Guitar Noise

Here is a beautiful song from songwriter extraodinaire John Prine. This is another arrangement that most beginners can handle, plus we get into some discussion about choosing keys and chord voicings when creating arrangements. And you also get to hear how easy it is to turn this into a simple two-guitar arrangement.

Sometimes a simple sounding fingerstyle acoustic guitar part takes a bit of thought and tinkering to create. David looks at how to go beyond the chords offered up on a typical Internet tab sheet in order to get more of the flavor of the original recording of this great Mark Knopfler song.

Here is a rather faithful arrangement of the closing song from Bob Dylan’s immortal album, “Blood on the Tracks.” Using open D (or open E) tuning, as well as a steady (and incredibly easy) bass part, it’s easy to make this song sound really good. And, it’s excellent practice both for honing your finger picking technique as well as for developing a good sense of syncopation.

This is another one of those songs that could easily have gotten onto the “Easy Songs for Beginners” page, especially if you’ve already worked on the two Guitar Noise Lessons on Travis style finger picking. While you’ll have to work at this one a bit, it’s not beyond the grasp of a beginner who’s ready to practice!

Don’t be put off by the “Intermediate” tag as beginners should have little problems putting this classic Who song into their repertoires. This is a great lesson on why playing strictly “by the record” can tie you up in knots and how important it is to simply have a good feel for the overall flavor of the song.

We’re going to combine a very simple walking bass with some of our Travis picking (and “pinching”) and create a light, lilting arrangement of this Simon and Garfunkel song. Even beginners can tag along as we’ll be using chord shapes that involve only one or two fingers of the fretting hand!

There’s a little bit of everything in this lesson, from easy arpeggios and strumming to some basic Travis style finger picking patterns. As always, David picks the song apart into small pieces that even many beginners can get with some concerted practice. Have fun learning this Harry Chapin classic!

This is more of a mini-lesson, taking a song you know with fairly easy chords and coming up with an arrangement that will work for the single guitar. And with a simple strumming pattern and the strategic use of a capo, even beginners can have some fun with it.

It’s been ages it seems since we’ve had an intermediate song lesson. It also seems like it’s been ages since we’ve done something with an alternate tuning. And when was the last time we did a Neil Young song? And don’t let the intermediate label put you off – even beginners (with some practice, of course!) can make this song sound sweet…

There are seemingly limitless ways of playing any one song, so why should someone ever say I can’t play a song? Or worse, I’m waiting for someone to show me how to play a song… In this lesson, we’ll start out with a simple strumming arrangement, spice things up a bit with arpeggios, and then wind up with an arrangement that’s close to chord melody.

Here’s a short lesson that uses the chord melody approach to come up with a nice song arrangement that you can play either as a chord melody or as a single guitar accompaniment for a singer (or yourself).

…we live in a beautiful world… Yeah, we do! Don’t let the Intermediates tag discourage you from trying out this cool single-guitar arrangement of the opening song from Coldplay’s Parachutes CD (also featured in the Garden State Soundtrack). It’s not at all hard and you might even learn a few things!

John Lennon’s Imagine is usually thought of as a piano song. We’re going to do a thoughtful arrangement for the solo guitarist.

Here’s a wonderful arrangement of this beautiful and haunting song from the pen of John Lennon. While we won’t be using the straight-from-the-record Travis picking style, we will more than make up for it by using many aspects of chord melody playing to make this both easier and challenging at the same time.

On the surface, there’s not an awful lot to this short, yet powerfully moving song. Because of the structure of the song, it’s very much up to the single guitarist to make this an interesting arrangement. And that’s what we’ll do with an arrangement that is interesting, challenging and also gives us some things that we can use in our every day guitar playing.

The classic Elton John song gets the Guitar Noise treatment. We’ve a terrific finger style arrangement for you, good enough to make you think you’re playing a piano! And, of course, I make sure to throw in enough interesting theory bits to remind you that it is, indeed, after all, a lesson!

Let’s kick off the year with a bit of a challenge. Here you’ll find step by step instructions for playing the second acoustic guitar part of this terrific song. Since this particular guitar part involves the four basic guitar techniques (hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides and bends), you’ll find it a great way to start learning how to play solos.

This is a fun and easy to play arrangement of an old REM song, Driver Eight. We’ll look at incorporating a riff into the strumming and switching our strumming around with different patterns for different parts of a song.

After spending the past few lessons developing bass lines, let’s turn our attention to melody. This Neil Young classic lends itself nicely to learning how to integrate a song’s melody into your strumming. Plus we’ll continue our work with arpeggio and partial chord picking.

There’s something for everyone in this single guitar arrangement – walking bass lines, a mixture of strumming techniques and it’s a waltz!