that performance) and they may assume that Leadbelly (Huddie Ledbetter) wrote it since Kurt Cobain attributes the song to him. But historians have traced the song back to at least the 1870s, making it impossible for Leadbelly to have written it. While the song’s original author is unknown, it has been recorded and performed by hundreds (if not thousands) of artists since 1925, up to 2010.

These files are the author’s own work and represent his interpretation of this song. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

Where Did You Sleep Last Night is known by many other names – In the Pines and Black Girl being two of the most common titles – but most arrangements tend to be a variation of Leadbelly’s numerous recordings of the songs. Depending on whose version of the song you listen to, you’ll hear different chord arrangements as well. Structurally, Where Did You Sleep uses a repeated eight-measure chord progression. Let’s assume for the moment that you want to play this in the key of E. Again, depending on whom you listen to, it will more likely than not that you’ll use one of the following three progressions, where each chord change is marked at every three beats (remember in 3/4 time each measure has three beats):

Sometimes you’ll hear this done with all power chords (also called “5” chords – check out the lesson Building Additions and Suspensions for more on those), which makes the song both a little darker and slightly sterile:

Nirvana’s arrangement, as well as the Mark Lanegan arrangement it seems to be derived from (Lanegan, a member of Screaming Trees and Queens of the Stone Age, was a contemporary of Cobain’s and introduced him to the song), is done in a lowered standard tuning, Eb standard, to give it a even darker sound. If you’re not familiar with lowered standard tunings, you can read up on them in the old Guitar Column, On The Tuning Awry. In Eb Standard tuning, all six strings are tuned down one half step:

You certainly don’t have to play this song in lowered tuning. The final MP3 file that accompanies this lesson is in Eb standard, so bear that in mind if you try to play along with it. All the other MP3s are in E standard. I apologize in advance for this confusion.

There are interesting musical aspects to each of these progressions. For our arrangement, we’re going to work in some of the cool drones we can create in standard (or lowered standard tuning). In the key of E, whether E major or E minor, the root note is E and the fifth is B, which are the notes of the two open high strings. We can use these two open strings and arrange our chord selection to take advantage of the interesting voicings they can give us. We can also make use of the two open strings to work out chords that use either five or all six strings, giving us a fuller sound than one might expect from a single guitar:

Rhythmically, it’s a good idea to keep this fairly simple. Start with a downstroke on the first beat and then use an upstroke on the second half of the third beat, like this:

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This may seem ludicrously simple, but once you have the accent of the beat down, you use your natural strumming motion to fill in the blanks. Those of you who have read the articles on strumming here, particularly the first article of the Getting Past Up and Down you know that keeping your strumming motion constantly going helps you keep the beat in a steady manner. What it also does is allow you to fill in space by lightly (and sometimes quite unintentionally!) brushing some strings as you pass by with your strum. This is one of those instances where you’ll drive yourself crazy if you’re following a “note by note” transcription, like those we covered in The Pattern Trap. So instead of writing out strings that will cause you to focus on the wrong aspect of playing, just listen:

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Every time you try something like this, it’s going to be slightly different. You’ll catch a different string on an upstroke or hit the same string with slightly different pressure. That’s part of what makes playing so organic. You want to treasure that.

With the rhythm in your pocket, you can then add little touches like bass lines and such. Many performers borrow this one from Leadbelly’s versions:

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You can use this short chromatic climb in other places as well. For instance, when you move from the G6 chord to the Bsus4, it’s easy enough to hit the G note in the bass and then run through the A of the open A string and then the A# at the second fret of the A before landing on B.

I’ve also come up with one to play over the Bsus4 chord that I like to use instead of the Leadbelly version:

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This is essentially just moving down the E minor scale from B to G, throwing in partial chords on the upstrokes between the beats. You can opt for just the single bass notes, too. Giving the G note a little tug, which is essentially a  quarter-step bend, gives it a blue note quality, placing the tone somewhere between G and G#. This is a technique used quite a lot in blues, rock and country guitar.

If you like, you can use a hammer-on to get the G note in the bass (third fret of the low E (sixth) string) at the third beat of the second measure. You can also use both the hammer-on and the quarter-step bend.

So if you put the whole progression together, and remember to take into account the many slight variations on the basic strumming you can play just by keeping your “sock puppet” strumming motion going, you’ll have an arrangement quite like this:

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There are many, many versions of this song, particularly as far at the lyrics go. In addition to Leadbelly’s (and Nirvana’s), which focus on the girl who spends the night in the pines, you’ll also find many that revolve around “the longest train.” I’ve used a bit from both in this version.

As I mentioned in the “Author’s Note” at the start of this lesson, this song is one that will be included in the upcoming book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Guitar. Since the guitar is used more often than not to accompany a singer (who could be the guitarist, of course), the CD that comes with the book contains many examples of the guitar doing just that. I am honored that our own Nick Torres was willing to participate in this project by singing the vocals for almost all the songs (there are a number of instrumental and chord melody pieces as well as an original song of my own). Here is his wonderful take on Where Did You Sleep Last Night, done in Eb standard:

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I hope that you have enjoyed this song lesson. I know that many people attach a bit of disdain to “traditional” songs, but a great song will be played regardless of its age and origin. There is a lot of music out there in the world. You should go digging through some of it that’s been around for ages and see (and hear) why they are still played hundreds of years after they’ve been written.

As always, please feel free to post your questions and suggestions on the Guitar Noise Forum’s “Guitar Noise Lessons” page or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Where Did You Sleep Last Night? was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

When it comes to learning music, the most important thing that you can use your eyes for is reading. But that’s just the first step of many. Being able to read tablature or music notation (and, ideally, you want to be good at reading both) won’t help you if you don’t apply your brain to your reading.

Hopefully, this lesson on Jack Johnson’s Banana Pancakes will help you understand the importance of both these points. Plus, it will give you some more work with easy forms of barre chords (something we all need, beginners or not). Don’t worry, though – you’ll also have the choice of playing this song (almost) entirely without barre chords, if you so choose.

These files are the author’s own work and represent his interpretation of this song. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

Structure and Rhythm

Breaking down Banana Pancakes in terms of musical structure doesn’t take long. The song is in the key of G, it’s in 4 / 4 timing (at a tempo between 112 and 120 beats per minute, if I’m not mistaken) and there is a short introduction that uses (as you’ll soon see) a very simple riff and flits between two chords – Am7 and G7 twice before very briefly using D7 as a “turnaround” chord to get us to the first verse. The verses are made up of a four-chord progression (G7, D7, Am7, and C7) where each chord gets two beats. This progression is played four times and then we have a chorus that is conveniently the same musical structure of the introduction.

Verse and chorus then are repeated, although the second chorus is twice as long as the first one. This extended part of the chorus doesn’t contain the riffs of the first one (or the introduction). Then we have a bridge that has two measures each of Am7, D, Am7, D, and Bm7 followed by single measures of Em, C, G, and D7 and then a measure-and-a- half of G before another two-beat turn around on D7 to take us back to the last verse and chorus. The final chorus, like the second chorus, is twice the length of the first chorus.

As good as all this information is, the first thing you truly need to know about this song is that it is played in swing eighths. Swing rhythm is something that is close to impossible for most people to pick up visually. Why? Because if you are watching the “down and up” strokes of a guitarist, the strumming looks identical to strumming regular eighth notes. Unless you’re listening (and, preferably, counting), you may not catch it.

Even written sheet music doesn’t always tell you that something is in swing rhythm. Usually it will be written out just as regular eighth notes. Here is a simplified version of the opening riff of Banana Pancakes written out for you (I’ve taken out the frills – don’t worry, you’ll get the “real” thing in a moment!) and played in both regular (or “straight”) eighth notes and then again in swing. I’m also counting along so that you can hear the difference:

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Straight eighths divide a beat evenly. You count them “one and two and three and four and…” In swing eighths, the beat is divided evenly into three parts (a triplet), but you play just the first and the last note of that triplet. In other words, you would count out “one and a two and a three and a four and a” but only play the numbers and the “a”s, not the “and”s.

If you want to get a good primer to swing rhythms, listen to Guitar Noise Podcast # 13. All of the music notation for this lesson will be written like “regular” eighth notes but you want to think of them in terms of swing eighths. One of the reasons that sheet music is written this way is to make the life of whoever’s writing the notation a little easier! Scribbling out all those triplets is a royal pain!

Introduction, Basic Barres and Reading Finger Position Clues

Barre chords are a signature part of Jack Johnson’s sound. You won’t produce the jazz-styled chord voicings and chunky rhythmic sounds he gets without them. And the barre chords involved in Banana Pancakes are, for the most part, very easy. This is one reason why it’s a great song to use for barre chord practice.

The Introduction / Chorus section of Banana Pancakes introduces the Am7 and G7 chords you will run into throughout the song. Both of these chords are what we’d call “E shaped” barre chords. The Am7 is an Em7 (020000) moved up to the fifth and seventh frets (575555) and the G7 is an E7 (020100) moved up to the third, fourth and fifth frets (353433). For both chords, you want to barre the appropriate fret with your index finger, then use your ring finger to get the note on the A string and your middle finger to get the note on the G string. If you’re careful about how you strum, you can get away with not fingering the A string at all. Just miss it when you strum either chord. This is especially easy to do on the upstrokes and, conveniently enough, you’ll be playing these chords mostly on the upstrokes. Here’s the Introduction, except for the very last measure:

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If you’re going to go with the barre chords, then it’s important to let the fingering of the barre chord help you determine how to go about fingering the riff. Since the first riff ends with the Am7 barre chord, you want to make the first slide (usually done from the fifth fret, even though it’s not indicated) with the ring finger. Sliding the ring finger up to the seventh fret puts you in great position to use your index finger for the notes at the fifth fret and also lets you use the index finger for the slide from the fifth fret to the third fret later in the measure. Using your index finger for the slide that begins the second measure ensures you are in a good position to make the Am7 barre chord. You hit the A note (fifth fret of the low E (sixth) string on the first beat and strum down on the second beat with your fingers not quite in place, just off the strings enough to mute them, and then set the chord in place and strum it on the following upstroke.

And just how did I decide on where to put the upstrokes and downstrokes? Well, from listening to Banana Pancakes and from counting out the rhythm while listening to it, I realized that all the strumming was done in either quarter notes (one per beat) or eighth notes (two per beat, done with “swing” as we’ve already discussed). And when dealing with measures of eighth notes, the easiest way to play them is using a downstroke on the beat and an upstroke for the eighth note that falls between the beat, like this:

Again, I can’t stress enough how rhythm is best learned through listening and feel. The temptation is to make it out to be a lot harder than it really is. Read through our lessons on basic strumming, like Getting Past Up and Down and others that you will find on our “Strumming for Beginners” section that you can access through the “Hot Lessons” page. And be on the lookout for a new strumming lesson that will feature a bit of the Jack Johnson song, Taylor. This should be up online before the end of January 2010.

Meanwhile, this particular fingering pattern for the first riff in the “Introduction / Chorus” section, as well as the rhythm pattern itself, repeats for the next riff and the following G7 chord. The third riff, which is followed by another Am7 chord, is a slight variation of the first two, using more notes on the A string, but your fingers should still be in position to get the notes at the fifth fret with your index finger and the notes at the seventh fret with your ring finger. The last riff and the following G7 chord are clones of the second pass through the Introduction.

The last measure of the Introduction involves a chord change from G7 to D7 and also gives a great demonstration of how easy, yet complicated, a simple eighth note strumming pattern can sound:

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There are two aspects of this to work on. The first is the fingering and the changing between the chords. This D7 chord is based on the open position C7 shape (x32310), in fact it’s just a C7 chord moved two frets up the neck. We’ve seen it most recently in the Holiday Song Lesson on Away in a Manger. It’s a cool chord because if you hit the open high E (first) string by accident, you’ve got a D9 chord, which usually will work as a substitute, particularly in blues-y and jazz type songs.

More important, moving between the G (or G7) barre chord we’ve been using and this D7 chord is actually something that you’ll run into a lot. Why? Well, in the key of G, G is the “I” or the root chord. D, or D7 in this case, is the “V” chord, and the I – V or V- I chord progressions are some of the most common ones found in songs of all types.

And (almost as if someone planned it that way) making this switch isn’t all that hard, although it will take some concentrated practice to get it smooth. What makes it relatively easy is that your fingers, when in the G or G7 barre chord position, are either where you want them to be for the D7 or close enough that you don’t have to move all that far. Your ring finger, sitting on the fifth fret of the A string, doesn’t move at all. The index finger goes from laying flat on the third fret to standing up in place on the third fret of the B string. Meanwhile your middle finger shifts from the fourth fret of the G string to the fourth fret of the D string. Simply add your pinky to the fifth fret of the G string and you’re there!

Take some time just switching between these two chord shapes. Start slowly at first, making certain that your fingers are ending up exactly where you want them to be. Then work on moving your fingers together as a unit. For some great tips on practicing chord changes, check out Tom Hess’ recent article on this very topic – Teaching Chords.

The second aspect, getting the rhythm right, will also require practice, persistence and patience on your part. The measure starts out with a rest, but you want to make certain you make the downward motion of the strum during that rest (the whole “sock puppet” thing again) so that you’re in place for the upstroke. You’ll hear me counting this all out very slowly on the MP3, so hopefully that will help you to get the timing into your head.

Verses, More Rhythms and Open Chord Substitutions

Believe it or not, you’ve pretty much got the song down at this point. The verses, as detailed earlier, a simple two measure progression that repeats four times:

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There are some fun (and slightly sneaky!) things going on here. First, the rhythm is the same one in “Example 3″ from the “Sock Puppet” lesson mentioned earlier. You hit the root note of the chord on the first and third beats (the quarter notes) and then strum down and up for the eighth notes that occur during the second and fourth beats. Remember that it’s still in swing rhythm and you’ll be fine!

The upstroke on the chord (on the second half of both the second and fourth beats) is a muted catch of the strings. This is very cool because that’s where you want to be making the chord change anyway, so the string muting actually helps you to cover up getting your fingers set! Told you it was a bit sneaky!

As promised, you can also do this part, not to mention the whole song, almost entirely without barre chords. I say “almost” because I do think you might like the “easy partial barre” voicing of Am7, which it to barre only the four high strings at the fifth fret. You can use the open A string for your root note, since it is, after all, A.

In the MP3 file for the last example, you can hear me playing it both ways. I play a regular G instead of the G7 but I like the voicing of D7 we’ve been using so I’ve kept that. And I also like the Am7 so I use the “easy partial barre” I just described and follow up with a regular open position C7. You can certainly use a regular open position Am7 (x02010) if you’d like. And, as you can hear, there’s not enough difference between the open position chords and the barre chords worth worrying about. Not to mention that if you’re trying to sing the lyrics and play the song at the same time you may find the open chords a little easier.

But the barre chords are not all that hard, either. You’ve already been practicing the G7 to

D7 shift, so you should be okay with that one. If you make use of the “easy partial barre” form of Am7 and use your ring finger to barre the strings at the fifth fret, then you never have to shift your index finger from the third fret for the entire chord progression since the C7 barre uses the open position A7 shape with a barre at the third fret. You probably never thought barre chords could be so much fun!

Choruses, Extended Choruses, Bridge and Bonus Riff

The final C7 of the verse goes to Am7 instead of G, signaling the start of the chorus. The first chorus is pretty much like the Introduction but without the first riff (because we begin at the Am7) and a slightly different rhythm:

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Here the rhythm is still all eighth notes (and by this point I don’t have to say “swing,” do I?) and the root note is still played on the first and third beat, but the chords themselves are on the offbeat, so they are played with upstrokes while the string muting takes place on the second and fourth beats. Keep your upstrokes short and don’t forget to keep your strumming in motion during the muting and you’ll find this isn’t at all difficult. It’s when you start thinking about it, when you try to visualize it, that the rhythm tends to falter. Try it with your eyes closed – that often helps!

The last measure of the first chorus is exactly like the last measure of the Introduction, but with a G note in the bass (played at the third fret of the low E (sixth) string) instead of an eighth rest. And yes, you can use open position chords just as well here, as you can in the Introduction.

This latest rhythm, with the chords on the offbeat (upstrokes) is also used to extend the second (and third) chorus, and the bridge as well. The extended choruses are just two extra sets of chord changes – two measures of Am7, two measures of G7, two more measures of Am7 and two of G (355433 for a full barre).

The bridge starts out by switching between Am7 and an A-shaped barre of the D chord (x5777x), played with a bit of an alternating bass line:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

A-shaped barre chords, especially straight major ones (no 7′s, 9′s, etc.,) can be a real pain. Many people tend to cheat on them a little – barring the first set of strings across the first five strings with the index finger and barring the second set (two frets higher) across the first four strings with the ring finger. The thing to remember when playing these this way is to not strum the high E (first) string.

Things get more interesting starting at the fifth line of the bridge with the Bm7 chord. This is an open position Am7 chord that’s been moved up two frets and barred across the second fret with the index finger. Your middle finger gets the third fret of the B string and your ring finger sits at the fourth fret of the D string.

You then slide this entire shape up the neck so that your index finger barres the seventh fret (your middle finger with be on the eighth fret of the B string and your ring finger on the ninth fret of the D string) and add your pinky to the ninth fret of the G string. This is the Em chord that starts the sixth line of the bridge. To get the Em/D# (and for more on slash chords, check out the Easy Songs for Beginners’ Lesson on Eleanor Rigby), keep your middle, ring and pinky fingers in place and slide the index down a fret so it sits at the sixth fret of the A string. You then reform another A major-shaped barre chord at the third and fifth frets to make C (x3555x).

This is a good place to mention that open position chords work very well on the bridge section of Banana Pancakes. Because Jack Johnson doesn’t strike his high E string for the D, Em and C chords, his chord voicings are very similar to the open position chords you know and love. So if you have decided to play totally without barre chords or would simply just like a bit of a respite from them, feel free to use these substitutes:

You’ve probably already noticed that the bridge ends with the exact same G to D7 turnaround that you’ve encountered twice already in this song.

Okay, one last thing: In the original recording, Johnson occasionally plays a very short riff (lick, flourish, whatever you’d like to call it) in place of the C7 chord during the verses. He uses it in place of the fourth C7 in the first verse, doesn’t use it at all in the second and then uses it in place of the second C7 in the last verse. It goes like this:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

This is one of those instances where your brain can help you out a lot. Even though the riff takes the place of the C7 chord, it is still based on the Am barre chord, so don’t lose your fingering! Slide your ring finger from the fifth fret of the A string to the seventh fret, then pick both the D and G strings, where your index finger is still barring the fifth fret. Then hammer onto the seventh fret of the D string with your ring finger and pull it off again to sound the note at the fifth fret. As long as you keep your index finger on the fifth fret (after the initial slide on the A string), you should be fine.

You can almost do this verbatim with open position chords, but instead of sliding on the A string, you need to hammer onto the second fret of the D string after initially striking it as an open string.

And there you have all the parts! Here’s the layout for you and you’ll have to forgive my not giving you the usual final MP3 file. I’m pretty sure that after all the explaining, not to mention all the MP3 examples, you can handle this without problems.

I hope that you have enjoyed this song lesson and I also hope that you find it a great way to get going on refining your playing of barre chords, not to mention working on some simple rhythm skills.

As always, please feel free to post your questions and suggestions on the Guitar Noise Forum’s “Guitar Noise Lessons” page or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Banana Pancakes – Jack Johnson was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

It should be easy to understand that, for a beginner (not to mention for a teacher), “I just do it” is more than mildly frustrating. How does one go about learning if one can’t get instruction?

The purpose of this lesson, a look at Seven Nation Army, from the White Stripes 2003 major label debut album, Elephant, is twofold – first we want to look at the interesting rhythmic pattern that serves as the song’s signature hook. We’re also going to take the song apart as we normally do in these lessons, but for the purpose of latter creating a single acoustic guitar arrangement of this song. That will be in an upcoming lesson. Today, we’re all electric!

Structurally, Seven Nation Army is about as simple as song come. There are three verses, four if you count the guitar solo between the second and third verse as verse. These verses are essentially made up of two parts, one that repeats itself over and over even though it may be played by just the bass guitar at some points and by a dense, multi-layered recording of guitars the next. This part also serves as the introduction, the outro and as a musical interlude between the verses. There is also a second two-measure pattern that “formally” ends each verse and also pops up during the solo and at the end of the interlude between the first and second verse.

It’s this first part that contains the interesting rhythm we want to look at and analyze. Here is the bass guitar part, a line of single notes, which I’ve written out for guitar:

The first two notes, the E notes located at the second fret of the D string, are harmless enough. The first is a dotted quarter note and lasts for a beat and a half in length, while the second is an eighth note and is a half beat in length. And this would probably be a great place to point out that while I’ve written out to play these notes at the second fret of the D string, you can also play them elsewhere on the neck of your guitar, such as the seventh fret of the A string or the twelfth fret of the low E (sixth) string, if you prefer.

I thought it would be good to have them all within easy fingering of one another.

The last three notes, at first glance, are quarter notes, which would be problematic in that we would be looking at a total of five beats in the first measure, a measure that is clearly marked in “4/4″ time so it should have only four beats in it. Looking closer, though, you should see a little bracket over these three quarter notes and a number “3″ imbedded in that bracket. This indicates that these three notes make up a quarter note triplet, which means that these three notes are supposed to be evenly spread out among these last two beats of the measure.

That may sound simple enough (although I’m certain to many of you it doesn’t sound simple in the least), but how do we go about making this happen? Counting out a triplet over two beats isn’t at all easy, even for seasoned players. So we’re going to “cheat” for a moment and make it simpler to count by pretending the song was written in 2/4 time, like this:

To do this, we’re cutting all the note values in half – half notes become quarter notes, quarter notes become eighth notes and eighth notes become sixteenth notes. A triplet over two beats will become a triplet over a single beat.

The purpose for doing this is to make it easier to count and to get the rhythm into your head. Most people count sixteenth notes like this: “One, ee, and, ah, two, ee, and, ah…” and triplets are counted “one and ah two and ah…” So we’re going to combine these two and make this measure of two beats go “One, ee, and, ah, two and ah.”

The most important part of this is to make the triplet a triplet, spreading the three notes evenly across the beat, and not turning it into a set of three sixteenth notes with a sixteenth note rest attached. If you’ve listened to the first third of Guitar Noise Podcast 3, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

You can help yourself here by tapping out the beats with your foot, slow and steady. When you are comfortable, pick a four syllable word and say it evenly across the beat. “Alligator” works nicely if you’re stuck for one! Say that for a few beats and then start saying a three syllable word (“elephant” might be appropriate, given the song in question), again making sure that the three syllables are evenly spaced in the beat.

When you’re good with the counting, you can put it all back together, first in 2/4 and then back in 4/4, as done in this example:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

You’ll notice that when going back to 4/4 timing, I draw out the triplet on the third beat when counting it aloud. It’s not at all easy to count out even beats while playing quarter note triplets, so I think you may find this method a little easier. And, since this rhythm figure is very much the heartbeat of Seven Nation Army, it goes without saying that you want to work it into your head and fingers so that you can play it effortlessly. Don’t skimp on the practice and, whatever way you choose to count out the beats and rhythms, don’t be shy about counting out loud. It can, and does, help quite a bit.

And once you’re good with this snippet of rhythm, the rest of the song is going to be a breeze! The second part, which we’ll conveniently call “Example 2,” is two measures of power chords (G5 and A5) played in straight eighth notes, like this:

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There are, of course, many ways to play this. On the original recording, there are at least two different guitars playing the part, one using two string power chords and one using two-string power chords for the G5 and then switching to the open position A chord (the A chord shown in the “Alternate” example here). In these examples, I’m using three-string power chords instead of two-string power chords simply because I like the fuller sound. After all, I’m using one guitar instead of overdubbing a second one. You should try out different variations of these chords and see which you like best.

The next section of Seven Nation Army is actually a repeat of the first section, only it’s fleshed out with full chords, using the single note bass line as the root notes for the chords. Again, on the original recording there are at least two different guitar parts. One guitar plays Root 5 position three-string power chords, like this (this example isn’t played in the MP3 files, by the way):

In case you don’t know what “Root 5 Power Chords” or simply what “Power Chords” are, you can address that by taking a quick look at two of our lessons here at Guitar Noise. The first, The Power of Three, shows you how the four basic types of chords (major, minor, augmented and diminished) are formed. The second, Building Additions (and Suspensions) goes on to detail the creation of other chords, with power chords being the first example in the lesson.

“Root 5″ power chords are simply power chords whose root note is played on the fifth (A) string. And you can see that all the power chords in this example have their root note on the A string.

There is another guitar playing full major chords on the D, G and B strings. This guitar is also being played with a slide. I decided not to use a slide for the MP3 in order to keep things simple:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Hopefully, one of the reasons for using the open position A chord in Example 2 becomes clear here. Your fingers are already in this shape and now you can just slide them up and down the neck of your guitar at will. If you’re careful about your strumming and can avoiding hitting the first (high E string), then you can use a single finger to barre across the second fret for the open position A and then be about your merry way for Example 3.

Another thing to point out here is that in the original recording, the slide guitar uses a single quarter note of the final B chord (which I have here as a half note) and follows that up with a quarter note of A (X0222X). Either way works fine.

When you’re comfortable moving around on Example 3, the only thing left to do is to be able to switch between the sections, from Example 1 to Example 2 to Example 3 and then back again from Example 3 to Example 2 to Example 1, as demonstrated in this MP3:

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That’s essential the whole song, once you put it all together. Feeling very much at ease with this particular rhythm is going to be essential if you’re going to sing and play it at the same time, so be sure to practice it as much as you may have to. Then practice it even more!

Here’s a lay out of how the song goes:

As I mentioned, there is a guitar solo between the second and third verses. It’s done on slide, but can be easily done without it as well and still sound okay. Well, you might want to make a few alterations and we’ll discuss that in a moment.

The solo itself is fairly simple, using just single notes taken, for the most part, from the E minor pentatonic scale in the following positions:

I’ve taken the liberty of adding the two notes taken from outside of the Em pentatonic scale (C at the thirteenth fret of the B string and F# at the fourteenth fret of the high E (first) string) in parenthesis so that you can add them to your practice warm up of the scale.

The solo is played over four repetitions of “Example 3″ and ends by going back to “Example 2.” Since you’re up that high on the neck for the solo, you’ll probably find it easier to play the G5 in the same three-string manner that the slide guitar uses, that is laying your finger across the twelfth fret (X X 12 12 12 X) and playing just the D, G and B strings, as indicated. For the A5, just slide it up two frets (X X 14 14 14 X).

Okay, then, here’s the solo. You will note that there are three places in the first half (the first eight measures) where there’s a double stop on the seventh fret of the D and A strings. These notes are A and E, respectively, so you’re basically playing an inversion of A5 in the solo while the rhythm is playing an E chord. It will sound slightly dissonant. That’s what goes on in the original recording, most probably from using the slide.

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Also, this is not exactly “note for note,” but it’s certainly close enough for anyone but the nittiest of nitpickers.

Anyway, I also hope that you had fun with this song. We’ll be coming back to it later this fall and examining how to turn it into a single acoustic guitar arrangement. That should prove fairly interesting, no?

As always, please feel free to post your questions and suggestions on the Guitar Noise Forum’s “Guitar Noise Lessons” page or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Seven Nation Army – The White Stripes was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Liner Notes: Bob Dylan

Born in Duluth, Minnesota in 1941, Bob Dylan has released over sixty albums and compilations. No other songwriter from modern times has had as much cultural and musical significance. We have several lessons on the music of Bob Dylan for easy guitar.

• If Not For You
• Tangled Up In Blue
• Simple Twist of Fate
• Buckets of Rain

For a complete list of lessons, articles and reviews check out our Bob Dylan artist page.

So, instead let me say that this lesson, a single guitar arrangement of Lay Lady Lay, a song a lot of people single out as one of their favorites of Bob Dylan, is definitely going to pose some challenges. But rest assured these aren’t insurmountable challenges.

Let’s dispense with the formalities and get right down to work, then, okay?

These files are the author’s own work and represent his interpretation of this song. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

Notice my use of the word “work.” Unlike many people, the word carries no bad connotations with me, and that may be why I have no problem expecting learning any song to involve some work. And that’s after close to thirty-five years of playing. There is little in life that is not going to involve some degree of work. So if you have a problem with the word “work,” you’re kind of setting yourself up with a ready excuse as to why you can’t do something. So now who’s being discouraging?

If anything else, I hope that those of you reading and learning from all the lessons and articles here on Guitar Noise understand and appreciate that nothing about learning the guitar involves magic, anymore than it truly involves me. You are the one putting the effort into learning and making things happen. I’m not much more than a glorified tour guide.

Perhaps a better way of putting it is that even though I’ve done a bit of work for you, putting things in order and arranging them as nicely as possible, you’ve got to also put in the work required for you to make the music happen. I’ll do my best to talk you through the stages as we go. Essentially, we’re going to take something that is slightly difficult and then deliberately make it more difficult in order to get better at our barre chord technique.

First off, let’s deal with some necessary preliminary steps. Structurally, Lay Lady Lay is made up of three verses. Each verse has an “A” section (the “lay lady lay” part) that consists of a four chord progression that repeats itself without the lyrics. This “A” section is then repeated as the second line of the verse and is followed by, a “B” section that lasts for two lines before the verse finishes with one last repetition of the “A” section.

If I go to a book of Bob Dylan songs or get the chords off the Internet or even just figure things out myself by ear, this is what I would come up with for the first verse:

You can see how the verse breaks itself into the AABA pattern.

Now, I don’t know about you, but just seeing that C#m listed there is enough to make me think about changing to a key with easier guitar chords. We’re obviously in the key of A major (although there is a very interesting thing going on that we’ll discuss in a moment), and that’s usually going to involve a few barre chords. I’m counting three here, C#m, Bm and F#m, and even though there are ways of getting around these particular chords, I’m still thinking things might go better with a change of key.

Fortunately, I have read Turning Notes into Stone, which explains how to transpose and I’m ready to change all of the chords to their appropriate matches in the key of G:

But this doesn’t help all that much as now I’ve got to deal with both Bm and F. I have gotten rid of one barre chord, since the F#m in the key of A is now an Em in the key of G, so I guess that’s a small victory. Plus, if I throw a capo on the second fret (as I do in all the MP3 examples for this lesson), then I’m back in the original key of A.

Better yet, I know ways of playing the Bm and F chords that don’t involve full barres. Even better, using these particular chord voicings create a natural descending bass line, even though it’s all way up on the D (fourth) string. Let’s start with G, and then use a “four string” version of Bm where the F# note at the fourth fret of the D string is the bass note. Most people will finger this chord with the index finger on the second fret of the high E (first) string, the middle finger on the third fret of the B string, the pinky on the fourth fret of the G string and then the ring finger on the fourth fret of the D. Technically speaking, we can call this chord, “Bm/F#” even though most chord books will list it simply as “Bm.”

From there we’ll go to the typical “beginner’s F” chord, you know, the one where you lay your index finger across the first fret of both the high E (first) and B strings, while your middle finger is at the second fret of the G string and your middle finger gets the third fret of the D string.

Finally, there’s the basic open position Am chord, but in keeping with the walking descending bass line, let’s not play either the low E (sixth) string or even the open A string and let the E note at the second fret of the D string be our bass note.

Putting all this together and using a basic Travis style finger pattern, such as those we’ve used in other lessons, we can put together something like this:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Think of this particular pattern as a slight variation of the pinch that you used in the lesson on Dust in the Wind. Because we’re working with sixteenth notes, the thumb will be counting off both the “beat” (the “numbers”) as well as the offbeats (the “ands” between the numbers) while the fingers will hit the notes in between. So, following this last example, start with a pinch (both finger and thumb) of both high and low E strings on the first beat and then pick the D string with the thumb on the “and” between beats one and two. This will be followed by a hit of the B string and then the high E (first) string with the fingers (usually index and middle, respectively) and then the thumb will get the G string on the “and” between beats two and three.

This is not an easy pattern to get right out of the box, so don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t go well at first. I’ve included a “variation” that uses the thumb on every beat and offbeat and for some of you this might prove a helpful starting place. But this will sound better once you get the hang of it, so don’t give up! As with all finger picking patterns, the hardest step isn’t usually getting it into your fingers – it’s being able to stop and then switch to another pattern when you want to!

When you switch to the following chords, your bass note will now be on the D string, so your first pinch will be with the thumb on the D and a finger on the high E (first) string, while your second note with the thumb will be on the G string. And this pattern will hold throughout the remaining three chords.

Before we move on, let’s take a minute and look at this progression. We go from G to Bm and then to F and Am. In the key of G, G is obviously the root (the “I” chord) while Bm is the “iii” chord. It’s not the strongest of progressions, in fact it’s very gentle and subtle and maybe that’s why Dylan went with it as it fits the mood of the song very nicely. The next chord, F, may seem out of place, but in the key of F, F is the root (“I”) and wouldn’t you just be surprised to find out that Am is the “iii” chord? Basically what’s going on here is that we’ve got one “I – iii” progression followed by another. And since Am is also the “ii” chord in the key of G, going from Am to G would be “ii – I” in our original key, another very gentle sounding cadence. I only mention all this because I find this sort of thing interesting, not only from a theory point of view, but also from a songwriter’s perspective.

Anyway, you can, if you’d like, use this pattern and these chord voicings for the entire song and consider the lesson over. Simply skip down to the final example and you’ll find all the chords in a nice “cheat sheet” format and you’d good to go. But if you’d like to get some more work and to, hopefully, get better at playing, then come along and let’s tackle some barre chords.

Why? Because while it’s entirely possible to play guitar all your life and not ever use a single barre chord, you are ultimately limiting much of what you can play. And the only way you’re going to get better at them is to use them. Sitting around talking about how you can’t do them will certainly prove yourself right, but you deserve to treat yourself better than that.

And it’s one thing to strum barre chords, especially on an electric guitar. Try finger picking them on an acoustic if you’d like to get better at them in a hurry!

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

This example uses essentially the same finger picking pattern as before, but every chord voicing, with the exception of the Am, is a barre chord. Fortunately, these barre chords are relatively similar and also very close together on the fretboard, so this makes things a little easier for you as you switch from chord to chord.

On the G chord, your index finger barres all six strings at the third fret while your middle finger is on the fourth fret of the G, your pinky is on the fifth fret of the D and your ring finger is on the fifth fret of the A string. If you think about it, your fingers are forming the same shape as the open position E chord. And thinking about your fingers being in this specific shape will help you a lot as you shift from chord to chord.

When changing from the G to the Bm, you want to slightly raise your index finger so that you can shift it down to the second fret (try to stay across all six string even though you’ll only be picking five of them) and, as you shift your index finger, also “relocate” your E shape so that it’s now an “Am” shape, that is, try to transfer all your fingers at one go instead of painstakingly placing them one at a time on the fretboard. You don’t need me to tell you that this is going to be, in all likelihood, a big train wreck the first few (or few dozen) times out. But as your fingers get to understanding what you want them to do, they will seemingly get better a little at a time until you should find that you are handling the change fairly well at a slow speed. And, as you already know, more speed will come with more repetition.

Moving from Bm to F involves more of the same, only this time you’re going back to the E shape. And use the Am at the end of the progression as a chance to catch your breath before doing it all again.

I cannot stress enough that this will probably take most of you some time to get down. Hopefully you understand that something like this is worth the effort on your part. One day you will wake up and think that you just play barre chords by magic, but the fact is that all the time that you’re spending now on this progression will play a big part of that seeming magic.

Again, you can feel free to call it quits here. But if you want to step up to the next challenge, then by all means, let’s continue:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

At first glance, this doesn’t seem all that different from our last example, but it is in a very important way. The first chord, G, is in open position and the second and third chords (the Bm and F) are barres. So that means you’re going to be working on making the shift from the open position G to the Bm barre. To make it even more interesting, I’ve put the F# note at the second fret of the low E (sixth) string, the bass note (I told you earlier there was a reason to barre all six strings on this chord!), so that the bass line now mimics our original “open position” bass line from Example 1. It’s simply an octave lower on the Bm, F and Am chords.

If you play your G chord with your index finger on the second fret of the A string, then you’ve got a head start on making the transition to the Bm a little smoother as all you’ll need do is to stretch it out over the six strings at the second fret. Also take advantage of the fact that your finger picking pattern uses a lot of open strings, which will help you to get a bit of a jump in making the chord change.

Even after all the work you did on the “barre chords only” progression of Example 2, this is going to take more energy and effort on your part. I can only tell you that it will, in the long run, be worth every bit of it. I hope you can trust me on that!

One of the (many) reasons for all this dealing with barre chords is that the technique of barring can help you out a lot even when you’re not playing barre chords. Confused? Well, let’s look at our next example to shed a little light on that:

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This latest pattern is a dead ringer for our first pattern but I’ve decided that I’d like my single guitar arrangement of Lay Lady Lay to contain some of the textures of the pedal steel guitar that accompanies Dylan in the original recording. Absurd, you say? Well, I certainly cannot make my acoustic sound like a pedal steel, even on a good day. But by mimicking some of the notes and licks by use of a hammer-on, such as at the end of both the Bm and F chords here in this example, I can give the listener a bit of the flavor of the pedal steel guitar and hope that his or her mind fills in the rest.

The easiest way of getting these particular notes, you might notice, is by raising and lowering my index finger, just as if I were barring the second fret (for the Bm) or first fret (for the F). And if I want to emphasize the very low bass notes, as we did in Example 3, this would be the only way of accomplishing this. So now you’ve got another excellent reason for keeping up with the barre chord work.

Okay, just to keep this lesson from being too one dimensional, let’s tackle the “B” section of the verse:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

In order to give this section a bit of its own identity, I’ve changed the picking pattern to more of a “straight down and up” sort of arpeggio while keeping the rhythm of the finger pattern of “Section A.” Note the use of the E (second fret of the D string) as the first bass note in the Em chord. This mimics the bass player in the original recording. Playing the B at the second fret of the A string for the second of bass note of the Em chord makes a nice lead down to the G (third fret of the low E (sixth) string) that starts the second measure.

This section also contains what most folks think of as the “signature lick” of this song, namely the little ornamentation at the end of the second measure. To play this, start by fingering an Am7 chord (x02010) and pinch only the D and B strings (the ones where your fingers are on). After performing the pinch, pull-off your fingers on both strings. Remember that you always want to tug down a little when you make a pull-off. That’s what gives you a good clear sounding of the notes of the open strings.

On the original recording, there is a slight variation on this lick, which I’ve included in our last example. To play this, first you’ll need to form a different voicing of Am7 (x02013) that uses either your ring finger or pinky on the third fret of the high E (first) string. Once you’ve formed your chord, play a “three finger pinch,” plucking the D string with your thumb, the B string with the index finger and the high E (first) string with your middle finger and then perform the pull-off on the D and B strings as before while leaving whichever finger you have on the third fret of the high E (first) string, firmly in place.

This signature riff, as well as the “multi-finger pinch,” shows up again in the bridge:

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I should note that I deliberately used both the finger patterns from “Section A” and “Section B” for the bridge, but you can feel free to go with either one or the other. Truth be told, I originally wrote it all out in the style of “Section B” but found myself playing the first measure of the bridge in the style of “Section A” and subsequently re-wrote the music! Sometimes your fingers just do what they want to do!

In the second and sixth measures, you’ll find three block chords (D, Em and G) that require a multi-finger pinch. The easiest solution is to use the thumb on the bass note (the open D string or the open low E (sixth) or the G at the third fret of that same string), the ring finger on the high E (first) string, the middle finger on the B string and the index finger on the G string. Another possible method is to use any finger to “sweep’ across all three high strings in an upstroke motion while playing the bass note with the thumb. Both techniques work fine.

In the final measure of the bridge, I throw in another little guitar lick, taken directly from the original recording. This involves playing the open high E (first) string, and then playing the D note at the third fret of the B string before pulling off to sound the open B. After all the work you’ve done so far, this should prove to be a snap.

To put the finishing touches on our arrangement, let’s add an outro:

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Here the chords simply ascend up the G major scale, going from G to Am to Bm and then to C. Surprisingly, this is the first use of this chord that normally shows up every two to three chords in the key of G!

This entails a little more complicated picking pattern than before, but you can also use either the pattern from “Section A” or “Section B” of the verse if you’d prefer. Try, though, to pinch the first notes of the chord that I’ve written out as it makes for a very nice melodic line to close the song, moving from the open B string to the C note at the first fret to the D note at the third fret and then to the open E of the first string. Once there, use your pinky to get the G note at the third fret of the first string and then slide the pinky up to the seventh fret for the final note. When you’ve reached it, you’ll also play the G note at the third fret of the low E (sixth) string with your index finger. This is a bit of a stretch and normally I wouldn’t think about trying it, but having the capo at the second fret makes this a lot easier and, again, it mimics the slide guitar part played on the original recording.

And now that we have all our pieces in place, let’s try out the whole thing:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

I hope that you’ve hung out and tried the various exercises and techniques involved in this lesson. Part of this, obviously, is meant to both encourage and light a fire under you to get you going on feeling more comfortable with barre chords. Part of it is selfish, as well. We’re going to be doing some lessons in the very near future on Jack Johnson songs that will actually be less involved than what you’ve just accomplished and I don’t want to have to put all of these songs in the “Intermediates” section when you truly would be able to handle them if you simply worked a little on them with some concentrated effort.

Anyway, I also hope that you had fun with it as well. This is a beautiful song that you’ll probably find yourself playing over and over again and wondering what all the fuss about barre chords was about in the first place!

As always, please feel free to post your questions and suggestions on the Guitar Noise Forum’s “Guitar Noise Lessons” page or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Lay Lady Lay – Bob Dylan was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Just as important, perhaps more so – developing this flexibility will keep you from falling back on the old “must-not-deviate-from-original-strumming-pattern” mentality, which sounds even more ludicrous, by the way, if you can manage to say it with a bit of a James Shatner impression.

Think about this: Most of us pick up the guitar to play songs. If we go out of our way to learn a single part (the strumming guitar) of a song that is done by a whole band, then our playing isn’t going to sound just like the song to begin with. So why get hung up on that when we can usually come up with something a lot more interesting that still sounds like the song we want to play?

Liner Notes: Pink Floyd

David Gilmour’s distinctive guitar style is often regarded as the most familiar aspect of the Pink Floyd sound. It’s instantly recognizable for its economy and tone and his gift of melodic phrasing is still influencing guitarists all over the world.

We have several lessons on the music of David Gilmour and Pink Floyd.

• Wish You Were Here
• Wish You Were Here – Intro Solo
• Brain Damage / Eclipse
• Money (for Bass Guitar)

For more check out our Pink Floyd artist page.

Looking at songs as things you can arrange, pardon the pun, will give you the pluck to try out songs that you might dismiss as “beyond” your capabilities. I can’t even begin to tell you how cool it is when you’re listening to a single guitarist perform and he or she totally stuns you by coming up with a song you’ve never heard done before in a single-guitar arrangement.

So without further ado, let’s get down to the task at hand, shall we?

In case you didn’t read the title, we’re dipping once again into our Pink Floyd catalogue for this lesson and pulling out the classic ballad Comfortably Numb, originally released on their album The Wall. I’m pretty certain most of you are familiar with the tune, so much so in fact that I’m wondering whether or not I should even discuss the song’s structure.

Better safe than sorry, right? Like our last lesson, Play with Fire, Comfortably Numb is made up of two distinct sections – a “verse” section and a “chorus” section. Some people might like to break the chorus down into two subsections: a “pre-chorus” (starting with the line “…there is no pain…”) and a regular “chorus” (just the final line – “…I have become comfortably numb…”). That seems a little like too much work for me, so we’ll settle for two parts, okay? Laying out the song in the style of a “cheat sheet” or “chord sheet,” and going with very basic chords, it would look like this:

You can see that the two sections have their own chord progressions. The verses are made up of either two or three sets of a Bm – A – G – Em – Bm progression while the chorus goes from D to A twice, C to G twice, back to D and A (again twice) and then back to C and G again (and again, twice). The last line goes from A to C to G and ends on D.

The chorus, beginning with the repeated line of D to A, serves as the backing progression for the first instrumental solo. The last line of the chorus is still sung, though, which leads us back to the verse section again.

Finally, the chord progression of the verse serves as the backing chords for the extended solo of the outro. And that pretty much covers the structure of our song.

Comfortably Numb is played at a rather languid pace; I think it’s around sixty-five beats per minute. This leaves a lot of space for strumming and, during the first verse, Gilmour does very little of it. You can also hear that when he gets to the second Bm (at the point where the lyrics are “…anyone home…”) that he’s not really playing a Bm chord, but something a little more moody and mysterious. Back to that in a moment…

During the second pass at the Verse Section, the strumming is actually more like it was in the chorus section, a bit busier but still steady. Almost like someone managing to get to his feet, perhaps?

Example 1 lays out these two basic strumming patterns for you:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

As you can see and hear, I’ve used the Bm chord for this example but I could have used any of the other chords as well. Speaking of that Bm chord, and we’ve certainly talked about this before, you can use one of three different voicings for it in this song:

The first one is obviously easiest and those of you who are comfortable with the full barre chord version (the third choice) will probably like the way that sounds. I’m going with the second one for now, because of what we’re going to do next. But before we go on, this would be a good place to point out that you can now play this song. Seriously. You’ve got the basic chords and some simple, yet effective, strumming patterns. What more do you need?

Wants, however, are a totally different matter. And we’re working on a single guitar arrangement of our song, perhaps we want to play Comfortably Numb with a few more interesting touches than simply being locked into a strumming pattern throughout the whole tune.

So what I’m proposing is that we take a number of ideas from our various Guitar Noise Podcasts, things like combining strumming and crosspicking (from GN Podcast #8) or even the sixteenth note accent from way back in GN Podcast #4 and put them into play. We can even use a little bit of our bass line work. In fact, if you’ve read the very first lesson on walking bass lines, Connecting the Dots, you’ll see that we’ll put Examples 8 and 10 from that lesson to good use in this one.

Before we do, though, let’s go back and look at the “mysterious” sounding Bm chord that Gilmour plays at the end of the verse progressions. It’s a Bm chord where the D note (third fret of the B string) has been replaced with C# (second fret of the B string), giving what us what most guitarists would call a Bsus2 chord and it would look like this, if you were using the “second choice” voicing of Bm as a starting point;

Alright, then, I think we’re ready to come up with an interesting “template” for the verse chord progression. After doing a bit of playing around and experimenting, I’ve hit upon this:

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That’s certainly a lot more interesting than just strumming around. The first measure starts with a Bm chord, but I’ve left the high E (first) string open so that I can hammer onto the second fret to get the F# note to complete the chord. There’s a bit of sneakiness in that on my part, too. Since that F# note is the note of the start of the melody, I usually find myself trying to find it and often slide up to it from E. So this little hammer-on helps me to find the melody line right from the start. For the third and fourth beats of the measure, I use simple upstroke arpeggios, removing my finger from the high E (first) string again to get a more interesting final arpeggio to contrast with the one of the third beat.

I like the combination of strumming, hammer-ons and arpeggios in the first measure so much that I use it again in the second measure for the A chord. The first beat begins with what some folks call “Asus2,” which is just an A chord with no finger on the B string. I hammer-on the second fret of the B string and also catch the full A chord on the upstroke. And since we’ve been doing okay with the hammer-ons, why not give the pull-offs some equal time? You’ll find one in the last arpeggio that occurs on the fourth beat of this measure.

Since the G to Em transition that occurs in the third measure is dramatic, the easiest thing to do is to emphasize it by keeping the rest of the strumming in this measure relatively sparse. Those of you with sharp ears may hear that I’m sometimes catching a few extra notes on this short descending bass line. This is done by hitting all three of the low strings while playing it:

The thing to watch out for here is that you want to mute the A string when you go for the F# note (second fret of the low E) in the bass. Simply lifting your finger that is already sitting there at the second fret just enough to dampen the A string should do the trick.

Another thing to notice is that we’re what might be a different voicing of the G chord that some of you may not have come across before (although some of you do recognize it, I’m sure, from other lessons here at Guitar Noise). Having the D note (third fret of the B string) allows you to just leave it there when you play your Em. This added D note turns the Em into an Em7, which gives the chord a more interesting feel. You’ll hear on the last MP3 file that I strummed this Em7 chord very close to the bridge of the guitar, giving the strum a little more of a ‘ghostly” effect. Using a technique such as this every now and then can also make a song more interesting to your listeners. Not to mention to yourself!

Because the third measure is practically all strumming, it kind of makes sense to follow that up with a measure that is nothing but single picked notes. In my playing around, I discovered that I liked the arpeggios I could create by leaving the high E (first) string open while playing the Bsus2. This creates another weird chord that I’ve chosen to call “Bsus2sus4″ just to keep the “Dadd2add4″ used in our Easy Songs for Beginners lesson on Man on the Moon company. If you finger the chord using your ring finger on the fourth fret of the D string, your pinky on the fourth fret of the G string and your index finger on second fret of the B, that will free up your index finger to perform the hammer-on and pull-off at the third fret of the B string.

So far, so good? As always, it’s important to note here that this “template” is merely a suggestion. There is no end to the ideas that you can come up with and while you’re playing you may certainly come across more than one or two that sound good. It also goes without saying that there’s no reason to make things more complicated than you have to. If you can only sing while strumming simply, and if you’re the only one singing and playing, then you have to go with what you’re capable of. But do yourself a favor and keep trying out adding little touches here and there. As you gain more confidence in your abilities, you’ll find yourself able to put your practice into your performance.

And this is important to remember when we get to the chorus. If I’m not handling the singing duties when playing, I like to use the guitar to add the wonderful keyboard arpeggios that are part of the hook of the chorus. When singing, though, that makes thing a bit difficult. Sometimes a compromise is in order.

For instance, the notes of the D arpeggio in the first measure of the chorus, along with the tablature you’ll often find both online and in “guitar tablature edition” books of Pink Floyd music are:

This certainly sounds fine. But if you’re more partial to the sound of ringing strings, you might find this interpretation of the same notes more up your alley:

You might recognize this particular voicing of the D chord from many of our other song lessons and articles here at Guitar Noise. For more about figuring out how to come up with a different chord voicing yourself, check out Moving On Up or Multiple Personality Disorders; both articles are certainly worthy of your attention. The easiest way to finger this, by the way, is to use your index finger for the fifth fret of the high E (first) string, your pinky on the seventh fret of the B string and your ring finger on seventh fret of the G string.

And we’ve not mentioned it yet, but if you decide to play Comfortably Numb on a twelve-string guitar (no reason not to!), this particular technique will sound very cool.

Back to the point – borrowing the lines from the keyboard is a great idea, but if you’re not able to handle it and sing, there’s no reason to abandon it all together. After all, during each of the measures of A, you’re only singing on the first beat. Likewise the first two measures of G in the chorus section. So, strumming the D’s and C’s while playing arpeggios on the A’s and G’s should work out fine. In the following example, I’ve written out each of the chord changes as arpeggios, but on the MP3 you’ll hear the example played twice – once with all arpeggios and once with alternating strumming and arpeggios:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

The A and G arpeggios vary slightly from the original recording. Actually the A is an exact copy of the second pass on the recording while the G is different in that I’ve changed the notes used in order to take the best advantage of the guitar’s two open high strings. If you’re playing with someone who’s got that part covered, then you obviously don’t have to worry about it. If you’re on your own, might as well make things easier on you. Chances are likely that if I hadn’t told you it was different, you might not have even noticed. You’re still using the flavor of the song and that will often carry you through.

For the second pass through the D, A, D, A, C, G, C, G of the chorus, I want to give the music more of a push, so I go for all strumming (and these are all just slight variations of the “possible chorus” strumming from Example 1) but I punch things up by adding a sixteenth note accent at the last half of the fourth beat of the previous measure, like this:

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Again, and you’re undoubtedly tired of hearing this by now, this is also just a suggestion. You can use these sixteenth note accents in combination with arpeggios or with different strumming patterns or not use them at all. This is, after all, your call as arranger. You are the one who knows what you can (or can’t) play at this point in your guitar playing adventure.

You might also hear in the last MP3 example that I manage to find the melody notes of the very last phrase of lyric (“…have become comfortably numb…”) in much the same way we found the melody line of Play with Fire. To accomplish this, I need to change the last C to Cadd9, which means adding the pinky to the third fret of the B string in order to get the D note of the melody. And then, after a bit of careful picking with the G chord, I finished things off with first a partial D chord, using just the A, D and G strings, and then a full D, strummed as close to the bridge of the guitar as possible in order to quiet things down a bit for the second verse.

And that’s pretty much everything. You’re good to go! I hope you’ve had fun with this lesson. The main thing to remember is that Comfortably Numb is a song where your playing carries a lot of emotional weight, so why sit on a robotic strumming pattern that displays none?

And for those who noticed that I totally ignored the solo between the first chorus and the second verse, don’t worry. Time permitting (although that might mean sometime after August), I will write out a single guitar arrangement for that to help you out.

As always, please feel free to post your questions and suggestions on the Guitar Noise Forum’s “Guitar Noise Lessons” page or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Comfortably Numb – Pink Floyd was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

As a guitarist, as a musician, I know that the ability to be flexible, to change from strumming to a single-note crosspicking pattern or to change from full chords to partial chords or even to chord melody style in midstream can make a big difference in how a song comes across. So even when I’m learning a specific technique, part of me is thinking about how to be able to turn that new technique on and off at will and how to be able to integrate it into what I already can do.

Liner Notes: The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones formed in London in 1962 with singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards forming one of rock music’s most enduring songwriting partnerships.

Guitar Noise has several easy guitar lessons for classic Rolling Stones songs.

• Happy
• As Tears Go By

For more check out our artist page for The Rolling Stones

None of that, by the way, is supposed to make you wonder whether or not this particular lesson is going to be harder than the usual “Easy Songs for Beginners” Lessons here at Guitar Noise. Far from it! Rather, I just want to prepare you for doing something you’ve not tried before and while it is something fairly simple and easy, it may take a little getting used to!

So onward then, shall we?

Today’s selected lesson is Play With Fire, originally the “B” side of The Last Time, released almost exactly forty-four years ago (don’t get me started about where the time goes!). It’s a spare, acoustic song that will lend itself well to some interesting arranging work, using an interesting technique that essentially reverses the way you’re probably most used to playing guitar as yet. Hang in there and I’ll hopefully explain along the way.

In terms of structure, Play With Fire is about as simple as they come. There’s a verse section and a chorus. The chorus also serves as the introduction and as an interlude between the second and third verse. And you repeat the chorus a second time at the end, so I guess you could also think of it as the outro. It’s in 4 / 4 timing at a moderate pace of, say, one hundred and twelve beats per minute. And there are only four chords – Em, G, D and C.

To make matters easier, the entire verse, all eight measures of it, is sung over an Em chord. So you could take a simple strumming pattern, like this one I conveniently have here:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

With this we can do the whole song. Remember that the verse is eight measures (four beats each) of Em. The chorus starts out with two beats of G, then two beats of D, then two more beats of G, two beats of C and finally eight beats (two measures) of Em:

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Not much of a lesson, is it?

So where shall we start? This may seem like old hat to some of you, and I’m sure you’re tired of hearing me say it, but the melody of a song is almost always a great place to find ideas and inspiration. And this song is, probably not surprisingly, not an exception. In fact, if we look at the melody line and see how it fits on the guitar, we may make an interesting discovery:

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Guess what? There are only four melody notes and two of them are open strings! And here’s another gift – the two non-open-string notes, D (third fret of the B string) and G (third fret of the high E (first) string) are easily reached when playing an E minor chord. So let’s try and go about fitting them into our chord pattern. We could choose many ways to do this, such as in the following examples. By the way, these snippets only use the first two lines (four measures) of the verse in order to give you a taste:

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Our “first idea” is a typical beginner chord melody approach, pretty much going with a full chord strum with each melody note. A little heavy handed, but it works.

The “second idea” actually borrows from the original recording, using the Travis picking / pinch technique we’ve discussed in several relatively recent articles. It’s actually a lot sparser than even the original recording, but should be easy enough for you to get a handle on. First just use your thumb to get used to alternating between the open low E (sixth) string and the E note at the second fret of the D string every beat. Then add in the melody, using either your index or middle finger. Or you can use both fingers to play the melody notes, playing any note on the high E (first) string with your middle finger and any note on the B string with your index.

And if the style of the “third idea: seems familiar, it’s because we’ve used that in our After the Gold Rush lesson (and good for you, by the way, for venturing into the Intermediate Song Lessons page! Some of them are not as hard as you think they might be). We’re going to go with this one for today’s lesson because while it may sound easy, it’s going to take a little bit getting used to.

There are two main reasons I want to use this technique. First, it’s even and steady. You probably heard in the last example that it takes a few liberties with the timing of the melody line and that’s okay here because we’re not strictly playing a chord melody style. We’re actually the accompaniment and someone should be singing. Shadowing the melody in this fashion allows a bit of tension between the voice and the accompaniment, letting the voice weave in and out between the beats while we’re keeping things smooth and steady on the guitar.

The second reason is that we can use some of the pauses of the melody to play short arpeggio fills, especially at the end of the fourth and eighth measures. We’ll also tack on a short walking bass line at the very end of the verse, leading from E to F# on the low E (sixth) string, which will take us to the G note that will start the chorus.

Basically the “third idea” takes the familiar “bass note / chord” style of playing that we’ve used in lessons like Folsom Prison Blues and turns it around. We play the chord or partial chord on the higher strings first right on the beat and then add our bass note, which is usually the root note of the chord on the offbeat. Now here’s the tricky part: the easiest way to play this is to start with an upstroke. Instead of the typical down-up-down-up pattern that we play without thinking, we’re going to have to reverse our stroke. So do yourself a favor and start out slowly. Here we go:

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Again, I can’t stress enough to take things slowly. Only work the first two measures for starters. Once you’re comfortable with playing in this manner, then add the third measure (which should be a snap since it’s a repeat of the first one) and then tackle the fourth measure. It’s a very simple Em arpeggio, you don’t even have to lift your fingers, just go straight down the strings one at a time and then back to the B string. The last two notes again mirror the melody at that point of the song.

This may seem like a very minor thing, almost an afterthought really, but here you’re learning to snap out of your pattern, to take a (very) short deviation before getting back to it. This is the flexibility I was talking about at the very beginning of this lesson. At first it will seem weird but you’ll get better at it with each pass.

Speaking of mirroring the melody, we’re going to do the same thing in the chorus, but this time we’ll place the melody all the way down in the bass notes of the guitar and add some basic straight arpeggios:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Using the melody line as our bass puts us in a sort of “good news / bad news” scenario. The good news is that the initial G chord, as well at the G/B at the start of the second measure, are essentially one-fingered chords. If we’re careful with our picking, we can play both these chords using only one finger. The C chord at the last half of the second measure also poses no problems.

That means the bad news is the D chord at the end of the first measure. Technically, it’s got the A note of the open A string as our combination melody-and-bass note and we could make this easier on ourselves by using D5/A, which is fingered exactly like your regular open position D only you don’t play either E string (X0023X).

But this is a lesson and you’re supposed to be learning new things and taking on new challenges, so I’ve made the decision of playing a D chord with the F# note at the fourth fret of the D string. Probably the easiest way to finger this for most of you will be to use your ring finger for this F# note while your index finger gets the A (second fret of the G string) and your middle finger plays the D (third fret of the B string). And there’s a nice little arpeggio at the end that uses a pull-off from that D note on the B string to the open B string itself.

As mentioned earlier, the chorus, besides just being the chorus, is also used as the introduction and as an interlude, a (very) short instrumental break between the second and third verses. Plus the chorus is done twice after the fourth verse.

I have no qualms about using the chorus as the introduction; it’s distinctive and anyone who knows the song will be able to figure out what I’m playing. But playing it a total of seven times (four times with each of the four verses, plus as an introduction, an interlude and an outro) seems a bit much. We only do the verses four times, and that’s a lot!

So why not come up with a different arrangement for the chorus that can be used for the interlude and outro? And why not use the same style of “chord / bass note” playing that we’ve been doing so well with so far in the verses? Maybe something like this:

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The first line here you should recognize as the end of the chorus. It’s there because, at least according to the song structure we’re using, we’ll be playing this after the second verse and chorus and then again after the fourth verse and chorus. So it makes sense to see how it ties into the song. The F# note (fourth fret of the D string) is the pick-up note; if we were singing it would be the syllable “don’t” right before the “play” that starts the chorus.

Normally making the stretch to the fourth fret of the D string might be a tad worrisome, but remember that the note immediately before it is the open low E (sixth) string. That gives us plenty of time to move our fingers to be in place.

We’ll use the same chords that we did for the first chorus, but this time we’ll pick them in the same style that we use for the majority of the verses. Because the initial melody notes are on the G string, we’ll have to be a bit careful with our upstroke, making certain we miss the high E (first) and B strings. As I said, this is a lesson, so where would we be without techniques to practice?

And speaking of new things, there’s that pesky D/A again. Use the same fingering that you did on the regular chorus. It should work nicely. And if you truly are having a hard time, remember that the D5/A chord discussed earlier (X0023X) is still an option.

Finally, it’s no secret to anyone who’s heard me play that I am a big fan of using harmonics. So getting in a couple of natural harmonics, found at the twelfth fret of the B and high E (first) string, at the very end of this phrase sounds good to me. You can, as always, feel free to omit them if you’d like.

Alright, then, you’re good to go! Don’t forget that, as with all our song lessons here at Guitar Noise, this is meant to be a template, a starting point from which you can play around and experiment with different variations of your own choosing. You’ll soon get to the point where you’ll want to incorporate more of the syncopation from the verses, which means making some appropriate adjustments in the rest of your strumming pattern. You’ll hear a little bit of that in this final MP3:

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I hope you’ve had fun with this lesson. Coming right on the heels of Hey There Delilah, it’s almost like taking two steps forward, then taking two exact steps in reverse yet still ending up four steps ahead of where you started!

As always, please feel free to post your questions and suggestions on the Guitar Noise Forum’s “Guitar Noise Lessons” page or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Play With Fire – The Rolling Stones was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

I have to admit, though, I personally tend to avoid barre chords for the most part. My first guitar was a twelve-string and I have smallish hands, so I learned a lot of ways of getting around these somewhat dreaded chords. My fear of barre chords is probably one of the major reasons that I know so many different chord voicings and chord substitutions that I do. Not to mention giving me a lot of practice with capoing and transposing in my head!

Liner Notes: The Beatles

It’s very easy to forget that we’re talking thirteen albums, more than half of which were recording in the span of four years. Let’s put the spotlight on The Beatles, as well as on all the various Beatles song lessons available here at Guitar Noise.

• Yesterday
• Julia
• Nowhere Man
• Eleanor Rigby

For a complete list of lessons and articles check out our Beatles artist page.

So let’s take a song that uses a few barre chords, maybe two, three tops, and work out a lesson. And, to give you a sporting chance, we’ll use a song where you can cheat around the barre chords while you’re learning them. After all, we want to play, right?

These files are the author’s own work and represent his interpretation of this song. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

This lesson’s song in question is Help! by the Beatles. In addition to working with barre chords, we’ll also take our usual look at the nuances of single guitar arrangements, as well as learning a nifty little guitar riff. And, just to be a total pain, how about a walking bass line, albeit a very tiny one? Oh yes, we might also learn a thing or two about music and music theory and how it all pertains to the guitar. Some habits die hard, I guess. Anyway, let’s get started, shall we?

Verses, Chords and Strumming (in some order)

Help! is structured in the following manner: it begins with an introduction and then goes into the first verse, followed by the chorus. The chorus, as we’ll see, is simply a variation of the introduction. After the first verse and chorus comes the second verse (with chorus) and then a repetition of the first verse (again, with chorus). Finally, there is a short outro to end the song.

The key of the original recording is A major. The verses are made up of two eight-measure phrases, using the chord progression of A (two measures), C#m (two measures), F#m (two measures), D (two beats), G (two beats), and A again (one measure). This eight measure phrase is repeated to make up the second half of the verse.

Before we get to the chords, let’s take a look at the strumming. If you listen to the original recording, you’ll hear John Lennon’s acoustic guitar playing not one single strumming pattern, but rather numerous variations of what could be considered a single pattern. Here are some of the rhythms he uses (and please notice that I’m using “slash” notation to mark out the rhythm – that way you don’t have to get confused by reading lots of notes!):

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As you can see (and hear), these various patterns have similarities, but are definitely different. For the most part, the first two beats of any given measure are quarter note downstrokes while the remaining two beats are some combination of quarter notes, eighth notes, ties or rests. The song certainly doesn’t suffer from not having one strict strumming pattern. To the contrary, it sounds organic and lively.

What you might want to do at this stage is to get comfortable playing any of these rhythms that appeal to you. Then work at combining different ones, to the point that you’re not even thinking about switching from one to another. I know it sounds a bit like voodoo, but you want to get so that these variations in patterns just happen seemingly by their own accord.

Since these four examples are each two measures long, another thought would be to “splice” them together differently. For instance, follow the first measure of “Pattern 1″ with the second measure of “Pattern 3″ or the second measure of “Pattern 4.” You can see you’ve got a lot of choices.

An even further test is to see if you can play any combination of these rhythms while holding a conversation. If so, then you’re well on your way to being able to sing and play at the same time.

A quick note before we move on to the chords: one variation that you might find very helpful, not only here in Help! but with other songs as well, is to try out a “bass/strum” style. That is, you’d hit the root note of the chord you’re playing on the first beat instead of the full chord, as in this example:

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It may seem like a small thing but, as you’ll find when we look at some of these chords in a moment, playing in this style can buy you a moment or two to get the rest of your chord in place. It never hurts to think about these things! And it will be very important when dealing with the barre chords we’ll be using. This particular pattern, by the way, you’ll hear a lot in the MP3 examples. It seemed to be a “default” setting for my strumming when I was recording this lesson…

Okay, on to our chords. As I noted earlier, in the verses we’ve got A, C#m, F#m, D and G. On the original recording, C#m and F#m are played as full barre chords, like this:

Even if you’ve never made a barre chord in your life, you hopefully will recognize these chord shapes (and if you want to read more on chord shapes and learn where they come from, check out this old guitar column: But Then Again…). And if you don’t, don’t worry. That’s why we’re here!

Let’s start by making an open position Am chord, like this:

If you’re like most people, you’ve got your index finger on the first fret of the B string, your ring finger on the second fret of the G and your middle finger sitting on the second fret of the D string. Are we good with that?

What we want to do next is to rearrange our fingering of this chord so that we aren’t using our index finger. So, the middle finger replaces the index finger at the first fret of the B string and your pinky takes the ring finger’s former position (the second fret of the G string) so that the ring finger can place itself on the second fret of the D string. With this fingering, your index finger is totally free. And that will allow it to perform the barre for the barre chord. Are you ready?

There are essential two ways to go about this and we’re going to want to look at both, for reasons that will hopefully become obvious. I’d like to suggest that you start with the Am chord and move it up the neck until your fingers are sitting in the fifth and sixth frets and then place your index finger across the strings at the fourth fret. That placement of the index finger is the “barre.” Here’s a breakdown:

In essence, what we’ve done is to move the Am chord four frets up the neck. Each fret is one half-step higher in pitch, so when we moved up one fret we moved the Am chord to A#m (also called Bbm). Two frets higher up the neck we had Bm (which we’re going to need very shortly), three frets higher we had Cm and now that we’re four frets up we’ve got C#m.

A couple of things you want to remember about barring – first off, this is going to be new, so give yourself time to get it. Most people, especially on acoustic guitars, need quite a bit of practice before they feel even slightly comfortable with making a barre chord.

Secondly, with this particular shape where the root note (C#) is on the fifth (A) string, you really only need to get the tip of your index finger onto the string. A typical beginner approach is to get as much of the index finger to cover the barre as possible, usually jamming the neck of the guitar totally into the little webbing between one’s index finger and thumb. There’s simply no way you’ll be able to finger the rest of the chord if the tip of your index finger is way beyond the sixth (low E) string.

Third, as impossible as this is going to sound, relax! Even though we want, ideally, to be able to strum each string and get a clean, clear note, you actually don’t need to turn your index finger and thumb into a vice that has a death grip on the neck of your guitar. Experiment a bit and see just how much pressure you do need and then work on relaxing even more. It’s about finger placement, and that’s part of the paradox – the goal is, obviously, to lay your index finger flat across the strings. But if you take a look at your index finger, and it doesn’t have to be that close of a look, the chances are likely that it’s far from flat. So your initial concern is going to be finding the “sweet spot” for your finger. And that sweet spot is likely to change depending on the type of barre chord you’re playing.

Once you’re somewhat comfortable with the C#m, let’s try to form an F#m. We’ll use the same steps, only this time we’ll start with an Em chord and then move it up two frets on the neck like this:

For this, you may find it a lot easier to use your ring and pinky fingers, leaving your middle finger free to tell your teacher what you think of this exercise. When your F#m chord is in place, the pinky will be on the fourth fret of the D string and the ring finger will be on the fourth fret of the A string.

Many people find a “root six” barre chord (where the root note, F# in this case, is played on the sixth (low E) string) easier than a “root five” barre chord, such as the C#m we just played. For some it’s just the opposite. Regardless, you’re eventually going to want to do both so why not get started now? Again, relax and take your time to get the chord so that you can play all the strings with a reasonable amount of comfort and clarity.

Now, believe it or not, comes the harder part, changing between chords. In order to do that, we’re going to change our philosophy a bit in regard to barre chords. So far, we’ve managed to make barre chords by getting the other fingers in place first. The main reason I had you do this was to get the feel of how the chord should be, to gain some confidence that you can make these chords and make them with a relative sense of ease.

To take this one step further, we now want to form the barre chords we’ve learned by laying down the index finger first. For the C#m, place your index finger in its barre position on the fourth fret and then get the other three fingers into the Am chord shape. On the F#m, you’ll want to get your index finger set on the second fret first, before adding the ring and pinky fingers to complete the chord.

You should find that the work you’ve done in setting up the barre chord is making it easier for you to get it in place in this “index finger first” fashion. You’ll also find that making the barre chord in this way, particularly if you’re going to be hitting the bass note before the rest of the chord, as in Example 3 (told you it pays to think ahead) will buy you an extra fraction of a heartbeat, which will help you to get all of the chord in place for the full chord strum on the second beat.

And now that you’ve got something to work on, let’s also make things a little easier for you by giving you a “barre-chord free” option. Many times when a song calls for a minor chord, the minor seventh can be used as a substitute. And, as luck would have it, there are relatively easy fingerings for C#m7 and F#m7, as you can see here:

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The C#m7 is especially interesting, as it’s pretty much a C#5, or a C# power chord if you will, but played across all five strings, from the A string down toward the floor. The open E string is what makes this chord minor, while the open B string provides the seventh.

This version of F#m7 might be familiar to those of you who’ve read the Nowhere Man lesson. Basically, it’s a “one finger” barre chord, but you can also use your thumb to get the bass note (F#) at the second fret of the low E (sixth) string.

Alright then, now that we have our chords and some ideas about strumming, let’s put together a verse:

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As we’ve been discussing, the hardest part about playing this is going to be making the chord changes from A to C#m to F#m. You want to practice this by starting out painfully slowly, at a tempo slightly slower than, say, tectonic plate movement, but slightly faster than the brains of most people’s when given the chance to not say incredibly silly or vapid things on the Internet. I’m certain you’re dead tired of my telling you that patience is key, that you’ll get faster with practice and clean repetition, so let’s just pretend that I’ve told you that, okay?

Help! is played at a fairly brisk pace on the original recording. I’ve heard many covers done in many different styles and tempos, so don’t worry about tearing along at speed until you’ve gotten comfortable making the changes between chords.

Introduction Riff, Chorus and Outro

I recall promising you a walking bass line…

The introduction and the choruses of Help! include two vital bits that we might think of as “signature riffs.” The first is actually a very short walking bass line, first from the B root note of Bm (second fret of the A string) to G (third fret of the low E (sixth) string) and then from G to the open low E. Before we get to that, though, let’s take a quick look at Bm:

The Bm is a carbon copy of the C#m barre chord, only our barre is on the second fret instead of at the fourth. And our other fingers are positioned accordingly, middle finger on the third fret of the G, pinky on the fourth fret of the D and ring finger on the fourth fret of the A string.

Because hitting this root note is vital to the signature riff, we don’t want to use any of our beginners’ substitutes for Bm, such as XX0432 or XX4432, because neither gives us that root note (again, second fret of the A string) to work off of. So many people might want to use the Bm7 shown in this example. But give the Bm barre chord your full attention, okay, and only use this substitution if your fingers are so sore they can’t barre anymore!

And since that’s taken care of, let’s look at the descending bass line used in the introduction:

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You’ll note that I’ve simplified the rhythm a touch in order to concentrate on getting the timing of the bass notes clean and right on the first and third beats of the second measure of both the Bm and the G chords. The very cool thing you may discover about playing a full Bm chord is that you only have to raise your index finger off the barre to get the open A string. Be careful not to strum all the way down to the open high E (first) string and you should be okay.

The walk from G to Em, via the F# note at the second fret of the low E (sixth) string, is something we’ve done in numerous lessons by now, so hopefully it won’t take you too long to get it back up to speed.

After two measures of E7 (please note that I’m using an open E7 chord here – 020100 – and that many transcriptions use a full open position E – 022100 – either choice is fine), we come to the much fancier signature riff, which is this:

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I call this an “A9″ riff because, in essence, we’re playing the open G and open B strings on top of an A chord. This is one of those instances where guitar players might want each of the chords spelled out, but it makes absolutely no sense to do so. The first notes on the A and D strings, respectively, are E (seventh fret of the A) and G (fifth fret of the D). That’s part of an A7 chord and many transcriptions will note that an A7 chord is played underneath this riff. But the droning of the B string definitely makes it an A9.

What you want to do is to move up the neck from your E7 chord, placing your index finger on the fifth fret of the D string and your ring finger on the seventh fret of the A string. Play an arpeggio, picking the A, D, G and B strings in order and then shift your fingers down one fret (ring finger on the sixth fret of the A and index on the fourth fret of the D). Play the resulting arpeggio again and slide your fingers down one fret once more. You’ll keep this up until you get to the fourth and second frets.

Like the barre chords, this is going to take some practice. It’s important to keep the rhythm of these eighth notes smooth and even (and not play them like I do sometimes in the final MP3!) and that will take some effort on your part. Plus, you want to practice getting to this riff from the E7 and then “landing” yourself back on the A chord that starts the first verse.

The reason all this is important is because you’re going to run into both the descending bass line and the “A9 riff” in each chorus:

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As you can see (and hear), the chorus is pretty much a “drawn out” version of the introduction. Instead of two measures of Bm, G and E7, there are four measures of each, with the appropriate walking bass line taking place in the fourth measure of the Bm and G chords. Shouldn’t be a problem at all.

It’s important to notice that there are also two measures of A immediately following the “A9 riff.” These start on the word “me” in the final “help me” of the chorus. The outro is essential a small change to these last two measures of A in the chorus, plus a bit of an addition. If we look at the last chorus, starting with the “A9 riff,” we see:

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You can see that we’ve got the “A9 riff” going and leading into an A chord for one measure instead of two. This measure is followed by a measure of F#m. And this particular measure is one place where you might find the substitution of F#m7 to be very helpful, because of what’s going to happen next.

Actually what happens here, in this arrangement of Help! is different than the original recording. In the penultimate measure, I opt to use a different voicing of the A chord, one (sneakily enough) that also uses the “single finger barre” that we can use to play the F#m7. Using the index finger to cover the four highest strings, I add my pinky to the fifth fret of the high E (sixth) string. This voicing of A is used quite frequently in classical music, as well as being a favorite voicing of Pete Townsend’s (you can hear it, for example, in The Seeker as well as in the Who classic, Won’t Get Fooled Again). I strum from the A string down, using this voicing, then pull off the index finger to get the F# note at the second fret and then strum once more, replacing my pinky on the fifth fret of the B string to get the E note. Here it’s important to stop the strum at the B string, otherwise I’d get the F# note again and I want to save that for the very last chord, A6.

Those of you with quick eyes and minds will notice that the A6 has the same fingering as the F#m7, except that A is now the root note. We could, if we choose to do so, argue that they are the same chord, after all they have the same notes. And we could argue that the A6 is simply an inversion of the F#m7. Or we could simply roll our eyes and get on with playing the whole song:

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I hope that you’ll truly forgive the big breakdown in the playing at the end of this last MP3. I could blame it on the writing and recording this under the influence of a lot of allergies and congestion and sore throat. Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to redo it very, very soon.

And I also hope you’ve had fun with this lesson and are ready and willing to get going on playing songs with barre chords. They can definitely add a different voicing to a chord and also give a lot of “oomph” to your playing and the sooner you get comfortable using them, the sooner you’ll be using them without thinking about it.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Help! – The Beatles was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Two big “slap yourself on the forehead” moments for me were when I realized how many chords could be formed by sliding the shapes of open position chords I already knew up along the fingerboard of the guitar and when I discovered that fingerpicking could be relatively easy and painless to deal with. More important, that one could often simplify a fingerpicking pattern and still retain enough of the flavor of a song that other people would recognize it. Let’s see if we can’t help you feel the same way.

Liner Notes: Pink Floyd

David Gilmour’s distinctive guitar style is often regarded as the most familiar aspect of the Pink Floyd sound. It’s instantly recognizable for its economy and tone and his gift of melodic phrasing is still influencing guitarists all over the world.

We have several lessons on the music of David Gilmour and Pink Floyd.

• Comfortably Numb
• Wish You Were Here
• Wish You Were Here – Intro Solo
• Money (for Bass Guitar)

For more check out our Pink Floyd artist page.

These files are the author’s own work and represent his interpretation of this song. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

To help us with our lesson today, we’ll be using the Pink Floyd song Brain Damage, the penultimate number from their album, The Dark Side of the Moon. And, as an added bonus, we’ll toss in the last song, Eclipse, as well. So let’s get going…

First thing we notice when we look at chord charts for Brain Damage is that we know most of the chords. Don’t take my word for it; check it out yourself:

Nothing here that’s too much trouble. A few slash chords, but we’ll deal with those in a moment. When listening to the original recording, it sounds like two guitars are playing the same part, a picking pattern like this:

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This, just by itself, is not all that hard. You can play it with a pick or with your fingers or even both if you so desire. But performing this pattern while singing might be a bit of trouble for some (it was for me when I first learned it), so let’s simplify our pattern slightly. All that involves is removing one note and changing the timing just a little:

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If you listen to both examples, you do hear a difference. But is it a big enough difference to matter? Not unless you’re getting judged in a “Sound Exactly Like Pink Floyd” competition. Again, you can go with pick or fingers (or both) here. One thing that sounds very cool with finger style is to use a “pinch” for the first beat. Your thumb picks the D string while a finger (any finger, really) plucks upward on the high E (first) string. You’ll see (and hear) that in a moment.

And there’s nothing saying you can’t simplify matters even further. Let’s get rid of the last note in each measure and listen to it. Oh, and you’ll also get to hear that pinch on the first beat we just talked about:

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Of course, one can always go the other way and make things a little more complicated. But since we’re looking at this song from a beginner’s point of view, we’ll use either of these last two examples as our template for a picking pattern.

Regardless of which pattern (original, simplified or “even simpler simplified”) you choose to use, you want to take time and get comfortable with it. This basic pattern is used pretty much through all the “verse” parts of the song. The first three chords, D, G7/D and E/D, all employ the same exact pattern. That’s why the slash chords are used in the first place.

You may recall from Eleanor Rigby or other lessons here at Guitar Noise, that a slash chord is simply a chord using a different note as its bass (or lowest) note. When a guitar is in standard tuning, the lowest D note you can get is the open D (fourth) string. So the picking for the G7/D and the E/D both use only the four top strings of your guitar.

And it gets even better! G7 is one of those chords requiring, for most people anyway, a big stretch when you’re playing all six strings. But if you’re only playing it on the four high strings, it becomes a one-finger chord! All you’ll need is a finger on the first fret of the high E (first) string.

Better still, let’s tackle the E/D with a little bit of magic known as music theory. Since E is a full step from D and since every fret of the guitar is a half-step, then we can figure that any E note is two frets higher than any D note. That makes sense because we know that E can be found at the second fret of the D string as well as at the fifth fret of the B string (that’s how some of us tune our high E strings).

Well, it’s not that great of a leap to realize that what works for notes will also work for chords provided no open strings are involved in the chord. And since the open D note of the D chord is also going to be the bass note for our E/D chord, why don’t we just shove the D chord up two frets and use the same picking pattern we’ve been using? Well, try it out yourself and see:

The only other chord that’s left in the verse section is A7. There are many, many ways of playing this, but using this particular voicing of A7 works nicely because you get the G note on the high E string:

Most people find the easiest way to play this is to lay your index finger in a “mini-barre” across four strings at the second fret and then use one of your other fingers to get that G note at the third fret of the first string. You might also see that, since we’re using the same picking pattern from our other chords (except for the use of the open A string as our bass note on the first beat), that you can just barre three strings. But it’s a good thing to get across all four so that, should you happen to play the wrong string, it will still sound fine because all the notes are part of the A7 chord.

We can also get a little fancy here, adding a more interesting, not to mention melodic, line to the A7 as well as switching from D to Dadd9 (which some texts will call “Dsus2″) at the very end of the verse, like this:

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This isn’t anywhere near as complicated as you might think on hearing it for the first time.

The second verse is pretty much a repeat of the first verse, but at the very end we want to from D to D7. We can do this very easily while using the “optional” ending we saw in Example 4:

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But another option is to use these last measures of D and D7 in the second verse as a chance to switch from picking to strumming. In the chorus sections on the original recording, the guitar mostly plays arpeggios and the occasional broken chord, but there’s also a whole band making a lot of sound in the background. Since we’re working on a single-guitar arrangement, it’s not a bad idea to give the chorus section a different feel, and since the overall effect we’re looking for is “more” – more intense, more involved (louder, in other words) – changing from picking to strumming will help create the feel we’re looking for.

It doesn’t even have to involve that much strumming. Here’s an idea to help us switch over:

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In this particular pattern, we’re using a measure of D played in two half notes. Nice lazy downstrokes. We follow that up with a simple arpeggio that starts with playing a regular old D chord, but also adding our pinky to the third fret of the high E (first string) and then performing a pull-off to get the F# note at the second fret of that string. We then play the B string, where our ring finger is already on the third fret and finally remove our middle finger from the high E (first) string to get the open E string to sound during the last three notes of the measure. This is a typical flourish one might play with a D chord and, with a little practice, will probably be something you find yourself doing without conscious thought before too long.

Even though we’re strumming the chords of the chorus, we probably still want a lot of space in our strumming pattern. How about we try something like this:

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We’ll keep this up until the very end of the chorus, ending with a single strum of G on the word “moon.” And, to ease us back into doing some more picking, we’ll stay with single strums of the Bm7, Em7 and A7 chords, like this:

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And that’s pretty much all there is to Brain Damage. After the first chorus, you go begin the third verse, which starts out exactly like the two earlier verses. But there’s a slight “hiccup,” if you will in the chord progression. Up through the line “…you rearrange me ‘til I’m sane…” everything stays the same and you find yourself going through two measures of D here. But in the next line (“…you lock the door…”) you want to go back to the D to E/D to A7 part of the verse once again before finishing with D and D7, and that takes you back to the final chorus.

Eclipse

After this last playing of the chorus, Brain Damage closes with an instrumental run through the third verse, complete with the two passes of the D to E/A to A7 progression, ending with two measures of D as we played in Example 4.

And this leads us directly to Eclipse. The first important thing to know about this song is that it’s in 3 / 4 time, as opposed to the 4 / 4 timing of Brain Damage. So right away you have to be acutely aware that when you begin the introduction that you want to pay attention to your counting. It’s not that hard of a switch if you’re ready for it.

At its heart, Eclipse is simply four chords repeated over and over again. Or five or six chords, depending on how you choose to look at it. The many layers of guitar parts are essentially arpeggios playing over each other, with a bit of a more traditional “lead” part coming in at the third sung stanza.

If you listen closely to the original recording, you’ll also hear that none of the guitar parts are played identically throughout. There are little changes in the strings played or in the order of notes on the arpeggios – even to the point where extra notes and occasional double stops can be heard. So what’s a person to do?

The answer to that is simple – play around and experiment. See what you like and what you don’t like. Here’s a template that you can use to get you started:

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There are all sorts of possibilities open to you. One of my reasons for using this one is that I’m actually only playing four of the six chords listed. If you’ll look carefully, the notes I’m playing for the Bbmaj7 can use the same fingering as the Bbmaj7(b5). Likewise, on the A I can use the fingering for A7 to play this particular arpeggio. In fact, on the original recording it often uses only the A7 chord for both measures.

You should mess around with this progression and find out what you like and what works for your hands. There is no one right way to play it, as obvious in the original recording. I know that this is something I tend to harp on in all our lessons, but in this age of cut-and-paste digital performance, it never can be said enough.

This progression of chords runs through to the end of the song, where you go directly from the Bbmaj7(b5) to a resounding D chord for a finale. So here’s our complete cheat sheet for Eclipse:

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I hope that you’ve had fun with this lesson and maybe have had a few of those “slap yourself on the forehead” moments! Whether you’ve been learning the guitar for a few weeks, months or most of your life, there’s nothing like the feeling when you start a song and someone recognizes what you’re playing. It’s a feeling that certainly makes you want to go out and learn some more! Not to mention play some more.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Brain Damage / Eclipse – Pink Floyd was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Be that as it may, let’s take a quick moment to note two things concerning our lesson: First, when I say “wrap up,” I’m lying. Not to mention making a bad, if late, joke concerning Christmas presents. It’s kind of silly to say that we ever wrap up anything in these lessons, because one of the purposes behind them is to give you ideas and tools that you can use no matter what song you’re playing. We’ll be seeing lots of walking bass lies in the future. I’m just hoping I don’t have to explain them from scratch.

Liner Notes: The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones formed in London in 1962 with singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards forming one of rock music’s most enduring songwriting partnerships.

Guitar Noise has several easy guitar lessons for classic Rolling Stones songs.

• Happy
• Play With Fire

For more check out our artist page for The Rolling Stones

The second thing is that we’ll also use this lesson to give us a bit of an introduction into the idea of cross picking. But more on that in a moment…

In terms of structure, As Tears Go By is made up of three verses, four if you count an instrumental verse between the second and third verses. Each verse contains four lines and the first two lines have the same chord progression. Have a look:

As you can see here, there’s nothing you can’t handle. So if you’d like, pick a strumming pattern and go. Here’s one that will work nicely:

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This is, of course, one of countless patterns that will work for this song. I’ve chosen this particular strumming pattern in order to help us make incorporating a walking bass line a little easier. Also, being sneaky, having both the pattern and the walking bass line will make our look at cross picking a little easier as well.

I should also mention here that, while I’m fairly certain these are the right chords; I’ve heard all sorts of chord substitutions in the numerous arrangements of this song that I’ve heard over the years. Some folks use A7 instead of A. Some like the sound of Am or Am7 instead of A. And, as you’ll see towards the end of the lesson, there’s all sorts of suspended chords and fills and ornamentation you can add when you’re playing.

So let’s use this strumming pattern and chord progression as a template and get going with a walking bass line. At this point, I hope, you’ll see it as nothing more than “connecting the dots” between the root notes of the chords:

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After going through the lessons on You Are My Sunshine and Connecting the Dots, Part 3, this sort of thing will hopefully be old hat to some of you by now. The only somewhat tricky part involves using the open low E (sixth) string for the E and F# notes when you change from the D to the G chords. A lot of people find it easy to hook one’s thumb over the top of the neck to get that F#, but since you’re not playing any chord at that point, just using the index or middle finger should work fine.

If you are comfortable with what we’re doing to this point, that’s cool because that allows you to start trying some other variations. For example, you could stagger the strumming and the bass line on the section where the chords change from G to Em:

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Again, you can use either your thumb or a finger to get the F# note in the bass. Not worrying about hitting the B note (second fret of the A string) of a “normal” G chord does have some advantages!

While this first variation may not seem like that big of a change, it makes a big difference to the listener, if for no other reason that you’ve broken up the strumming / rhythm pattern that you’ve been using for the first two and a half lines of the verse. Little subtleties such as this are how you keep from being robotic, playing the same strumming or rhythm pattern over and over and over again.

The second variation carries the “new” rhythm pattern (which, as you’ve already figured out, is the same rhythm that we used for the original strumming template.

You can likewise tinker around all throughout the song. Here are some suggestions for the very last line, where you change from D to D7:

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The first variation uses notes of the D chord (D and A, of the open D and A strings respectively, and F# at the second fret of the low E string) before going back to the open E and F# to walk back up to G. Here you might definitely find using your thumb an advantage in fretting your bass note of F#.

Things get a little more complicated with the second variation even though, to the ears at least, it’s a simple descending walking bass line. Simple to the ears, but you’ll want to take some time sussing out the fingering. Personally, I find myself using my pinky to get the C note (third fret of the A string) in the bass and then changing my whole fingering around – index finger on the B (second fret of the A string) in the bass while my middle, ring and pinky reform the D chord in the high strings. Some people like forming a “mini-barre” chord, using their index finger to cover the second fret of the high three strings and getting the D at the third fret of the B string with either the ring finger or pinky. This frees up the middle finger for the bass notes. Take you time with this variation and be prepared to do some practicing!

The third variation sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is. One starts out with the normal D chord and then adds a pinky to the third fret of the high E (first) string to get the G note (technically turning the whole thing into Dsus4), then removes it to get the second fret again and then opens up the first string entirely for the E note. While we could spend ages debating that we’ve created a Dsus2, it’s all merely ornamentation.

The second measure of this variation can all be done with pull-offs if you wish. Sounds very cool, in fact!

In and of itself, there’s enough here to mess around with without going any further. But I’d like to take one last step (or two) forward, if for no other reason than to give you more to think about. What we’re going to try to do is to pick individual strings in place of the strumming of chords. Some people call this flat picking, some call it cross picking and I’m not here to debate terminology. To me, it’s just part of playing. Let’s start with the G chord and work through the first line:

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Here, regardless of the chord, we’re starting with the root note on a downstroke and then hitting the high E (first) string with an upstroke, then a downstroke on the D string and finally an upstroke on the B string. You’ll find this a lot easier using alternate picking and you may also simply find playing chords in this manner a good exercise to help you get better at alternate picking. Even if you miss the string you want, you’ll hit another note in the chord as long as you keep the chord in place with your fingers.

And frankly, no one’s going to know if you make a mistake unless you start swearing! I can’t stress enough here that this is, again, one of many patterns that you can play. And I also want you to listen to something – in the MP3, I play the first line exactly as written out and then go and then just play the rest of the verse without worrying about the pattern. To my ears, things sound a lot better when I’m not worried about it. Why? Because then I’m playing and not being a tape recorder is certainly part of it. But as I just mentioned, as long as I keep my chord shapes, there’s not going to be a bad note. Most songs don’t require you to use a single pattern throughout. Doing so, in fact, makes you sound like you’re just a looping device. More importantly, it tires you out as much as it does your listener.

As a guitarist, you’re not going to be playing in front of people and muttering under your breath “…root note, high E string, D string, B string, root note…” Trust me, you don’t want to be! Right now you merely want to be thinking “bass, high, middle, high-ish” and getting yourself comfortable with playing in this manner. Before long, you’ll be able to add in bass notes as well:

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You’ll have to forgive me for only giving you the first two lines as a start. You’re actually getting off better than my private students, who have to come back to me in a week’s time with whatever they’ve dreamed up as an accompaniment for this song. A lot of times, and this is when I know they’ve got the point, they’ll play it slightly differently in each verse and not be totally conscious of what they’re doing. You might end up with something like this:

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Or something totally different. But that’s the whole idea.

As always, I hope that you’ve had fun with this lesson and have learned a few things about walking bass lines in the past few months. In the near future, we’ll be looking at how to combine strumming with picking and will, hopefully, be sounding a lot more like musicians and less like people who panic without patterns!

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Also in this Series

• Connecting The Dots – Part 1
• Connecting The Dots – Part 2
• Connecting The Dots – Part 3

As Tears Go By – The Rolling Stones was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

One problem that we face, though, is that we often practice these two skills separately, and that makes it a little hard to get things together at first. Eleanor Rigby was a good start at getting to work at the two techniques together, and I’d like to continue a bit on that aspect of your playing. So in this lesson, we’ll take a pattern we’ve already learned (in the Easy Songs for Beginners Lesson on Margaritaville), add some simple chords we already know (E, E7, A, A7, D and B7), and ratchet our strumming and chord changing skills up a notch or two. And to make this a little more interesting (not to mention fun), let’s learn two new songs instead of the usual one we do in each lesson. We’ll dig a bit into the “country” catalogue and pull out two standards – Folsom Prison Blues, by Johnny Cash and the Hank Williams’ classic, Your Cheatin’ Heart. And, by the bye, if you ever want a real treat, you should get to hear two of the Guitar Noise Forum moderators perform these songs. Wes Inman does a terrific turn on Folsom Prison Blues while Nick Torres’ rendition of Your Cheatin’ Heart is second to none.

If you’re keeping track of these things, this lesson fits nicely after the aforementioned piece on Margaritaville, and if you haven’t already read that one, then you might want to take a moment to do so. In essence, people tend to start strumming with simple downstrokes. Then the occasional upstroke or two is added. Then we might do what we call a “bass/strum” pattern, where the root note of the chord is played and then followed by the whole chord. And then beginners evolve from there to the alternating bass line. We’ll be using the same basic strumming pattern from the Margaritaville lesson, complete with alternating bass line, in this lesson, so being up to speed on what we’re talking about will certainly help you to get the nuances of these two songs a bit quicker.

Folsom Prison Blues

Let’s start out with Cash’s Folsom Prison Blues. We’re going to play this song in the key of E, so we’ll need the following chords:

The original recording of this song is in F, so if you want to play along with it, you should place a capo on the first fret. I’m playing in E on the MP3 files here, so don’t worry about a capo if you just want to play along with the MP3 files. And do try to remember to right click on the files so that you can use the “Save Target As…” function to save them directly to your computer. Doing this means you don’t have to download the sound files more than once, which will help us save a bit of bandwidth.

In terms of structure, Folsom Prison Blues follows a variation of the basic twelve bar blues format (as one might suspect from the title). If you’d like to learn more about the twelve bar blues structure, check out the lesson Before You Accuse Me and then hurry back. There are numerous ways to fool around with the basic chords of this song, but for the sake of simplicity as well for the overall structure of the lesson, I’ve gone with the following:

Please note that I placed a chord marking for every measure (every four beats), which will hopefully make things a little easier for everyone. There should be four measures per line of lyrics. I’ve also made a few changes or substitutions, if you will. Many TABs or transcriptions for this song will use a regular A instead of the A7, but I really think the A7 adds a lot to the sound, making things a little more blues-y. Also, I tend to come in earlier with the E7 than others might. Some folks don’t even use the E7 at all. These are all things that you can experiment with. As always, you should feel free to ultimately come up with your own arrangement of this song.

And now that we have our chords, let’s use our strumming pattern from Margaritiville to get us started. Here are the basic patterns, using root notes only, for the E, A7 and B7 chords. Obviously, you can use the E pattern for E7 as well:

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Remember that you don’t want to hit all the strings when strumming the chords. Just the top three or four will do, since the bass note will resonate over the entire thing. And on the upstroke especially, you just want to hit the top two or three strings, even though the notation and TAB shows all four. Basically, when you make the upstroke, you’re bringing the pick back a little, almost in a cocking motion, to get it set for the next single hit of the bass string. This takes a little getting used to, but you will be surprised at how quickly it comes with a little concentrated practice on your part.

You can, of course, play the whole song using just this pattern. You could also skip the bass notes entirely and simply strum the chords for the whole song as well. That will sound fine. But give the pattern a try. We’ll be taking things a step or two further in a moment, but first I’d like to address the subject of changing chords.

In our lesson on Eleanor Rigby we discuss making chord changes in a timely fashion by starting our switching a little earlier than necessary and then working the changes up to speed through practice and repetition. Here on Folsom Prison Blues, I’d like you to use the strumming pattern itself to give you the chance to make timely chord changes. You’ll notice that we have five different chord changes in this song: E to E7, E7 to A, A to E, E to B7 and B7 back to E. With the exception of the B7 chord, we start each of our strumming patterns with a hit of an open string for our bass note. Here, for example, is the switch from E to E7:

The idea is to make the switch from E to E7 when you strike that open E string at the start of the second measure (where the “*” is). Since the change from E to E7 merely involves lifting your ring finger off the D string, doing this at speed, even a slow tempo, should pose little to no problems for most of you, so let’s move on the E7 to A and A to E switches:

Because you’ve probably done a lot of switching between E and A (and back again), this change should become easy after a few tries. And even if you’ve never tried changing from E or E7 to A before, your fingers should catch on in a relatively short while. Try to remember to start slowly, keeping the tempo even. Don’t pick up speed until you’re pretty confident you can make the change cleanly at a slow pace.

Okay, one more chord change to deal with:

At first glance, the E to B7 change might seem a bit involved, but if you think about it for a moment, you realize that when you play the E chord your middle finger is right there on the second fret of the A string – exactly where you need it to be to play the B root notes of the B7 chord. So keep that finger in place, and as you strike that note at the start of the B7 measure should be when you shift your fingers over from E to the rest of the B7 chord. It’s a pretty simply switch. Your index finger moves from the first fret of the G string to the first fret of the D while your ring finger shunts from the second fret of the D string to the second fret of the G string. Add your pinkie to the second fret of the high B string and you’re good to go.

Notice that, with this particular change, your pinkie should be the last thing you worry about. Even if you don’t get it there on time, the chord will sound fine with an open high E string. The most important thing is to get the index and ring fingers to make their shift in the time it takes you to hit the B note that your middle finger hangs onto.

Now that you’ve got a good handle on your chord changes, let’s spice up the strumming pattern with a good ol’ country alternating bass line. Here are the patterns for our chords, and remember you can use the same pattern for both E and E7:

The only tricky part here is the B7 chord. Some people actually cover both the second fret of the A and low E strings with their middle fingers, but it doesn’t take a whole lot of practice to get comfortable making your finger dance from string to string.

When you do get the hang of the alternating bass strum, then go back over your five chord changes, incorporating this new strumming pattern into the mix. And then work the whole song up to speed and voila! You’ve got it!

But it doesn’t have to stop there because of the incredible number of variations you can do. On the alternating bass patterns, you can use the E note at the second fret of the D string during your E, E7 and A chords. You can also bring hammer-ons into your playing. Here are a few of the many variations you can try:

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As you can hear, we’ve created a lot of cool musical touches simply by using techniques and patterns you already know. I particularly like the last example with the B7 chord. Giving that F# at the second fret of the low E string a little tug provides a nice blues-y feel, especially when you use it right before switching to the E chord.

And speaking of which, the signature that opens Folsom Prison Blues comes straight from using that B7 chord:

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This is a great example of how a guitar riff is created right from a chord. And it’s not only easy to play, it’s a lot of fun. So let’s try doing the Intro followed by a whole verse before moving on to our second song.

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Your Cheatin’ Heart

As you’ve hopefully learned, once you know a pattern, such as the one we used in Margaritaville, you can adapt it to other songs with relative ease. Sometimes, though, you’ve got to make some adjustments for one reason or another.

For example, if you were to play this alternating bass strum pattern as an accompaniment for Hank Williams’ Your Cheatin’ Heart, you might feel that, on account of this song’s slower pace, the pattern doesn’t fill up enough space. Try it out and see. Here are the chords (more on that in a moment), once again written out as one chord change for every measure (four beats):

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This is certainly okay to play and to listen to, but it leaves me thinking that these must some way to pick it up a little. The strumming makes the song seems a little lifeless and that’s not a good way to treat a great song.

So let’s pick it up a little. In this case, it will be a simple matter of adding an extra eighth note to our alternating bass strumming pattern. This is a fairly time-honored rhythm method on the guitar, used in songs across all genres. You start out exactly like the alternating bass strum, hitting the root note of the chord on the first beat. But you want to play an eighth note instead of the usual quarter note and then follow that eighth note up with a second eighth note played on one of the middle strings of the guitar, usually the D or G strings, like this:

You will probably find it makes your strumming a lot smoother if you play the first note (the root) as a downstroke and then use an upstroke on the second note. After practicing it on A and A7, as we’ve done in this example, try it out on D, E, E7 and B7.

This is a great way to get started on learning some alternate picking and crosspicking skills as well as to develop more dexterity and confidence in your picking skills in general. It really doesn’t matter which string you hit as your second note. As long as you’ve got the whole chords formed with your fretting hand, you can’t play a “bad” note. Try it out and see for yourself!

After you get comfortable with this new picking pattern, you want to take the same steps we used in Folsom Prison Blues – namely try out playing some chord changes and then see if you can add an alternating bass pattern to this new one:

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Hopefully you heard me mention in the last MP3 that I’m using swing eighths to play this particular pattern. Swing eighths give us more of a blues shuffle feeling and you can read more about them in the Roll Over Beethoven lesson. It’s a little difference, but it does make all the world of change in the feel of the song. Give the examples another listen and play them both ways yourself. If you prefer the sound of straight eighths, then by all means, play it that way.

Again, try these ideas out on one or two chords first. Then work your way through all the chords you’ll need for Your Cheatin’ Heart. Or all the chords you know, for that matter. Finally, put your pattern to the test by playing through a whole verse.

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

At the risk of repeating myself, don’t hesitate to experiment and add some new touches, such as hammer-ons and pull-offs or different alternating notes, to your arrangement. Have fun with it!

Now, a quick word on the chords: For the purpose of continuity, not to mention to make this a little easier for everyone, I transposed Your Cheatin’ Heart into the key of A. This way you get to practice making the same chord changes while learning the new strumming pattern. That seems to make sense. To me, anyway!

The original recording of the song is in the key of C, so if you want to play along with that, put a capo on the third fret and use these chords. Otherwise, you’ll want to transpose it back to the original key! The MP3 is in A, so you can play along with these sound files without a capo.

I hope you enjoyed this lesson and that you use the strumming patterns here (as well as the chord changing tips) with other songs you’re learning. The idea is to use these lessons here at Guitar Noise as templates for all your music, not just to learn one single song.

Or two…

And, as always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or songs (and/or riffs and solos) you’d like to see discussed in future pieces. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forum page or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Folsom Prison Blues / Your Cheating Heart was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

But what, exactly, is “simple?” Depending upon your skill level, something that someone else says is simple can seem well beyond your abilities. Present abilities, you should say. As you evolve as a guitarist, improving and adding new skills and techniques and knowledge to your playing, your concept of “simple” will also evolve.

This is one reason why I spend so much time stressing that you don’t worry about playing “by the recording.” If you’re a beginner, there’s little point in comparing your abilities to those of someone who’s been playing professionally longer than you’ve been alive. Unless, of course, you simply like being frustrated. Personally, I don’t think much good can come of it.

But a lot of good can come from the enjoyment you get in revisiting old songs and bringing something new to them. Arrangements, like your abilities, also constantly evolve. Some people can play the same song over and over again and never be bored because they actually play it differently each time.

So to demonstrate this point, let’s take a simple song, make a simple arrangement of it and then let it evolve a little bit. I guess that means hauling out our friendly disclaimer:

These files are the author’s own work and represent his interpretation of this song. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

For this lesson, we’ll be using Friend Of The Devil, a song originally by the Grateful Dead and covered by so many artists (Lyle Lovett and Counting Crows come immediately to mind) that it’s hard to list. Technically, it only uses four chords: G, C, D and Am, which you hopefully feel comfortable enough with by now.

If you take a look at a very simple chord sheet for this song, you’ll probably find something like the following:

As I mentioned, four chords. All we need do is come up with a strumming pattern we like (and can easily play) (or learn) and we’re set. Here is one that should work well with this song. Remember that the “D” stands for “downstroke” and the “U” denotes an “uspstroke:”

This particular pattern is actually based on the rhythm guitar of the recorded song. With very little practice, you should find it comes easily to your strumming hand. Start with the “full chord” version and then, when you feel you’re ready, give the “bass / strum” example (also known, believe it or not, as the “boom-chuck” approach) a try. You’re now able to play this song and add it to your repertoire. End of lesson…

Okay, you know me better than that! After all, at this stage in your guitar playing life, you should be able to get to this point on your own. If we’re all agreed that, so far, we think this is simple enough to play, shall we move on?

Can you play a G major scale? Whoa! You’re probably wondering how we jumped to this topic! Fair warning, if you’re someone who does his or her damnedest to stay away from “traditional” things like scales, theory, knowing that the note on the third fret of the A string is actually called “C” and not “just play this,” then I’m going to try to teach you something. Feel free to just go on and “read the pictures” if you will, but everything will be easily explained in the text. So please give it a read at some point if you’re having any troubles.

Back to the matter at hand – Since Friend Of The Devil is in the key of G, it doesn’t hurt to be aware of the G major scale, which is conveniently written out below:

You’ll notice that I’ve placed the G note written on the second line up from the bottom of the staff at two different places on your guitar. You can play it as the open G string and you can also find this note located at the fifth fret of the D string. You already know this, of course, from manually tuning your guitar. If not, then consider it something to keep somewhere in your head among the somewhat important bits of information already there, such as the birthdays of your friends and family.

If you listen to the G major scale and then listen to a recording of the song, you’ll hear that the “signature guitar riff” is nothing more than a descending G Major scale:

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Well, playing just that descending scale seems simple enough. But something you should know is that some folks will decide that using this descending G Major scale means that you should also go and change the chord names. This will involve using slash chords and will make the “simple” chord sheet look a little more like these examples:

What does that mean for us simple folks? Not really a lot. We’re going to just think about the descending scale as “passing tones” and just go about our business of adding some chords to the notes of the descending scale. I’ve kept the basic G and C chords of the verses and turned them into slash chords simply so that you can keep track of what note of the scale you’re on:

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Again, with a very little bit of concentrated effort, this will be something that you should be able to accomplish in relatively little time. If you use this pattern for the verses and go back to the “bass / strum” pattern for the choruses and bridge, you’ve now got a more complicated arrangement that is still simple for you to play.

You might have noted in these last examples that I start with the G at the fifth fret of the D string instead of the open G string. You can certainly use either, but when we get into the following verse patterns, you should see (and hear) the advantages. Before we do that, though, this would be a good place to bring up that you can play the verses just like this, and then add the “boom-chuck” approach for the choruses and bridge and have a perfectly good arrangement for this song.

And, quick as you please, you now have two possible arrangements before going any further. And, for some of you, either of these two arrangements is a great place to start. The whole point of this lesson is to show you how you can “grow” an arrangement and to do that, you’ve got to start with what you know and then add on to it as you learn more, because, at some point, you’re going to be learning more and looking for more.

Let’s say, for instance, that you’ve managed to get a handle on playing simple arpeggios, such as those in the lesson on House of the Rising Sun. Having that under your belt, you might want to take a stab at applying your arpeggio playing to an arrangement, much like the first section of the following example:

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You can hear we’ve given the song a very different character. In order to further demonstrate the simple, yet drastic differences you can make in an arrangement, I played the first “option for verse pattern” with just my fingers and then again using a pick. Again, there’s a very distinct feeling with each of these approaches. The first time out sounds very folkish while the second smacks of bluegrass. The notes played are exactly the same, it’s just a matter of the method you use to bring those notes to your listener.

Now let’s say that you’ve become a little more adept at picking your arpeggios. Then you might try the second section of this last example, called (appropriately enough) “another option for verse.” This involves a little more crosspicking than the first section, but with some concentrated effort, shouldn’t be beyond your capabilities. Notice the slight variation in the bass line in the final measure, caused by hammering-on from the open A string to the B note at the second fret. This is not from the original recording, but because it sounds pretty cool so I’ve added it to the mix. Also, adding that full G chord at the end kind of punctuates the end of the phrase, creating some interesting dynamics by giving the song a little more punch.

So now you have three or four ways of playing the verses. That’s not too bad of a start. Shall we take a look at the chorus? Because the verse is so busy with its descending bass line, a return to something simple would be a good first approach to the chorus:

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Rather than using a straight “bass / strum” or “boom-chuck” accompaniment, this “basic chorus” employs an alternating bass line, much like that in the Margaritaville lesson here at Guitar Noise. Please note that the rhythm is slightly broken up every other measure, which tosses in an extra bass note on the fourth beat instead of a replay of the chord. Generally speaking, the third and/or fourth beats of a measure before a chord change are good places to throw in a fill or two and we’re playing a very simple two-note fill here.

Another thing to notice is how the last measure of D contains an ascending bass line – the final E (second fret of the D string) and F# (fourth fret) – which leads us back to the G note that starts the verse. This is called a “turnaround,” a phrase that you’re probably familiar with from playing the blues. A turnaround is a chord progression or riff that leads the listening back to the song’s beginning chord, which often (but not always) is the home or root chord of the key of the song. The bonus to you, as a player, is that this particular turnaround gets you right in position for the verse pattern.

This arrangement of the chorus is fairly straightforward and shouldn’t give you much more trouble than doing a straight strum of the chords or a typical “bass / strum.” And you know what I’m going to say next, that you can add to this arrangement according to your abilities. Let’s say that you’ve been working on your hammer-ons and pull-offs and want to incorporate them more into your playing. Starting with the basic chorus, we can add to it like this:

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The pull-offs in the second measure and the hammer-ons in the fourth measure are, respectively, all based on the D and Am chords. So playing these doesn’t involve any extraneous finger movement. I told you I like simple things! Measures six through eight use small walking bass lines along with Am and C chord arpeggios before heading back to our alternating bass pattern D from the basic chorus pattern.

The final measure of this “embellished” chorus contains a different turnaround to get us back to our verse pattern. It’s the flashiest thing we’ve tried so far and, to be honest, is a little more than what I would consider teaching a pure beginner. But what’s learning without a challenge or two? These are just notes of the G major scale, centered around the open D major chord. In the MP3, I’m playing this very slowly and you can hear that I’m using alternating picking to play this. When I get to the final A note (second fret of the G string), I then shift my finger to the second fret of the D string (the E note) in order to slide up to the G note at the fifth fret and once again begin the verse pattern. This slide takes place very quickly. It’s almost like “Oops! I didn’t mean to hit that note! Here’s the note I want!”

Some people might find it easier to slide from the F natural (third fret of the D string) as shown in this example:

There’s not much of a difference between this two, but they do have very different sounds. So if you decide to use either of these variations of the chorus, take your time to hear which one you like and also experiment and see what fingering works well with you.

Because we’ve been so busy with the verses and choruses, I find the bridge a good place to lay back a little. You can, if you decide to do so, use the basic strumming patterns you learned at the beginning of this lesson. That will sound perfectly fine.

I’ve come up with this arrangement of the bridge, which is recorded painfully slowly on the accompanying MP3 file. You’ll hear it more at speed in the final MP3:

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This is pretty much straight quarter note arpeggios up until the very end when it reverts back to the patterns we used in the embellished chorus section.

The song ends with a final verse and chorus and has one of those “unresolved” feelings because D is the last chord. Here’s an MP3, which contains a verse, chorus, bridge and then final verse and chorus. You’ll hear different ideas that we’ve touched upon in this lesson as well as some expansions on these ideas (other arpeggios and staggered rhythms) and also a few genuinely bad clunkers!

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I hope you had fun with this lesson and that you enjoy playing around with this song. I also hope that you understand that, as you grow as a guitarist, you should be able to go back to some of the songs you played as absolute beginner and bring something new to them. A lot of the differences that people perceive as “beginning” or “intermediate” guitarists are simply the ability to make a more interesting strum or to add a little embellishment here and there. Taking the things you’ve learned and applying them to what you already know is one of the best ways to jumpstart this process.

If you had fun with this lesson, I’d like to encourage you to take a look at Time After Time, our next Songs for Intermediates lesson, which should be up sometime before the middle of July. It will take a lot of the ideas we used here and expand on them. If you can handle the Bookends lesson on the Easy Songs for Beginners pages, you’ll find Time After Time, while a bit of a challenge, within your capabilities.

And, as always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or songs (and/or riffs and solos) you’d like to see discussed in future pieces. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Friend Of The Devil – The Grateful Dead was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise