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

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

We’re going to work a bit of the same sort of magic with “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” written by American Episcopalian priest Phillips Brooks (inspired by his 1865 visit to the fabled city) and his church’s organist, Lewis Redner. For the most part, we’ll use either pairs of notes of chord arpeggios to create our arrangement of this beautiful carol.

The First Two Lines

I’ve chosen to write this arrangement in the key of D to make use of both the open D and A strings for bass notes and also the open B, G and D strings as part of the G chord. You get a taste of that right in the first line:

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

Even though the first set of notes is based on an open position D chord, it’s a good idea to fret the high E (first) string with your ring finger and the G string with your middle finger. In fact, you want to use your middle finger as a bit of an anchor during the most of the instances where you’re playing two notes at the same time. If you use your middle finger on the G or D string, that frees you up to use your ring finger whenever the high note is on the same fret and to use your index finger when the high note is one fret lower, as in the second pair of notes in the second full measure.

The third measure demonstrates why this use of the middle finger as anchor can be so helpful. If your first inclination is to use your index and middle fingers for the pair of notes on the second fret of the B and D strings, then you’d find it more than a little awkward making any sort of smooth transition to the two subsequent pairs. But keeping your middle finger on the D string allows you to quickly move from pair to pair.

By the bye, you definitely want to finger a “normal” open position D chord at the start of the last measure in this example!

As mentioned, playing this song in D is giving us a number of opportunities to use open strings, which in turn gives us a chance to reposition our fingers when the melody makes a bit of a leap to higher notes, as it does in the start of the second line:

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The first two measures of Example 2 are the trickiest part of our song. Use your index finger to barre the first five strings at the fifth fret and your ring finger to barre the first four strings at the seventh. This will allow you to play the first two eighth notes and the following quarter note (where the B and G strings are played at the seventh fret).

Then stand your ring finger up on its tip on the seventh fret of the D string. Use your middle finger to play the sixth fret of the A string and your pinky to get the seventh fret of the high E (first) string. Lift up your pinky and your index finger will have the two notes at the fifth fret (on the high E and G strings) that you need to close the measure.

You’re still not out of the woods, though! You next need to make a bit of a leap to place your index finger on the second fret of the D string and to put your pinky on the fifth fret of the high E. This takes a bit of practice but it’s not as hard as it sounds. You could, as an alternative, play the E note (second fret of the D) at the seventh fret of the A string and the G note (third fret of the high E) at the eighth fret of the B string. That’s a lot fewer gymnastics for your fingers but you’re still going to have to jump down the neck for the G in the bass (third fret of the low E string) at some point. I’ve tried it both ways and find myself preferring the former. You may find otherwise, though, so be sure to experiment.

The final two measures in this example are more chances to use your middle finger anchor when playing. If you thought you were getting good at it earlier, now’s your chance to find out for sure! And, like the first line, you want to finish this section off with an open position D chord.

The Last Two Lines

That D chord kicks off the third line of the song:

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

It’s a good idea here to use your ring finger to get the E note (second fret of the D string) when you play the third chord (Em) and then slide it up the D string for each of the following two chords. You should end up starting the second measure with your ring finger at the fourth fret of the D string, your middle finger on the third fret of the G and your index finger at the second fret of the B string. This is an F# chord, by the way. For the second F# Lay your index finger flat across the second fret to make a barre chord out of it and get you the F# in the bass (second fret of the low E string).  You’ll revisit this F# barre in the last measure of this example.

The last line starts out the same as the first and ends a little like the second:

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Try to get the G note in the bass in the second measure with your index finger. This will make the next pair of notes (seventh fret of the high E and the fourth fret of the low E) a lot easier to manage!

As always, here, is a full version for you to work with. And (again, as always) please forgive any of the numerous performance mistakes!

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 arrangement of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and that you find it a great Christmas present for both you and your family and friends.

And let me take a moment to wish all our readers, their family and friends, a wonderful holiday season. We thank you for your continued support of Guitar Noise and look forward to bringing lots of great lessons in 2012!

Until the next lesson…

O Little Town of Bethlehem 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:

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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:

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

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:

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

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:

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

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:

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

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:

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

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

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

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.

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

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?

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

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

More important to you as a guitar student, having to continually shift from one pattern to another is excellent practice for your finger picking. Not only that, but being able to switch patterns on the fly will make your own playing sound much more organic and keep you from falling into the finger style trap of maintaining one single non-changing picking pattern.

So if you’d like to explore some very interesting and intricate fingerstyle guitar playing, come along. This sounds great no matter what type of guitar you play. I’ve played it on classical, acoustic, twelve string and electric (yes, even twelve string electric!) and it comes across beautiful on all.

And while I’m thinking of it, let me also note that in this lesson I will freely interchange the use of the words “measure” and “bar.” They are synonyms, so don’t let that throw you, okay?

For this lesson on Scarborough Fair, we will use the Simon and Garfunkel take on Carthy’s arrangement as our inspiration, but there will actually be quite a few differences that hopefully you won’t even be aware of! On their original recording, the song is played in the key of E minor. Simon uses a capo on the seventh fret, which means that he is really playing in A minor. The voicings that he creates result from both the capo and the choices of the chords he uses.

Since there is a lot of fret movement in this song, I encourage my students to first work on the picking pattern. After all, it’s easier to work on one hand at a time than to worry about both. The best way to approach this is to start with the “theme.” This is the haunting fingerpicking that we’ve talked about before in a number of my guitar columns. This two measure chord progression pops up four or five times during each verse, so nailing it down early in the lesson will provide us with an excellent base from which we can tackle the other parts of the song. Here are the two chords used as the “theme:”

I suggest starting with the second chord in order to work on getting the fingerpicking pattern into your fingers. You will probably want to try one of these two methods:

The song is in 3/4 timing and the pattern consists entirely of eighth notes. So you should be thinking in your head, “one and two and three and…” Let me suggest that you play this chord, the Asus2, with your middle finger on the D string and your ring finger on the G. You’ll understand why when we go on to playing both chords of the theme.

I tend to play this the first way, with my thumb, middle and index fingers but I highly recommend that you at least try to work in your ring finger as well, as shown in the second pattern. As always, start out as slowly as you need to in order to get it all clean. Smoothness is what we’re trying to achieve. This isn’t a fast song by any means. You want there to be a dreamlike quality to your playing.

Whichever picking you choose, practice it until your fingers can play it “on their own,” so to speak. It really doesn’t take all that long for this to happen. Once you settle on a pattern and just play it, your fingers usually fall into it pretty quickly. This is the sort of thing you can do while reading or watching the TV (with the sound off) or talking with someone on the phone or almost anything.

When you don’t have to look at your picking fingers anymore, you’re ready to move on to playing the second chord, the A7sus4(add6). Here, use your middle finger again on the D string and your index finger on the B string. Once again, simply play the chord with your picking pattern until you are satisfied that your fingers know what they are doing. Your notes should be smooth, flowing evenly from one to the next. Only when you feel ready should you move on to playing both chords:

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Because you’ve practiced the picking beforehand, you should find that you can concentrate on your fretting hand. On the neck, keep your middle finger on the D string, as I recommended. Use your index finger to fret the 3rd fret of the B string in the 1st measure. Now simply slide the middle finger to the 2nd fret (still on the D) and play the 2nd fret of the G with your ring finger. Since each measure begins with two notes on open strings, you have plenty of time to switch from one chord to the next. And since your picking hand is on automatic pilot, you will be amazed at how quickly you’ll get the hang of this. Before you know it, you won’t have to watch either of your hands, and that’s the whole point.

Okay, let’s get on with the rest of the song. The intro (bars 1 through 3) starts with the same first chord (and the same first measure) of the theme:

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See how easy it is because you’ve already played it? The picking pattern in the second measure is the same. All that changes is that you add your ring finger to the fifth fret of the A string. Basically, you’re playing a first position C chord that you’ve moved up two frets. At the start of the third measure, slide your ring finger from the fifth fret to the third while removing your other fingers from the neck. The timing here changes slightly, so only play the first three notes of your pattern (thumb, middle (or ring) and index). Then on the third beat play the second fret of the A string with your middle finger, using your thumb to pluck the note. From there, you go right into the theme. Repeat it a few times and you’re ready for the main body of the song itself.

Guess what? Five of the measures of the first line (bars 6 through 10) are the theme! Measure eight is the only different one, so let’s give it a look:

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Playing this all by itself, out of the context of the rest of Scarborough Fair, it probably sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Hey! It’s the first measure of Blackbird! How about that? We already know how to do that. The real trick here is in shifting from one picking pattern (the “theme” pattern) to this new one and then back again. I really can’t stress this enough, but the easiest way to learn how to do this is to slow things down. It’s all striate eighth notes so the timing of the pattern will still be “one and two and three and one and two and three and…” If you take the time to concentrate on count as well as using your index finger to pick the open G string on the “ands,” you should have little trouble. And it’s a very important thing to get set now, as we’ll see in the next line coming up.

The first three measures of the second line (called “Herb”) (sorry, I really couldn’t help myself…) look more complicated than they are:

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Bar 11 is a C major chord, played as an arpeggio. The next measure is an Am arpeggio. Could life get much simpler? This is the third picking pattern of the song. As you can see, I’ve illustrated two ways to play it: one using the thumb, index and middle fingers and the second incorporating the ring finger as well.

The “blackbird’ pattern reappears in bar 13. Here the first beat is a C chord and the last two beats are a D chord, but you play this measure with the same picking pattern we used in bar 8. Then you go right back into the theme once more.

So we’ve gotten through half of the song without even working up a sweat! But, of course, here comes the fun stuff. We’ll need to examine the third line in two parts. Here’s the first:

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They’re throwing everything at us now! Measure 16 starts out with an Am arpeggio, but it’s a totally different one than we’ve used thus far. This one starts with the bass note and then descends from the first string to the third before returning to do a walking bass line from the open A to the C note that starts the next measure. Thankfully, this is another C arpeggio and we have seen it before! Then we go into another “blackbird” pattern where the melody line descends instead of climbs. If you hang on to your C chord in bar 17, you’ll find your fingers already in position to measure 18 this very smoothly. All of this leads us to a much needed rest:

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Okay, so it’s not really a rest as much as it’s a bit of flash. Measure 19 brings the first break in the “all eighth note” timing since the intro. This tends to derail people quickly! Once you realize that it’s just the timing and not you, it shouldn’t throw you at all. The first two beats are self-explanatory. The third beat, as well as the first beat of bar 20, is a quick hammer-on involving two string. If you think of this as an Am7 chord (x02010) and use your middle and index fingers to do the fretting, you might find this to be the part of the song you most look forward to playing!

The final line of the song is almost anticlimactic in comparison, but it’s not without a trick or two:

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Bar 21 repeats the Am arpeggio we’ve done a couple of times while measure 23 is the same “blackbird” pattern from bar 8. It’s the one in the middle that requires a little more attention. I know a lot of people who play this with an open B string, but I prefer to follow the melody line with my guitar, hence the third fret on the first beat (part of a G arpeggio) and the second fret on the third. This is one of those little stylistic things that you can use or ignore.

You wind up the fourth line by gong back into the theme and then back through all the verses. The outro is an exact copy of the intro except that it comes to a stop instead of recycling the theme again. I like to add the twelfth fret harmonic on the first string. Don’t forget that with the capo this is at the nineteenth fret! I use the side of my thumb to play it.

So, here’s the complete package!

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I hope that you’ve enjoyed this lesson. Scarborough Fair is an excellent exercise in fingerpicking as well as chord shapes and truly gives you a taste of how the guitar can be just as grand (no pun intended) an accompanying instrument as the piano.

But Wait! There’s More!

This is a great arrangement, isn’t it? But it’s certainly not the only one. When I decided to include Scarborough Fair as one of the song lessons for The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Guitar, I had to create one that was decidedly easier than this, as the book was meant for a complete beginning guitarist. The idea for this section of the book was to use the basic techniques learned throughout the book to play complete song arrangements. At the same time, though, I wanted it to be interesting and teach a few new simple ideas. Check out the easy version of Scarborough Fair.

Let me also take this time to wish you all a safe and wonderful summer (or winter, if you’re one of our many readers south of the equator!). Please take the time during our “sabbatical” to review any of the (many) old lessons and to write me 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

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

This isn’t to say that the guitar’s accompaniment isn’t important! Quite the contrary! How one chooses to accompany a song can make all the difference when it comes to getting the message across and that’s why great guitarists are able to create a wide spectrum of tonal colors and moods with their instruments. They take all the techniques they know, all the stylistic nuances of various musical genres and either select or blend a combination of them to paint a musical background that best suits the song at hand.

Over the course of a few lessons, we’ll take a look at some of the typical styles of guitar accompaniment and try to explore why and how they work. I hope you’ll enjoy these musical excursions! In many ways, if you think about it, almost all our lessons here at Guitar Noise are much more lessons on song accompaniment than on the songs themselves.

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 the time being, I’m going to assume that we’re all relatively familiar with the “strumming as accompaniment” approach. That’s actually a rather large general category and can lead to all sorts of intriguing arrangements by its own right, not to mention when combined with other styles.

So today’s lesson is going to focus almost exclusively on the use of arpeggios and how single note chord arpeggios can create interesting arrangement totally on their own. The use of arpeggios as accompaniment has been around longer than the guitar has and is a technique that most musicians learn early in their playing. You can hear it in songs from all eras of music, from the Animals’ version of “The House of the Rising Sun” to Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” to Glen Miller’s “In the Mood” (by Garland and Razaf).  We’re going to also combine a little bit of fingerstyle work and a dash of “follow the melody” to add a bit more interest to the lesson.

Probably more important than either of those ideas, we’re going to see how the techniques and lessons we’ve learned from other songs can come into play when making arrangements for other songs. Having the ability to hear opportunities to use all that you’ve already learned in playing guitar is vital is you want to continue to grow and evolve as a player.

We’re going to use an old (very old) Stephen Foster song, Oh! Susanna, and give it a twist straight out of our lesson on Friend of the Devil, if you can believe that! Or you can think of it as putting a Green Day – Wake Me Up When September Ends – sort of spin on it if you prefer. Oh, and you’d better read our Friend of the Devil lesson to get a head start on what we’ll be doing!

Whichever way you want to look at it, we can’t start without examining the song and chord structure of Oh! Susanna first. Purely for convenience, we’re going to play this song in G, since both songs cited earlier are written in that key. Just using the first verse and chorus, here’s what we’ve got:

By the bye, I wrote this arrangement for The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Guitar as an example of why scales were important and how one would go about incorporating scales into their walking bass lines, just like in Friend of the Devil. Now if you’ve gone and done a quick reread of that lesson, you might be shaking your head a bit. The chord progression isn’t the same in both songs, so how are we going to work things out?

Mostly by listening and counting. Much like Friend of the Devil, this verse of this song is broken down into phrases of two measures. Two measures in 4/4 time is eight beats. There are eight notes in the major scale if you count both the starting and ending notes. Who says math isn’t helpful?

Unlike the Grateful Dead song, where we can use an entire G major scale as a descending bass line, Oh! Susanna ends the first and third phrase on a D chord. This means that we really don’t want to follow use the entire scale. But we can use seven notes of it:

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There’s a little slide, which mimics the beginning of the melody, to start things off and then you’ve got a bass and arpeggio combination much like Friend of the Devil. The big difference is that the open B string is hit first instead of the open G string. The bass note moves from G (fifth fret of the D string) to F# (fourth fret) to E (second fret) to D (the open D string). Then the chord changes to C, so you make a C chord but still maintain the same picking pattern the both the initial C chord and then the C with the B in the bass.

Things change up when you get to the open A string. Beginning with the hit of the note of the open A at the start of the third beat in the second measure, play an Am arpeggio straight down the strings until you get to the C note at the first fret of the B string. Then switch quickly to a D chord but play only the D, G and B strings. Technically, this is a “D5” chord, or a “D power chord” if you prefer. But since we’ve used the F# twice now (once in the initial slide and once in the descending bass line), the listener will pick up on this and magically hear the D5 as a D chord. Wild, isn’t it? We’ll also help reinforce this sleight of hand by starting the next phrase with an emphatic slide using the F# note again.

The second phrase of the verse starts out as a carbon copy of the first but things get very different in the second measure:

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Here you reverse the direction of arpeggios starting with the C chord on the first beat of the second measure of this phrase. You follow that up with a three note arpeggio of D and then a five note arpeggio of G (skipping the A string as you pick down the strings).

These two phrases then repeat in order to complete the verse. Here is the full verse:

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Notice the very slight change at the last two beats. We want to make a definitive break between the verse and the upcoming chorus and using a double stop of the G (third fret of the high E string) and B (open B string) notes seems like a good way to do so. This second play through of the verse, by the way, will also serve as the last two lines of the chorus.

And speaking of which, to give the chorus a bit of a different feel, let’s start it out with a simple “contrary motion” Travis style picking pattern, taken straight from our lesson on that topic: Basic Travis Finger Picking Tutorial. For the first two beats, use the C at the first fret of the B string as your high note and then switch to the note of the open high E (first) string for the third and fourth beats.

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The last line of the chorus repeats the lyric of the first line of the verse. Musically, it’s a repeat of the second (or fourth) line of the verse. So having the accompaniment repeat the phrase as well makes good sense. But it’s an abrupt shift going from the Travis style that starts the chorus to the arpeggio style of the verse. To make this shift both seamless and musically dramatic, why not do a little melody shadowing, as shown in the last measure of the above example? It creates a nice, natural pause for breath to lead into the last line of the chorus.

And here are the notation and tablature for the entire chorus:

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As I mentioned, this arrangement was written for The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Guitar and, just in case you haven’t heard, Nick Torres did an absolutely wonderful vocal for the CD that comes with the book. If you’d like to have the sheer pleasure of playing backup for Nick, here’s your chance:

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I hope that you have enjoyed this lesson in accompaniment. 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

The Art of Accompaniment 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 while the answer is positively mundane, it still might help nudge you in a direction that will help you become a better soloist (and player in general).

Are you ready? Here goes:

A scale is not, usually, a solo.

Take a moment to let that sink in before you gasp at how incredibly underwhelming (not to mention obvious) a statement this is. Take a second moment to get over the sarcastic replies that are filling your head as well.

And then think – how do you go about practicing solos? Many guitarists don’t really practice soloing at all. They practice scales and think that they are practicing solos. They will sit and work on getting their fingers to fly around on the fretboard until they are extremely proficient at it and then think that they are soloing. They aren’t. They’re just playing scales or sequences (or series, if you will – and more on that in a moment). Scales can certainly be used in solos and can be (and usually are) an important tool to create a good solo, but they are just one part of the big picture.

At their heart, the great solos we remember are like miniature songs, songs within songs, if you will. And part of what makes them both great and memorable is that they are sing-able. Or hum-able. They have melodies that stick in your head and you find yourself singing them or whistling them or playing air guitar while they’re running around in your brain. Scales are nice but not very exciting as melodies, unless you’re singing Do, Re, Mi or Joy to the World (the Christmas carol, not the “Jeremiah was a bullfrog” song).

Scales move dutifully from one note to the next and we tend to practice them in steady, even rhythms in order to work on our speed. For instance, if we were to work on the C major scale, we’d probably do something like this:

See? Nice and even eighth notes. Maybe we’ll work on sixteenth notes or even thirty-second notes. After all, speed is what we’re interested in, right?

Melodies are interested in phrases and we’ve discussed the importance of phrasing at many points in this series. Just what do we mean by “phrasing?” Phrasing is how a line of music breathes. Take even a simple descending scale, change up it’s timing a little bit and voila! You’ve the first line of the aforementioned Christmas carol:

Even if you don’t play it or sing it, you can see from the different notes (and I’ve written out the counting for you to help you see it) that this isn’t even. It’s full of long notes and short notes and gives both the player and the listener places to take a breath.

Unless you make a deliberate effort to include phrasing and melodies as part of your practice routine when it comes to soloing, your solos are going to sound like the scales you practice. How can they not, since that’s what you’re practicing?

To be fair, a good number of beginners do get this and so they start to vary their practice routine by playing “series” or “sequences” instead of straight scales. A “series” or “sequence” is a slight variation on a scale. You might play the first four notes in order and then back up two notes, like this:

But if you’re observant (and again, you don’t even need to hear this if you’re paying attention), you can see that these are all eighth notes and therefore are all even. This, then, becomes an exercise about speed and not about phrasing. And there’s the trap. If you’re interested, truly interested in solos as solos, at some point you have to stop thinking about speed enough to become a student of melody and phrasing.

And that’s actually very easy, but not in an “easy to practice with a set format” way. It becomes a matter of putting together little melodic bits either from the scales you already know and practice, or from the melodies you can hear in your head while you’re playing.

For example, here’s the descending Am pentatonic, positioned at the fifth fret:

And here’s a very simple, yet elegant blues-style phrase (in swing eighths, so it’s counted out for you) that is basically a slight, incredibly slight, variation on the last example:

The use of the triplet on the second beat, plus the skipping of a note (or two) of the Am pentatonic scale, plus the occasional reversal of direction makes this sound a lot more like melodic, which makes it sound more like a solo.

Next time out, we’ll use a real life song to explore this idea further, but in the meantime you might find it helpful to go over a couple of old Guitar Columns here at on our site that explore what we’ve been talking about: Leading Questions and Picture in Dorian Gray.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief “sidestep” in our series and I also hope it helps you see that even though we often use scales as a starting point to soloing, they are two different creatures and we’re going to have to spend more time practicing making solos, which will help us make our solos sound less like scales. And we’ll tackle just how to “practice soloing” in Part 10 of this series.

As always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forum page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

• Choosing Colors – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 1
• One Note At A Time – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 2
• The Major and the Minor – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 3
• Combining The Major Scale With The Minor Pentatonic – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 4
• Color Me Blue – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 5
• Targeting in on a Mode – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 6
• Sustaining Interest in a Target – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 7
• Taking Care of Choices – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 8

Practice With Purpose -Turning Scales into Solos – Part 9 was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

What’s sometimes overlooked is that it’s very easy to create “chord melody” finger style instrumental pieces out of a blues format. You’ve already done this with our last “Turning Practice into Play” lesson (the Drop D Happy Blues) and in this lesson you’ll have a new piece to add to your single-guitar instrumental music repertoire.

The song for this lesson, which I’m calling the Quick Change Chromatic Blues just to give it a name, is one I wrote specifically for the upcoming Complete Idiot’s Guide to Guitar. Like the Drop D Happy Blues, it’s designed to work on syncopation and timing in general. It’s both easier and harder than the first song in a couple of ways. Easier in that the bass is pretty much a single note (the root note of the given chord) throughout, but the melody provides ample opportunity to stretch and move the fingers about on the fretboard.

There are also some aspects of musicality to address – while the bass is pretty much the same throughout, there should be a bit of distinction between what we would think of as the song’s melody and what will pass as typical blues fills. More on that as we move along…

Let’s address a few basics first: the song is in E major and follows a twelve-bar blues format that most musicians refer to as the “quick change” blues. Typically a twelve-bar blues pattern in the key of E would use the following chords:

Measures 1 – 4: E

Measures 5 – 6: A

Measures 7 – 8: E

Measure 9: B

Measure 10: A

Measure 11: E

Measure 12: Turnaround (meaning getting back to the B so you can start the song again)

In a “quick change” blues, the second measure usually goes to the “IV” chord, which in the key of E would be A. Then the third and fourth measures are back on the “I” chord, which would be E in this example.

Let’s take a look at the first two measures and see how this will play out. Don’t forget that blues is played in swing eighths. If you’ve forgotten about how to do that, don’t worry! We’ve just created a new “mini-lesson help guide” here at Guitar Noise for just this purpose! Go here to get a quick refresher (complete with audio) on swing eighths rhythm.

And when you’re done with that, you can get back to focusing on this song:

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Let’s talk a moment here about notes, fingering, melodies and making use of open strings. The E note in the melody line at the end of the first measure can be played at many places along the neck of the guitar. There’s the open high E (first) string, obviously, but you can also play that particular note at the fifth fret of the B string, the ninth fret of the G string, the fourteenth fret of the D string and even the nineteenth fret of the A string if you’re so inclined. Which note is the “right one?”

A lot of that choice depends on you but part of it is simple logic. If you play the first three notes of the melody starting with the G note at the eighth fret of the B string (as shown in the above tablature) it just makes sense to start with your middle finger because then your ring finger and index finger are in perfect position to play the G# (ninth fret of the B) and B (seventh fret of the high E). But you’ve got a choice now as to where to play that E note we were just discussing.

Perhaps the most logical place to play it is at the ninth fret of the G string. Your fingers are, as mentioned, in a perfect place to do so. But I’ve chosen the open high E string for two purely personal reasons. First off, I like the way it sounds. Maybe I’m just an “open ringing strings” kind of guy (that may have a lot to do with starting out on an acoustic twelve-string guitar ages ago), who knows? Letting the note ring out and decay naturally, even while the new phrase of the second measure begins, is pleasing to my ears.

The second reason is a little more practical – using the open string means that I’ve bought myself a bit of time to shift my fingers down the neck for the next phrase of the song. I am not the world’s fastest guitarist by any stretch of the imagination and I like to give my fingers a head start whenever the opportunity presents itself.

And even though this is a reasonably simple song, there’s quite a bit going on here. Take the bass notes, for instance. Even though it’s probably the easiest bass line you could possibly come across, you want to think about just how you want to play it. You can hear on the MP3 in the last example that I use a bit of palm muting on the bass notes, keeping the bass fairly crisp and staccato, in contrast to letting the melody notes ring out. Again, this is my choice and your personal musical tastes may guide you to play it differently.

Turning our attention to the second measure, my original intent with this song was to have it serve as a practical use of the age-old “one finger one fret” exercises that we all used at some point in our playing history. If your index finger plays the first C note (fifth fret of the G string), then you can use your middle finger on C# (sixth fret), your ring finger on the F# (seventh fret of the B string) and your pinky on the G (eighth fret of the B). But again, that’s just one possible approach. You could, for instance, decide to use a series of short slides, sliding the index finger from the fifth fret to the sixth fret on the G and either your ring finger or middle finger to slide from the seventh to eighth fret of the B string. Hammer-ons are another possibility.

The third measure was designed to give beginning guitarists a bit of work on rolling the index finger:

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Begin the phrase the middle finger to fret the G (third fret of the high E) and use your ring finger for the G# at the fourth fret. Next you’ll hit the open high E string and let it ring out while you play the C# at the second fret of the B string. To do so, you’ll need to fret the note cleanly with the tip of your index finger. After you’ve done so, flatten out the index finger to get the F# at the second fret of the high E string. You can then either remove your index finger and pick the note of the open high E string or perform a pull-off with the index finger to sound the note.

To get the final note of this phrase, you can simply play it as notated or you can choose to use a slide or a hammer to move from the C# (second fret of the B string) to the D (third fret of the B).

Measures five and six involve bouncing your fingers across the first six frets of the two high strings:

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Here we’re once again making use of the open strings to move our fingers around. The first time you hit the open high E, shift your fingers so your index finger is positioned at the second fret. Doing so will make it easy to play the A (fifth fret of the high E) with your pinky.

Likewise, use the second strike of the open high E string as a chance to reposition your fingers so that your middle finger is poised over the third fret. This means your pinky will be able to nail the Bb at the sixth fret. Take advantage of the next-to-last hit of the open high E to shift back and you’ll have no trouble getting the F# at the second fret just before this phrase is over.

Be sure to take note that the first three notes of the fifth measure are triplets and not swing eighths. This means that you are supposed to play them evenly through the first beat of the measure. Don’t treat the first hammer-on (which could just as easily be played as a slide, if you prefer) as a grace note – give it its full rhythmic due.

Also be sure to notice that the third note of that triplet is tied, so it is in essence a full beat (the last third of the first beat and the first two-thirds of the second beat). Whenever you find yourself faces with a combination of triplets and swing eighths, be smart and count it out loud to yourself in order to get it right. Here’s how you would count out the fifth measure:

I threw in a traditional blues riff to serve as a fill during the seventh and eighth measures:

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This is probably the trickiest part of the whole song, so if you can work your way through measure seven it’s pretty much smooth sailing from here. You may find using your ring finger for the initial D note (third fret of the B string) to be very helpful. Doing so puts your middle finger right over the second fret so you put it down on the A note (second fret of the G string), hit it and then slide up two frets to the B note. Now your index finger is at the third fret position, which is exactly where you want it to be. Be sure to keep your middle finger in place at the fourth fret of the G string when you hit that D note (index finger on the third fret of the B string) so that you are ready for the slide back down to the A at the second fret. Then you can simply remove the finger normally or perform a pull-off to get the note of the open G string.

Don’t pat yourself on the back just yet, though. You need to hit the open G once more and then immediately hammer your index finger on to the first fret to get the G# that starts the eighth measure. This open G is a true grace note. It’s almost like hitting the open G string was a mistake that you corrected as soon as you heard it.

Take these last two measures slowly and deliberately at first. Don’t even worry about the count as much as getting comfortable knowing how and what your fingers are supposed to do to perform this fill. Once you feel less anxious about how to play it, work on the fill at a very slow and even tempo, counting out the triplets (“one and ah two and ah three and ah four and ah”) as you do so. The hammer-on at the start of measure eight should all happen as you say “one.”

As you gain confidence in playing this riff at speed, back up two measures and play the entire phrase (measures five through eight) at a slow, steady beat and then gradually build up your speed again.

The final five measures may seem a little mundane compared to what you just went through, but hopefully there will be some interesting musical twists for you to enjoy:

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You want to start by fingering a B7 chord (x21202) but since you won’t be playing the B or high E strings, don’t even worry about putting any fingers there. After a brief four-string arpeggio, slide the B7 shape, all three fingers, one fret up the neck. Believe it or not, this is C7. With your picking hand, pinch the A and G strings with your thumb and middle finger, respectively, and use your index finger to pick the D string. Then slide the whole shape back to B7 and repeat the picking pattern.

And, having just taken a short break from the “all quarter notes all root notes all the time” bass line, you get right back into it in measure ten. The melody line uses only the notes at either the open B and high E string or the second fret of both those strings. Again, compared to what you’ve done up to this point, you should find this surprisingly easy and painless.

Measure eleven is an interesting demonstration of converging musical lines. The bass notes climb up from E to G# to A to A# and then B at the start of measure twelve while the melody notes move down from E to D (natural) to C# to C natural and then to B again. It’s the first time that the melody is all quarter notes so take care not to speed them up! Inertia can do that to you!

You might find it easiest to finger the second pair of notes in measure eleven – the G# in the bass and the D in the melody – with your middle finger and index finger, respectively. Then slide your index finger down to the second fret of the B string for the C# and use the open A string for the bass note. For the final pair of notes in that measure, use your middle finger for the A# note (first fret of the A string) in the bass and your ring finger for the C (first fret of the B string) in the melody. This allows you to slide the middle finger up to get the B note (second fret of the A string) and also puts you in position to fret the low three notes of the B7 chord again. A little planning certainly doesn’t hurt.

Let’s try out the whole thing and see how it goes, shall we?

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I hope you’ve enjoyed this little blues number. You should feel free to experiment and work out your own melodies and fills and create solo guitar blues pieces of your own. It’s not all that hard if you remember to start out nice and easy. As you pick up more and more techniques and ideas, your songs will start to reflect your new skills, too.

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

Turning Practice Into Play #2 – “Quick Change Chromatic Blues” was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

A piece of music in 4/4 time (meaning four beats to the bar) may commonly be expressed in a straight eighth feel, a syncopated feel, a 12/8 feel, or a 16-beat feel.

Straight Eighth Feel

Each note is kept to exactly the same length in straight eighth feel. The result can be verbalised like this:

“One and two and three and four and”

It is normally best played with all down strokes.

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A shuffle pattern is often applied to this in blues, R&B and rock music, emphasising the backbeats (beats 2 and 4 – also called snare beats as they are commonly picked out by the snare drum):

“One and two and three and four and”

On rhythm guitar this is often reinforced by adding the sixth note of the scale to a power chord like this:

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12/8 Feel

This is the one I find people need the most help with. First of all I recommend forgetting the number 12 – it’s just too big a number to count. Counting “One two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve” every bar is likely to just result in you spitting all over the front row of your audience as you play!

Better to go back to the description of straight eighths and instead of dividing each of the four main beats into two equal halves, divide them into three equal thirds. This is best verbalised:

“One-and-a two-and-a three-and-a four-and-a”

And should, except at really fast tempo, be played with all down strokes to keep it smooth.

It is the staple rhythmic diet of slow blues (Jimi Hendrix’ ”Red House”), some soul and gospel (Sam Cooke “Bring it on Home”) and 8-bar country blues like “Key to the Highway” by Big Bill Broonzy.

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Swing Feel

There is a great deal of discussion about exactly what constitutes a swing feel but, in the simplest of terms, swing rhythm differs from straight time by making the first of each pair of notes slightly longer at the expense of the second.

Strangely enough, this is done through triplets, like those you counted out in the 12/8 feel. But instead of playing all three notes of the triplet, you just play the first and last notes of each set. Swing, in its simplest form, can be verbalised like this:

“One  a-two a-three a-four a-”

It is almost always better to play swing rhythms with alternating strokes:

Down up-Down up-Down up-Down up-

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16-Beat Feel

Most commonly found in funk, jazz, disco and heavy rock, the sixteen beat feel is probably the last of these four feels to try and master.

Again, the notes are all of even duration. This time each of the main four beats are subdivided into four lesser beats. As with the advice on the 12/8 feel, don’t try counting from 1 – 16! Better to think of it as:

“One-e-and-a   two-e-and-a   three-e-and-a   four-e-and-a”

And play it with a nice free right hand, strumming evenly, strictly alternating up and down strokes.

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We have barely scratched the surface with this article, but I hope it will inspire guitar players to look deeper into this aspect of their playing. A great way to expand your understanding is simply to try to figure out which of these four categories the music you are listening to falls into. There are, of course, other time signatures, feels and many sub-varieties of those listed above; but you may be surprised just how many popular songs have rhythms that fall into one of these four basic categories of rhythmic feel.

The author welcomes feedback from guitarists and teachers alike. You’ll find more such articles plus loads of other free resources for guitar teaching on www.teachguitar.com

Solving Timing and Rhythm Problems Part 3 – Left-brain Left Behind was written by Nick Minnion for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

With musicians, just talk about the difference between “practice” and “play.” We all love to play our guitars, but few can hear the word “practice” without experiencing a twinge of some sort. But the reality is that practicing is, at heart, playing one’s instrument. You’re just playing with a specific focus.

Part of the dislike for practice stems from the perception that practice is not “fun” like playing is. But that’s something you can fix with a little imagination on your part. To help, I’ve put together this lesson (and others to follow) that give you a song specifically made up to help practice different techniques or ideas. Since we’ve recently had a focus on finger picking guitar, and since just about everyone loves the blues, your first lesson is a song called Drop D Happy Blues. It may remind you of Taj Mahal’s rendition of Fishing Blues or even Buckets of Rain by Bob Dylan. And that’s a good thing if it does, because then you’ll be noticing how this made-up-specifically-for-practice song is something you can easily do on your own.

We’ll be using Drop D Happy Blues to work on Travis style finger picking as well as to get a better handle on the ideas of syncopation and anticipation, not to mention working on timing in general. This song will also give you a workout with “two finger hammer-ons,” like those used in the Amazing Grace lesson here at Guitar Noise. And if that’s not enough, we’ll also touch on the use of two-string harmony – playing pairs of strings much in the way we did with Bookends. Not to bad from one fairly simple song, no?

And I want to stress that word – “simple” – if for no other reason than to point out you probably liked it! Seriously, I’ve tried to make this first “practice song” one that most of you should be able to handle fairly easily but give it some challenging aspects as well.

Something else I tried to do is to make this a “multi-purpose” arrangement, meaning that it will (hopefully) work equally well as a “chord melody” style song, for those of you who don’t sing, and as an accompaniment, should you decide to create your own melody to sing over the guitar part. And please feel free to do so!

First things first, though, and that means getting our guitars in Drop D tuning. We’ve run into this tuning in a few of our Guitar Noise lessons, such as Neil Young’s Harvest Moon. To place your guitar in Drop D, you want to lower the low E (sixth) string down one whole step to D. You can do this by means of a tuner or even your ear. Just be certain you’re tuning the string lower in pitch and not higher! If you’re using your ear, you can match the new note of D against the normal open D (fourth) string (it will be an octave lower). Matching the twelfth fret harmonic of the newly tuned sixth string to the open fourth string will also do the trick, as will matching the note of the open A (fifth) string to the seventh fret of the newly tuned sixth string.

You may wonder why we’re going through the trouble of using Drop D tuning in the first place! Believe it or not, it’s to make things easier on your picking while you concentrate on other things. Throughout much of the song, you’ll be using your thumb to play a steady four-beat-to-the-measure bass line that simply alternates between the new lowest open D (sixth) string and the regular open D of the fourth string, like this:

For many players the trickiest part of finger picking, especially Travis style picking, is dealing with the picking that gets played with the fingers. More often than not these notes fall on the offbeats, creating syncopation and anticipations in the overall picking pattern. So, as silly as it sounds, you want to take a few moments to get comfortable playing this in a very steady rhythm. Don’t worry about speed but concentrate instead on being able to count and hold the beat steady and sure.

Keeping the beat steady is vital when you add the melody line of the song to the mix. It’s not at all difficult, but if you’re not familiar or comfortable with playing on the offbeat, it may take a few tries to get it right. Here is the first phrase, which is four measures long. Notice that the first and third measures are identical while the second and fourth mirror each other in rhythm even though the notes are different:

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I’ve added the count to the first line so you can see and hear how this plays out. For picking, you may find it best to use your middle finger to play any notes on the high E (first) string and your index finger to pick the notes on the B string. But you can also alternate your fingers, using the middle finger and index finger to pick alternate notes. You can certainly also add your ring finger to the mix as well or simply use one single finger to pick all the notes. Which way is best? That depends on who you ask. But it truly doesn’t hurt to be comfortable playing it using any of those finger picking suggestions.

For fretting the notes, though, you’ll probably find it best to start with your index finger on the seventh fret, which will allow you to use either your ring finger or your pinky for the notes at the tenth fret. At the second measure, using the middle finger for the first note (sixth fret of the B string) allows you to hammer onto the seventh fret with your ring finger while keeping your index finger in the perfect position to play the last note at the fifth fret of the high E (first) string. Similarly, in the fourth measure, using the middle finger to start with means you’ll have both the index and ring fingers in the right spot for the second and third notes of the melody.

Another option worth considering is using a slide instead of either the hammer-on or pull-off. You’d start the second measure, for instance, with your ring finger on the sixth fret of the B string and slide it up to the seventh fret. Likewise in the fourth measure you’d use your index finger for the first note (sixth fret of the B string again) and slide the index finger down to the fifth fret of the same string for the second melody note of that measure.

Whichever way you decide to play it (and I, of course, encourage you to try each one), the important thing here is to keep the timing correct. For whatever reason, many beginners seem to associate slurs, such as hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides and bends, with grace notes and tend to play all slurs as grace notes instead of giving them their full rhythmic value. The melody for both the second and fourth measures uses the same rhythm. First there is an eighth note rest, during which the bass note of the open low D (sixth) string is played. Then you get the first melody note during the second half of the first beat. The second melody note (the one created by the hammer-on, pull-off or slide) falls precisely at the second beat, coinciding with the playing of the open D of the fourth string. The third melody note falls between the second and third beat and is held over the final two beats of the measure. Be sure to count it out if you’re worried you’re not getting it correctly.

And just to give you more to practice, here is an alternate rhythm to use for both the second and fourth measures of this first phrase of our song:

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Here the first melody note of the second and fourth measures falls right on the first beat. The second note falls between the first and second beats and the third note occurs between beats two and three and is held for the rest of the measure.

The first phrase of this song is repeated. In the final MP3 of this lesson you’ll hear me play the first variation one time through and then the second. As always, you should feel free to mix and match as you see fit. Have fun playing around with the rhythm but do make it a point to tell yourself, “I’m playing this rhythm” and do so. After all, you want to be in charge of what you’re playing!

The second phrase begins on the fourth beat of the second repetition of Measure 4, kicking off with a two-finger hammer-on. It goes like this (I’m starting with the third measure of the first phrase, with the second rhythm variation, in the following example):

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On the fourth beat that marks the end of the first phrase / beginning of the second phrase, you’re playing the open D note of the fourth string with your thumb, as you have been on every fourth beat of every measure up to this point. At the same time you strike the open fourth D string with your thumb, you want to play the open B and G strings. You’ll likely find it easiest to use your middle finger (on the B string) and index finger (on the G string) to do so. After striking all three strings on the fourth beat, you’ll want to perform a hammer-on on the B and G strings at the second half of the fourth beat. Use your index finger to get the D note (third fret of the B string) and your middle finger to get the B note (fourth fret of the G string).

Coming in ahead of the first beat in this manner is called an anticipation. We’ve run into this in many lessons here at Guitar Noise, from Three Marlenas to Man on the Moon. With this particular anticipation, though, you’ll notice that having the hammer-on take place on the second half of the fourth beat gives you a little space in which to get your finger ready on that low G note in the bass.

Using the two fingers on the appropriate notes as outlined earlier puts your ring finger or pinky in place to get the G note at the fifth fret of the low D (sixth) string and having all three fingers in place sets you up to play the rest of the measure with ease. The thumb will still be playing the same strings – the G note on the low D on the first and third beats and the open fourth string D on the second and fourth beats. Then it’s just a matter of adding the fingers.

And that will be a little tricky at first. The second full measure of this second phrase is probably the most involved part of the whole song, so take your time with it. Many players will find it easiest if they use their ring fingers to pick the open high E (first) string, the middle finger to pick the B string and the index finger to pick the G string. But quite a few will also find it simpler to use just the middle finger and index fingers for picking. And there will also be those who prefer to use the index finger to pick all three strings.

You’ll also get a chance to work on your two-finger hammer-ons a bit more as the phrase ends with a shift from the D and B notes to D and A (second fret of the G string). Again, you’ll want to make note of the timing and watch out for the anticipations.

Okay, there’s one final phrase to deal with and, compared to what you just went through, it should be somewhat easier;

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You start with a nice, single hit of the open A string and then play three easy harmony pairs on the high E (first) and G strings. Use your index finger for the high notes and your middle finger for the low notes. If you’d like, you can slide into the first pair of notes, as indicated in the notation and tablature. Doing so is usually easiest from two frets lower on the neck, so you’d start with your index finger on the third fret of the high E (first) string and your middle finger on the fourth fret of the G string.

In the second measure of this last phrase the harmony pairs shift to the B and D strings. Again, use your middle finger on the low notes but go with the ring finger for the higher notes on the B string. And you can also slide into the first pair again if you’d like.

You also get a chance to see if you can hit the offbeat without the aid of the steady bass notes. Notice that the third pair of notes in the second measure falls between the second and third beats of that measure. Finally you end up with the same two-finger hammer-on last seen at the end of the second phrase.

So far, so good! Let’s try putting it all together. We’ll run through the whole thing twice, extend the ending a little bit the second time through and then tack on a short little run of bass notes to give the piece an nice finish:

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That last chord, by the way, is an interesting open string voicing of D9. I hope that you have enjoyed this song lesson, even though it’s a song you’ve not heard before. Hopefully, it kind of sounds like some songs you have heard before!

And do remember the whole point of this exercise was to come up with a song that you could use to practice some different techniques, in this case the focus being Travis style finger picking (complete with playing off the beat and anticipations) and two-finger hammer-ons.  You may not think so at this stage, but this sort of thing you could have come up with on your own if you were so inclined. All I did was to take a few areas of practice and create a way to make that practice (hopefully) be a bit more fun.

If you’re interested in this sort of thing, we’ll try to work out some more “practice songs” for you. It’s easy enough to take other song styles as well as the techniques used in other songs you know and to incorporate them into an interesting and fun lesson. Let me know if that’s something of interest to you.

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

Turning Practice into Play #1 – “Drop D Happy Blues” 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

This becomes very important when you encounter more complicated rhythms, as you’ll soon see. But I’d like to take a moment to clue you in to something that will also help you immensely when it comes to playing rhythm – written music notation. Notes written in musical notation do double duty. They tell you which note to play and they also tell you how long any given note should last in terms of beats.

Tablature is certainly helpful, but usually only to a point. For example, take a moment and play this for me:

You certainly can handle the notes themselves, but notes are only one part of music. Rhythm is another and it can be very important. How important? Well, suppose I tell you that the example you just played is the first line of the Christmas carol Joy to the World? Did you play it like that the first time? Or did you play it simply, giving each note a single beat? Quite a difference, no?

Since we’re truly only concerned with strumming (for now, anyway), you only have to concern yourself with reading the rhythm aspects of notation. We’ve a number of lessons here at Guitar Noise about this, like Timing is Everything. You might want to take a few moments to look that one over, particularly since it gets into counting and that’s right at the heart of what we’re discussing.

When you count out the beats of the song, you usually do so in terms of quarter notes. We did this in “Example 1″ in Part 1, where you strummed down each quarter note like this:

I’d like to take a moment now to introduce some of you to rhythm notation. Rhythm notation uses just the rhythm part of notation. Instead of writing all the notes of a chord out in notation, a simple slash is stuck at the end of a stem, like this:

These are four quarter notes of the G chord, just as you saw in “Example 2″ a few moments ago. It doesn’t matter in the slightest where on the staff, on whichever line or space, the slash appears. All you’re concerned with is that they are quarter notes. Many music books use rhythm notation without staffs, placing strumming notation above a lyric line.

We’ll use rhythm notation for our next few examples. I’m not going to bother putting a chord in the following examples so you should feel free to use whatever chord you’d like.

Getting back to our quick review of “Part 1,” you also read and saw how when you strum in quarter notes, you’re actually strumming in eighth notes when you take the upstrokes into account:

So far, so good. Now how about if you want to play some more complicated rhythms, maybe something in the style of Jack Johnson, perhaps? He’s actually a great choice because most (if not all) of his music is available in books, which means you don’t have to guess how he strums things, it’s all written down for you!

You may be wondering how that is possible. After all, no one probably went and marked every downstroke or upstroke on the notation. And you’d be perfectly right about that. But if you take a moment and apply your brain, using the information you got in “Part 1,” you’d make some important discoveries.

Suppose you want to play a rhythm where the fastest notes are sixteenth notes? First, you have to think about strumming in eighth notes. Why? Because sixteenth notes are half the value of eighth notes, just like eighth notes are half the value of quarter notes. So if you were to strum a measure of eighth notes with all downstrokes, like this:

That means you’d be strumming in sixteenth notes when you take the upstrokes into account, like this:

Of course, more likely than not, you’re not going to be overly challenged by a rhythm that is either straight eighth notes or straight sixteenth notes. The fun comes when things get a little uneven, such as in strumming something like Jack Johnson’s song, Taylor.  Here’s the riff that gets played pretty much throughout the song:

This looks kind of formidable unless you are able to see it and say, “Hey, that’s all sixteenth notes! Some of them have ties, but they are all sixteenth notes and I can do that!” First, chart all the notes out and ignore the ties. Since the two measures of this riff have the same rhythm, I’m going to just use the first one in the next two examples:

Now, when a note is tied, that means you just play the first of the tied notes and not the second. That means that we miss whatever strum happens to fall on the second of the tied notes, like this:

Instead of the rhythm and the strumming being a total mystery, you’ve got it down perfectly. Let’s try the whole riff:

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That wasn’t hard at all, was it? Not to figure out, anyway! Executing the strumming correctly will take a bit of practice, but nothing you aren’t capable of.

In the chorus sections of Taylor, a second acoustic guitar part comes in playing some open position chords while the first guitar is playing the riff we just worked out. Here is how the strumming of the second guitar looks in notation (rhythm notation this time):

By the way, I’m going to use a regular open position G instead of the “G5″ if that’s okay with you. I just like the sound of it better. Following the same process we just used for the first guitar part, we notice that there is a combination of eighth notes and sixteenth notes here. First, we want to just write out the count, and here’s something very interesting about that – It seems that many notation software programs, particularly those used in guitar books, usually separate out the groups of sixteenth notes or eight notes or dotted eighth and dotted sixteenth notes and what have you, in clusters of single beats. This makes writing out the count a lot easier, as you can see:

Finally, just add in our upstrokes and downstrokes according to where they fall in the count and you’re good to go:

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You’ve gotten quite a bit to digest here, so we’ll save going into even more complicated rhythms for next time.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Getting Past ‘Up and Down’ – Part 2: “Turning Notes into Strokes” 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 just because this is an “easy intermediate” song, that doesn’t mean we can’t learn something (or more than a few somethings) about it. And that’s the whole point of all these lessons here at Guitar Noise, 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.

Even though I’d heard this song for ages, I didn’t ever play it until the day a friend brought it along to one of the jam sessions we’d have in Chicago. His chord chart showed the song in the key of C, which I assumed was the key that the original recording was in. The first verse, and the chorus, looked like this:

Being a jam session, we obviously had a number of guitarists, so I quickly worked out two “up the neck” transpositions in order to be able to play in a different position and add a bit more to the song. The first was in G (which meant playing with a capo on the fifth fret) and the second was in A (capo on the third fret).

The next time I had the chance to play this was years later, as Hello In There turned up in one of Nick Torres’ songsheet collections. Owing to time, I’m not even sure we gave it a cursory going-over.

But when someone asked for a lesson dealing with a John Prine song, this is the one that came to mind first. And it’s kind of interesting because when I took a look at some recent videos of Prine playing the song, I noticed that he currently (or at least less than two years ago) is playing and singing the song in the key of A. He uses a capo on the second fret and plays open position chords in the key of G.

Now, if I were relying solely on information from the Internet without applying a bit of my brain to it, I might be lost because the majority of the tab / cheat sheets available on the Internet still put the song in C. C certainly may have been the key of the original recording (I don’t have a copy to verify that, sorry), but as people age their vocal range can change and that’s probably why John Prine currently plays it in A.

The point is that even when you know the chords of a song, you may have learned them in a key that’s very hard for you to sing in. And even using a capo may become problematic. For instance, my vocal range is not at all like John Prine’s (and that’s certainly an understatement!). I’m very comfortable singing this song in Eb or even E. That would mean putting a capo on the eighth or ninth fret if I wanted to use the same G based chords that Prine uses. Playing that high up the neck changes the character of the song quite a bit, so I have to take that into account when figuring out how I want to do this as a solo piece.

For now, though, we’re going to first approach this song in the style that John Prine plays it in the various recent live performances you can see and hear on YouTube. That means that we’re going to be playing with G chords but use the capo on the second fret, which puts the song in the key of A. Just so that we understand that we’ve technically got three keys to take into account here, let’s transpose the chords from C to both A and G to make our lives easier (and if you’re in a muddle about how to transpose, take a look at our lesson on that very topic – A Basic Guide to Transposing):

Once we have our pallet of chords, we can take a look at the picking. Prine uses a slow and relatively sparse Travis fingerstyle pattern as a foundation. To begin with, you want to use the thumb to get the bass notes on the beats and then add the treble notes with the fingers. For the G chord, for instance, you’d be playing this:

You can also hit the open G string instead of the open D string in this pattern. In fact, you’ll hear on the various MP3 files that go with this lesson that I will constantly flip between using the D string and the G string, particularly on the fourth beat of any given measure. As we’ve discussed in many articles and song lessons here at Guitar Noise, as long as you have the chord in place with your fingers, it’s rarely going to sound wrong.

In other words, even though I’ve written out the bass part as alternating between the low G (third fret of the low E (sixth) string) and the open D string, you should feel free to use the open G string as an alternate bass note as well. If you worry about being totally mechanical about it, you can lose some of the organic nature of playing. So please remember to use the tablature as a template for your playing and not as some kind of sacred text, okay? And forgive my switching from one to the other in the MP3 files.

In terms of structure, Hello In There is essentially a “verse – chorus” sort of song. The verse, or half the verse depending on the arrangement, also serves as an introduction and can also be played for an interlude between the verses. Both verse and chorus are sixteen measures long and can be broken down into two distinct parts, each eight measures long. This is very helpful because, as you’ll see, the second half of the chorus is almost exactly like the second half of the verse. Half of the verse is also used as the outro, or coda, of the song.

The first half of the verse is a four measure progression (one of G, one of Am and two of D7) that repeats itself (making eight total measures). If you’re confident about having a basic picking pattern down, then it’s time to tackle the first half of the verse:

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The basic Travis picking pattern remains constant throughout the song, but there are little twists to it. For instance, each of the first three chords has a root note on a different string. The low G, as we’ve discussed, is on the low E (sixth) string while the A of the Am is the open A string and the D of the D7 is the open D string. This means you need to shift your thumb accordingly when picking out the bass notes.

The first of the two measures of D7 tosses in a slight embellishment by adding the note of the open high E (first) string. This is a fairly common ornament that guitar players use when playing almost any open position D chord. You can either pick the open string or perform a pull off with your ring finger, which is keeping the second fret of the high E string down for the initial D7 chord.

The last eight measures of the verse involve four chords (Gmaj7, C, G and D), each of which get two measures. When I listened to the video of John Prine performing this song, it seemed to me that he continued to use the open D string as his bass note when he changed to what the chord charts pretty much write as “Gmaj7″ (or Cmaj7 if you go with the key of C charts) and the absence of the G note made the chord sound more like a typical minor chord rather than the jazzy sort of feel of a major seventh chord.

Now if you take a moment to think about it, this makes perfect sense. The notes of Gmaj7 are G, B, D and F# (F# being the major seventh). If you drop out the G, you’ve got B, D and F#, which make up the Bm chord. So playing a “beginner’s Bm” (xx0432) works wonderfully here, and also allows you to mimic the take-the-finger-off-the-high-E-string ornamentation that you used with the D chord:

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And since we’re having some fun dropping notes to open up the D string, how about turning around and adding a note, say adding the G chord at the third fret of the high E string during the C chord? That’s what’s going on in the first measure of C.

For the measures of G, I move the treble part of the picking down to the B and G strings, just to do something different than what we played for the first G chord. There’s nothing too fancy about that. Occasionally, he will hammer on the open low E string to get the bass note (G at the third fret) and you will hear me do that on occasion as well. I marked it on the second measure of G in the notation / tablature so you could see it, but you should feel free to use it at your discretion. Or not use it at all, if you prefer.

Another thing I picked up from listening to Prine’s video is that he uses F# (found at the second fret of the low E string) as the bass note for D chord, making it D/F# if you prefer. And if you take a look at him playing you’ll see that he wraps his thumb over the top of the neck of the guitar to get this note. He also does a hammer-on with the open G string to get the A note at the second fret. This is shown at the very beginning of the second measure of D in the notation / tablature of this last example.

A quick note here to point out that I should have stopped after the two measures of D/F# and not gone on to play the G chord at the end of that last MP3 example. Lost my place, I’m afraid! Hope you’ll forgive me.

Putting both parts of the verse together (and it is the verse and not the “full chorus,” as I mistakenly announce on the following MP3 example) will sound like this:

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That F# in the D/F# is something you can decide not to play. It won’t be all that different if you use a regular D chord instead. You will have to change your picking accordingly, though. But the real purpose of the F# is in how it leads your ear around and tricks you when the chorus comes up. Before the chorus, you’ll hear this F# in the bass three times – once in the Introduction, where it leads you to G; at the end of the first half of the verse, where it again leads you to G; and finally at the end of the verse. And your ear is, naturally, expecting to go to G again.

But instead he lowers the F# to F and plays an F chord. And the first eight measures of the chorus simply switch between F and G:

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You can play this F as a full barre if you’d like. Prine plays it as another “wrap-around” chord, using his thumb for the F at the first fret of the low E, his index at the first fret of the B string, middle finger on the second fret of the G, pinky on the third fret of the D and ring finger on the third fret of the A string. He doesn’t worry about the high E string because he’s not picking it on either the F or the G chord.

You could, if you wanted to, simply slide this “wrap-around F” chord (13321x) up two frets to get the following G. It will sound essentially the same.

The second half of the chorus is, as mentioned earlier, pretty much a copy of the second half of the verse, but with an additional four measures of G tacked on to the end:

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Now let’s put both half of the chorus together:

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And that’s pretty much the whole song. Here’s a chord sheet to help you see your way through:

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As I mentioned earlier, choosing a key to play a song, or choosing a capo placement for that matter (since it’s just a way of playing in a different key in a different place for different chord voicings on the neck) in is an essential part of how the song is going to sound. You’ve just heard the two main parts of the song, the verse and the chorus, played in A but using “key of G” chords and having the capo on the second fret. Here is another version, this time using open position chords in the key of A. With your permission, I’m not going to tab out the guitar part. There’s no sense to since it’s basically the same exact picking pattern we’ve been using all along. You will need the chords, though:

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As I mentioned, these are basic, simple open position chords. Bm7 serves as an easy substitute for a barre chord-style Bm and allows me to use the bass note (B at the second fret of the A string). I do use some hammer-ons, such as hammering from the open B string to the second fret while playing the regular A chord, and also throw in the D note at the third fret of the B string on the E7 on occasion.

In this key, it would have been easier for me to use Amaj7 (x02120) instead of C#m, but I chose instead to use an easy voicing of C#m7, x46600, with my index finger playing the fourth fret of the A string, my ring finger on the sixth fret of the D and my pinky on the sixth fret of the G string. That allows me to slide the fingers, keeping the shape, up one fret and playing D 6/9 (x57700), which sounds very cool. An even easier substitution would be Dadd9 (xx0770) and I play that at least once in the verse.

Finally, I make use of the open, ringing B and high E strings by playing an Aadd9 (x07600) for the final chord. That may seem tricky, but actually it’s another easy chord change because the Aadd9 is essentially the same shape as the open E chord that precedes it. You simply slide the shape up to the sixth and seventh frets and remove your finger from the A string. Voila!

You can hear that even though this version is in the same key as the first one we did, it has its own feel to it. Is one arrangement better than the other? No, they are simply different, that’s all. Instead of thinking of which one is “right,” why not listen to them both played together:

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This is an excellent example of how two guitars playing exactly the same fingerpicking pattern can still produce depth and harmony simply by using different chord voicings. And the voicings don’t have to be all that far away from each other on the neck.

One of the things I’d like to start exploring with some of the lessons here at Guitar Noise is how to put together multiple guitar arrangements. Hopefully, this will give you a taste for what you might hear. At the very least, you’ve learned a terrific song by a great songwriter. Roger Waters stated in a 2008 interview that John Prine wrote “just extra-ordinarily eloquent music – and he lives on that plane with Neil Young and Lennon.”

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

Hello In There – John Prine 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:

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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:

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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

Christmas Songs for Guitar

• Silent Night
• Silver Bells
• O Tannebaum!
• Joy to the World
• The Little Drummer Boy
• I’ll Be Home for Christmas
• O Little Town of Bethlehem

Coming up with single guitar chord melody arrangements (or close to chord melody, I suppose you could call it, too, since sometimes you don’t play full chords) can be a lot of fun, if for no other reason than sometimes you end up with something totally different than what you first set out to do.

Case in point – this lesson on the old Christmas carol Away in a Manger started out as a very simple lesson on melody movement, but, well, you’ll see!

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.

Away in a Manger is a beguiling, simple yet beautiful melody built on a descending major scale line, but starting on the fifth note of the scale. In the key of G, it would be like this:

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When I was working this out, I was indeed playing in G. This led me to thinking, what if I raised the melody up an octave so that I could play it mostly (almost entirely, in fact) on the high E (first) string and then use the open B, G and D strings as a drone, kind of making the guitar more into a dulcimer. That turned out like this:

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I liked this a lot, especially since it opened up some many possibilities for concentrating on the single notes of the melody. One could, for instance, use a single finger and slide from note to note. Or you could place your index finger on the B note at the seventh fret of the high E (first) string and set up the C note (eighth fret) with the middle finger and the opening D at the tenth fret with the pinky and then using pull-offs to sound the first three notes of the melody. Being able to focus on the tone of each note of the melody, how playing it even with different fingers creates a different tone, can keep me occupied for hours!

As much as I enjoyed being able to play around with the melody, I found myself missing having a low G note in the bass. But the thought of trying to have one finger on the G note at third fret of the low E (sixth) string while simultaneously playing the D note at the tenth fret of the high E (first) string, well, let’s just say that I didn’t think it being a good idea and leave it at that.

But there are all sorts of ways of getting around these kinds of challenges if you have an open mind. Since I wanted to have a low G note for my bass, why not tune my low E up to G just for this song and give myself nothing but open strings for my bass accompaniment, like this:

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Now, you might wonder why I didn’t tune my A string down to G instead, and you certainly can do that. But I was worried about the fact that, Away in a Manger being in the key of G, the song would primarily contain G, C and D chords and tuning the A down to G would make the C chord problematic, whereas changing the low E string wouldn’t change the C chord at all.

Away in a Manger, like many songs, has four lines and the melody line of the first and third lines are the same. Let’s tackle that first line with our newly tuned guitars:

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You’ll notice that I changed the accompaniment in the third measure, using the C note at the third fret of the A string as the first bass note but not changing the other two notes. Technically, this creates a Cadd9 chord instead of a regular C, but I liked the way it sounded, slightly dissonant but in an interesting way. After trying out using regular C and this one, I ended up liking the open D string much more.

Although I didn’t realize it at time, keeping the A string tuned to A made the first full measure of the second line much easier to deal with:

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This is simply a C7 chord (x32310) slid up two frets, creating a D9 chord (x54530) and the use of the F# (fourth fret of the D string) and C (fifth fret of the G string), mixing with the ringing tones of the D (third fret of the B string) and E (open high E (sixth) string) in the melody, makes this sound much more interesting than if I’d used a regular D with just the open high E string (xx0230).

The “regular” open position D chord does have its place, though, as it’s the perfect choice for the second measure. Some people might find this measure easier to play by making a partial barre at the second fret, covering the three high strings with the index finger. Doing so should allow you to play the initial D note (third fret of the B string) of the melody with the middle finger and the A note (fifth fret of the high E (first) string) with the pinky.

Using a partial barre also puts you in a position to simply stand up your index finger onto the second fret of the D string for the Cadd9 chord (x32030) in the following measure. The middle finger would get the C note in the bass (third fret of the A string) and the ring finger would play the D note at the third fret of the B string. You would then slide that finger up to the eighth fret to get the G note of the melody and hang onto it so that it could ring out while you play the B note (seventh fret of the high E) to end this phrase.

Since the melody of the third line is an exact copy of the first line, I thought it might be nice to do something different this time around. Adding a bit of additional harmony is always nice:

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These are basic double stops, and shouldn’t give you too much trouble provided you remember to keep the G note of the melody (eighth fret of the B string) the same while changing the harmony note from F (tenth fret of the G string) to E (ninth fret of the G string). And you don’t have to release the B note (fourth fret of the G string) in favor of the open G string if you prefer not to. This was something I thought was nice.

The final line has a few slightly complicated challenges to it involving a few partial barres:

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Begin the first measure here with your index finger barring the first four strings at the fifth fret. This, along with the open A string in the bass, gives you an Am7 chord for your harmony. Your pinky should be able to reach the C note of the melody (eighth fret of the high E) without difficulty and you can use either your ring finger or your middle finger to get the B note (seventh fret) that follows.

You remove the barre in the second measure but replace it, this time using your middle finger to barre, in the third measure. That frees your index finger for the F# note at the fourth fret of the D string. This chord, x04555, is D9/A by the way. Use your ring finger or pinky to get the F# note at the seventh fret of the B string and then slide that finger up a single fret to play the final G of the melody line.

Okay, let’s put this all together, shall we?

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I hope you’ve enjoyed working out this Christmas carol with me. Even though it’s fairly simple, I think we’ve managed to come up with an arrangement with some flair of its own.

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

Away in a Manger was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise