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

Liner Notes: The Wallflowers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until next time…

Peace

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

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

Liner Notes: America

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

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

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

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

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

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

Picking And Choosing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Origin Of The Species

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sharing The Wealth

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

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

Until our next lesson…

Peace

More in this series

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

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

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

Liner Notes: America

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

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

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

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

The Absolute Basic Model

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tinkering

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

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

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

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

An symbol indicates an upstroke and a denotes a downstroke.

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

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

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

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

Filling In The Bottom (and sides!)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Is That Chord Really?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until next week…

Peace

More in this series

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

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

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

Liner Notes: Plain White T’s

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until our next lesson…

Peace

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

Dealing With The Obvious Question

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

Liner Notes: R.E.M.

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

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

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

Complete artist information for R.E.M.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strumming and Verses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anticipation, Melody Lines and the Pre-Chorus

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

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

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

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

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

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

The “Quick Change” Chorus and The Interlude

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until our next lesson…

Peace

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

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

Liner Notes: R.E.M.

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

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

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

Complete artist information for R.E.M.

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

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

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

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

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

The Intro and Verses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Chorus

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

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

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

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

The Bridge and The Outro

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until next lesson…

Peace

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

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

Liner Notes: R.E.M.

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

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

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

Complete artist information for R.E.M.

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

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

The Verses

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

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

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

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

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

The Introduction / Instrumental Break

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chorus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bridge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until our next lesson…

Peace

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

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:

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

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!

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

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

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:

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

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:

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

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:

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

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:

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

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:

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

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:

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

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:

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

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

Sailing to Philadelphia, from the 2000 album of the same name by Mark Knopfler, could be a poster child for this philosophy. At a casual first listen, it’s a wonderful fingerstyle acoustic guitar song punctuated with some typically tasteful (and tasty) electric guitar fills and solos that Knopfler makes sound so easy. But, as you’ll see and hear, even the relatively straightforward sounding acoustic guitar part is an adventure in itself!

So let’s get started, shall we?

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.

If you’ve never heard this song before, you should go look it up on YouTube and give it a listen. It’s a narrative between two people, Jeremiah Dixon and Charles Mason, surveyors from England who mapped out the Pennsylvania / Maryland border in the 1700′s. The original recording is done as a duet between Mark Knopfler (singing Dixon’s part) and James Taylor (who gets Mason’s lines).

Structurally speaking, Sailing to Philadelphia is a fairly standard song format. There’s a very short introduction of eight measures and then there’s a verse. Or two verses, if you prefer to think of it that way, since each vocalist gets an identical amount of time and space. Then there’s a chorus and a short solo over a repeat of the introduction chord progression. Then a second verse (or two verses) and chorus, although this second chorus is slightly elongated, and then the song fades out over an extended guitar solo played over repeated cycling of the introduction chord progression.

On the original recording, this song is in the key of A. And you’ll find this verified in that most of the Internet tabs you’ll find for it are like this one:

Some have taken the liberty of working it up in the key of G, putting a capo on the second fret in order to bring the chords back up to the original key of A:

And these chords whether in A or G work fine. But listening to the acoustic guitar you can hear that something is not quite spot on. There are additional notes added to these chords, slightly embellishing them. Listening carefully, I could hear that the highest strings never changed notes, creating a ringing and mesmerizing repeated use of B and C# (the B note played at the fourth fret of the G string because the B string was fretted at the second fret to produce C#) while the high E string rang open. So the actual notes and the chords, using the first four measures of the introduction as an example, were more like this:

At this point in the process, I was in a bit of a dilemma – thrilled at figuring out this much so far but more than a bit apprehensive that I’d run into a song I wasn’t going to be able to play. Using these chords in these fingerings was going to be awkward if not downright painful.

So I thought about using a capo and playing in G, but that created other issues:

Because the ringing notes in the G became A, B and D, it was impossible to get them all on adjoining strings in order to get that hypnotic effect the original recording had. Or at least it seemed impossible until I started to think about it some more. After all, someone else had done it on the original recording!

Getting ringing A and B notes in combination weren’t a problem. Getting B and D or A and D in combination also was simply a matter of playing at the right place. But getting all three notes required more than thought, it required retuning! By tuning my high E string down a full step to D (making the tuning, from low to high EADGBD), I could get all three notes ringing across the three high strings, just as I did in the key of A but without the contortionist chords. So the first four measures of the introduction could be played like this:

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

Definitely sounds like the original, no? But we’re still not totally out of the woods yet, as there are fingering issues that will have to be dealt with because of the new tuning, and I haven’t even mentioned the surprises coming up in the time signature (!), but I think we’re ready to go!

The Introduction

Truth be told, I could sit and play the first four bars of the introduction forever; it’s that captivating. There’s also a good reason to spend a lot of time on it right now – first, to work out how best to change between chords and second, to get comfortable with the finger picking pattern. It goes without saying that there are a lot of different ways to approach both of these and you may find solutions that work better for you than whatever I might suggest. So, bearing that in mind, here are some suggestions. First, concerning the actual picking, you might want to try the typical classical approach, using your thumb (labeled “T”) for the three low strings, your index finger (“i”) for the G string, your middle finger (“m”) for the B string and your ring finger (“a”) for the high E string, like this:

Again, I can’t stress enough that there are all sorts of ways of doing this. The most important thing is for you to be comfortable enough with whatever fingers you’re using so that you can get your picking as close to being on autopilot as possible. Other aspects of this song are going to be tricky enough and you want to have something you can easily use as a fallback point.

Concerning the fretboard fingering, and after more than (quite) a few runs through these chords, I decided to finger the Em11 with my index finger on the second fret of the G string and my middle finger on the second fret of the D string. Doing so (and I’m more than happy to admit this) feels more than a little awkward at first, but it also allows you to keep that finger in place throughout each chord change in the introduction. Speaking of which, here it is:

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

In all the Internet transcriptions or chord charts I saw on Sailing to Philadelphia, only three different chords are used in the introduction. But I kept hearing a fourth chord being used for the seventh measure, immediately before the E (or D if you’re using a capo) in the eighth. Using a Dadd9 seems to fit the bill. Also, you can finger it like a regular open position D chord in this tuning, which seems comforting somehow. Once there, adding the pinky to the fourth fret will get you the straight D chord.

I also want to note here that these two measures are the only place in the whole arrangement of the song that I’m still a little unhappy with. Repeated listening to the original recording convinces me that someone is playing what would be a low D note (actually E taking the capo into account) but there’s just no way of doing it without using “double Drop D” tuning, but then I have to have longer fingers than I do to make the other chords. But that’s okay.

Picking this section took a little getting used to as well. Essentially I switched to using only three fingers (thumb, index and middle) and then switched up a string halfway through the measure, like this:

Again, you may very well come up with other solutions for this section. Have fun and try out different ideas.

The Verse (or verses) and The Timing Quirks

The important thing, up to this point, is to have a basic picking pattern that you can fall back on. You don’t have to, and really, you shouldn’t feel compelled to play it exactly the same throughout the song. If you catch the high E string instead of the B string, for example, who’s going to know you didn’t mean to do that? All picking patterns should serve as a starting point and nothing more. In upcoming MP3 examples, you will hear me miss strings and catch others than what is written out in the tablature. That’s what makes playing organic.

And it becomes essential in Sailing to Philadelphia because the verses of the song go through multiple changes in time signature. I’ve written out the first half of the first verse with just the lyrics, chords and time signature changes for you:

You see that the verse starts with three full measures of Em11 and then switches to a measure of Gadd9 in 2 / 4 time signature. If you want to, think of it as a “half measure” of Gadd9. You certainly can pick it as such:

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

After this measure of 2 / 4 in Measure 4, you go into four pairs of measures that alternate between 4 / 4 and 3 / 4 time signatures. Measure 5 (C and Cmaj7 for two beats each) and Measure 6 (D6 for two beats and G for a single beat) are repeated twice:

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

The trickiest part of this is fingering the D6 chord at the start of Measure 6, but preparing for it in Measure 5 can make things easier. In Measure 5, you start with a C chord and then remove your index finger to make Cmaj7. You then slide your ring and middle fingers up two frets and place your index finger at the second fret of the G string to get the D6.

Some people will have trouble with this stretch, and there are other ways of trying to make this chord. First, and this requires a little bit of “re-thinking things,” you can make the initial C chord without the middle finger, using your pinky for the third fret of the A string and your ring finger for the second fret of the D string. This does take more thought than you might think because you’re just not used to making a C chord in this fashion. If you can get past that, then you should find sliding the pinky and ring finger up two frets and dropping the index finger onto the second fret of the G string won’t be as big a stretch to deal with.

Another option is to simply leave the G string open. This creates a D13 chord and will sound perfectly fine. And you can also use either the Dadd9 or the D that you learned in the Introduction as a viable substitute.

As mentioned earlier, and as I mention in the MP3 sound file, the main concern here is getting the changes in timing right, not on nailing every note in the picking pattern. Don’t hesitate to count out loud to help you get comfortable with the shifts in time signature.

The final change in time signature, another 4 / 4 to 3 / 4 shift in Measures 11 and 12 is much easier in terms of the chord change and is followed by the same Dadd9 to D that you learned in the last two measures of the Introduction:

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

Pardon the pun, but do take your time with this section. As discussed earlier, once you have the picking pattern in your fingers, it’s just a matter of changing it up according to both the chord changes and the time signatures involved. Here is a full run through the verse chords and timing:

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Remember, too, that this is technically half a verse. You want to run through the whole thing twice – once for Dixon and once for Mason, or vice versa.

The Chorus

All your work on getting comfortable with the finger picking pays off in the chorus as the pattern holds constant throughout. In the first four measures, you have a chord change every two beats, but the majority of the changes involve fingerings that you should have no trouble with:

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Using a different voicing of Bm7 (x20204) in the fifth measure bring out the melody line and brings some variety to your chord choices, but you can certainly stick with the first voicing (x20200) from the fourth measure if you find it easier to play.

The final C to D change, technically Cmaj7 to D13, uses the same slide of the fingers along the A and D strings from the 4 /4 to 3 / 4 measures of the verse. The second time the chorus is played, this ending is extended:

If you keep your ring finger set on the A string while playing this, you should find using your middle finger for the D string on the Cmaj7 and D13 chords and then changing to your index finger for the fifth fret of the D string on the Em7 chord relatively easy to do.

All right, then! Let’s put it all together, shall we?

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

This lesson on Sailing to Philadelphia is a little more involved than many of our Guitar Noise song lessons, but I hope that you make the time to try it out. It is a beautiful song and, once you have the picking and time signature changes down, will be a bit of music you will never grow tired of. And there are all sorts of experimenting and exploring you can do on your own to make it even more enjoyable!

And, 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

Sailing to Philadelphia – Mark Knopfler was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

If you’ve not been keeping up with your finger picking, it wouldn’t hurt to check out our two lessons on basic Travis finger style guitar, Let Your Fingers Do the Talking and especially Add a Pinch. You could also give yourself some added (and practical) practice by going through the recent lessons on Dust in the Wind or The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy) if you so desire.

So if you’re ready, then let’s get to it…

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.

Liner Notes: Bob Dylan

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

• If Not For You
• Tangled Up In Blue
• Simple Twist of Fate
• Lay Lady Lay

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

We already have two song lessons here at Guitar Noise from Blood on the Tracks, and I’d like to direct your attention to one of them, Simple Twist of Fate, because Buckets of Rain is also in open tuning. On the album, this song is played in open E tuning (although if memory serves me well, it’s slightly off (perhaps sharp?) on the original recording), but we’re going to use open D and you can find a discussion as to why in the aforementioned lesson. Also, all the MP3 files will be in open D tuning and not in open E.

And just in case you’ve forgotten how to get into open D tuning, we’ll take a minute to refresh your memory. In this tuning the strings are, from low to high, DADF#AD. There are, of course, all sorts of ways to go about changing from standard to open D, but you might find it helpful to use the following steps, provided that your guitar is already tuned in standard (EADGBE) tuning:

1. Tune the low E (sixth) string down to D by matching it against the D (fourth) string. The newly tuned string will be an octave lower.
2. Tune the high E (first) string down to D by matching it against the D (fourth) string. The newly tuned string will be an octave higher.
3. Tune the B (second) string down to A by matching it against the A (fifth) string. The newly tuned string will be an octave higher.
4. Tune the G (third) string down to F# by matching it against the F# note at the fourth fret of the D (fourth) string.

Okay, you’re all set. Here we go!

Stylistically and structurally, Buckets of Rain is kind of a throwback to those old acoustic blues and folk songs. You could make a good argument for it being “old timey” music. A lot of this comes from the arrangement – the guitar is essentially playing along with the melody line, really more like darting all around it so that the guitar lines and the melody lines resemble two birds playfully chasing each other on a spring morning. All the while the bass just harps away at two notes, both D, creating a solid rhythmic drone that the voice and guitar play over.

In essence, this song is simply three four-measure phrases, one for each line of the verse. There are a few musical interludes, but they are essentially just repeats of the three phrases, although there is one distinct variation of the first phrase, which we’ll run across a little later in this lesson.

Pretty much all the fingering you’re going to be doing will be on the first (high D) and third (F#) strings. There will be a brief use of the high A (second) string, but other than that, you’ll be focusing much of your fretting attention on just two strings.

The Bass Line

It’s that bass part that is actually one of the things that will make this lesson both easy and hard at the same time. You want it to (hopefully) stay steady throughout the entire song. Regardless of what else is going on, you’re going to use your thumb as a metronome, alternating on the beats between the low D (sixth) string and the “standard” or regular D of the open fourth string, like so:

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

As I said, this may seem way too easy right now, but trust me, there’ll be no end of chances to totally blow the bass once you get going on the “finger” part of the song. If you listen closely enough, you’ll even hear me drop the bass part for a beat or two in the final MP3 for this lesson. So take the time to get this into your fingers and practice keeping the beat steady and even. When you can play this smoothly and hold a conversation while keeping the beat, then you’re ready to move on. And this shouldn’t take all that long.

Remember, too, that this is your fallback point. If you totally lose it, then just drop everything else and get back to putting this bass line together. Think of it as your safety net, if you’d like.

The First Phrase

Once you have the bass down solid, the real fun begins. Here is what we’ll call “Phrase 1.” It needs to be four measures long so you have to repeat it twice. In the notation, I’ve tried to indicate all the bass notes (played with the thumb) via notes with downturned stems and the notes for your fingers with notes having upturned stems:

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Becoming more adept in playing syncopated guitar pieces, and being able to create swinging, syncopated rhythms on your own, is probably the main point of this entire lesson, so we might as well get right to it. First, get the fingers of your fretting hand in place. You’ll probably want to use your index finger on the first fret of the F# (third) string and your middle finger on the high D (first) string, although you certainly can use other fingerings if this feels uncomfortable.

On the first beat, you’re going to pinch the low D (sixth) and F# (third) strings with your thumb and index finger, respectively. On the “and” between the first and second beats, you’ll pick the high D (first) string with your middle finger. Some of you will feel more comfortable using your ring finger and that’s fine. Others will want to use only your index finger, no matter how complicated things get. That’s alright, too, as long as it doesn’t keep you from maintaining a steady beat.

Hang on to those notes that you’re fingering and let them ring, even as you hit the regular D (fourth) string with your thumb on the second beat and then slide both fingers two frets up the neck, coming to rest at the third fret of the F# (third) string and the fourth fret of the high D (first) string on the “and” between the second and third beats. Then finish up the measure with another hit of each of the bass notes – low D (sixth string) on the third beat and “middle” D (fourth string) on the last beat. Congratulations! You’ve gotten through the first measure.

Now get your fingers back to where they were at the start of the first measure to begin the second one. You’ll start out exactly the same for the first beat-and-a-half. This time, though, instead of sliding up the neck on the “and” between the first and second beat, you’ll perform a pull off on both strings, letting the open first and fourth strings ring out while you complete the third and fourth beats of the second measure.

And do yourself a favor – don’t think that this is something so easy that you should pick it up immediately. Most people don’t. Depending on just how far you’ve come in your guitar adventures, it’s probably going to take some concentrated effort and repetition to get this right. But, as with most of the material you’ve learned up to this point, it won’t take a great deal of time before you find yourself in a groove and just playing these two measures over and over again.

Incidentally, this is one of those occasions where playing something slowly may not be as helpful as it usually is. It’s very hard to get good slides and pull-offs at exaggeratedly slow tempos. One thing you can do while you’re getting your fretting fingers used to performing these functions is to pinch the notes in question on that “and” between the second and third beat. There’s no shame in doing so. Some people actually prefer the extra punch you get playing those notes with a bit more attack.

Those familiar with our lessons at Guitar Noise know by now that this is just the tip of the iceberg. When you have this initial pattern down as a template, you can come up with all sorts of other variations for it. Here’s one, for example:

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

In this variation, I forgo the two-fret slide and try to nail each note along the F# (third) string. This can be done in all sorts of ways – a series of small slides or sliding from the first fret to the second fret and then hammering-on to the third or even hammering on each of the first three frets, which would mean using the pinky to get the note on the fourth fret of the high D (first) string.

There’s also the use of more syncopation – playing the open F# (third) string on the “and” after the fourth beat and then doing a hammer-on to the first fret of that string, landing at the first beat of the next measure.

The point is that you should, once you’re comfortable with the “template,” play around and come up with things on your own. I’ll give you a little tip in this regard – sometimes just trying to work out a few measures like this you end up hitting a “wrong” note or missing a half beat or maybe performing a hammer-on because you didn’t get to a particular note fast enough. You might find you actually like how the “mistake” sounds and presto! It becomes a “variation!” It’s kind of cool how that can work out sometimes.

The Second Phrase

The second measure of what I call “Phrase 2″ is probably the trickiest part of the whole lesson. Take a look and listen before we get started:

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Starting out with good fingering here will help you immensely with performing the whole phrase. Most of you should feel most comfortable beginning the first measure with your index finger on the first fret of the F# (third) string and your middle finger on the second fret of the high A (second) string, and you certainly already know that these fingerings are simply suggestions. Feel free to do otherwise. However you decide to finger these frets, you should find the first measure of this phrase mostly harmless, as the saying goes.

Using the suggested fingering frees up your ring finger to perform the pull-offs and hammer-ons involving the high D (first) string that take place in the second measure.

Unlike the first phrase, you should probably go at this second one, at least this second measure of it, at a deliberately slow pace in order to get the timing under your belt. You want the combination hammer-on / pull-off on the third beat to be exactly as written – two sixteenth notes and one eighth note – and not play it as a triplet. It’s not that you can’t play it that way, but rather that you will derail your sense of timing if you do play it as a triplet.

You want to make certain that the last note of this second measure, the F# created by the pull-off on the third string at the last half of the fourth beat, rings out through the start of the following measure. That’s why it appears in parenthesis in Measure 3.

On the MP3 example that accompanies “Phrase 2,” you’ll hear this phrase done twice. The second time I added a small variation by playing a hammer-on to the second fret of the high A (second) string. The timing of that would be just like the hammer-on / pull-off combo we just discussed. This would mean hitting the open high D (first) string right on the second beat at the same time your thumb is hitting the middle D (fourth) string for the bass note.

And it goes without saying that you can come up with any number of variations for this phrase, too.

The Third Phrase

The third phrase, “Phrase 3″ in the notation / tablature examples, sounds like it came straight from any number of blues or old folk tunes. And it’s a great lick to have at your beck and call:

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

And while it’s a little on the tricky side, this isn’t anything you can’t handle, especially after what you’ve managed to do so far! The real trick is in making the slides very deliberate.

For starters, take advantage of the fact that the second phrase ended with a complete measure of not needing to have any fretted notes (isn’t it great how some things just work out this way? It’s almost as if it was planned or something!), which gives you more than enough time to move your fingers up the neck and in position.

Probably the simplest way to finger this is to have your index finger set at the seventh fret of the F# (third) string and your middle finger on the seventh fret of the high D (first) string. On the first beat, you’ll again pinch the low D (sixth) and F# strings and then pluck the high D (first) string on the “and” between the first and second beat. Again, keep your fingers on the strings and let them ring.

You’ll begin the second beat in the usual way, hitting the middle D (fourth) string with your thumb and then use a finger (probably the index) to pick the F# string on the “and” between the second and third beat. After you’ve picked that note, slide your index finger down to the fifth fret of the same string. This slide has to be in time with the picking of your thumb so that you land on that fifth fret at the same moment (or as close to it as humanly possible) that your thumb picks the low D (sixth) string at the start of the third beat.

Also, be sure your index finger comes along with you and is sitting at the fifth fret of the high D (first) string. You don’t have to, and probably don’t want to, slide hard enough to make a note. Just kind of have the middle finger come along for the ride. Because then, on the “and” between the third and fourth beat, you want to play that note on the fifth fret of the high D, right where your middle finger should be sitting.

You’ll repeat this process two more times. The next slide occurs right after striking the fifth fret of the F# string again on the “and” after the fourth beat of the first measure. You want to get to the third fret of that string at the first beat of the second measure (and my apologies that the music notation does not seem to want to do this for me and I had to put it in the second measure instead of “between” them!). Here, during this particular slide, some of you might find it easier to switch off of your middle finger and let the ring finger take over fretting duties on the high D (first) string, handling the fourth fret in this instance.

There’s one last slide, from the third fret of the F# (third) string to the first fret of that same string that occurs on the “and” between the second and third beat of the second measure. And since the note being played on the high D (first) string is on the second fret, keeping the ring finger in position seems the easiest way to handle this. On the last half of the fourth beat, you’ll do another double pull-off to sound the open first and third strings and let those two notes run over into the following measure (again, that’s why they’re in parentheses).

Making sure that your slides are more like eighth notes and less like grace notes is important, so it won’t hurt (and never does) to count out loud in order to help yourself be in the right place at the right time.

As far as variations go, you probably aren’t going to want to mess too much with this particular phrase, especially if you’re singing and playing at the same time! But you’ve ample space during the last two measures to add a personal touch or two.

The “Interlude” Phrase

As mentioned earlier, Buckets of Rain is pretty much these twelve measures repeated over and over and over and over again. They are played, just the way we’ve done, first as an introduction and then they serve as the structure of the verses. And they are played as an interlude between the five verses of the song. And they also serve as an outro, played after the fifth verse.

Obviously, one could very easily be bored with this arrangement. Dylan solved this by coming up with an “interlude verse” that begins with a different take on “Phrase 1″ and it goes like this:

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

This is played much like the first phrase, only the fingered notes and sliding are much further up the neck and, owing to the use of the C note at the tenth fret of the high D (first) string, give the phrase a strong blues-y feel.

Sliding this high up on the neck, particularly on an acoustic guitar, offers plenty of challenges. Many of you may prefer plucking the note at the twelfth fret of the high D (first) string with your middle or ring finger to give it a bit more of an attack. You’ll definitely hear me do that in the MP3 files – maybe a little overboard, in fact!

Speaking of which, let’s put the whole thing together, shall we? On the original recording the outro consists of a “regular verse” followed by the “interlude verse.” I like to add one last repetition of Phrase 3 for good measure.

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

I hope you enjoyed this truly fun song and managed to work out a little more concerning syncopation in fingerstyle guitar work. Remember that if you want to be closer to the actual recording, you want to play this with a capo on the second fret, which will move you up from open D to open E tuning.

And, 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

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

And maybe that was the whole problem about using it as a beginners’ lesson. To me it seemed a little redundant. You’ve already learned the picking pattern, so just work out the chord changes and presto! Dust in the wind! Didn’t seem like there’d be much to teach.

I know you get tired of me writing this, but the point of any of the song lessons at Guitar Noise is not to teach you to play that particular song. Well, it is, but not really. What we want to do with our lessons is give you techniques and ideas and arrangements that you can then use with other songs you play. Learning the song is just the very tip of the iceberg, if you’ll pardon the cliché.

So I thought about Dust some more, especially when I got an email from a GN Forum member wondering why, even with the chords and the correct picking pattern, the song still “didn’t sound right.” And I looked at the differences between the original recording and the arrangement I’ve developed over time and I realized that my arrangement simply incorporates a bit more of the melody into the picking pattern. That’s something worth discussion. So here we are.

And because some of what we’re discussing is going to require a bit more thought and practice on your part, I decided to put this lesson in the “Intermediates” section, mostly because of the feedback I’m sure I’m going to get should I risk sticking it into the “Easy Songs for Beginners.” But like most of these “Intermediate” song lessons, it’s more about the work that you’re willing to put into it than about whether or not it’s actually harder. Give it a go and 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.

Same Old Song (Pattern)

As mentioned, the truth of the matter is that if you have gotten the “pinch pattern” used in Example 2 of the Add a Pinch lesson, then you have this song down cold because, with one or two small exceptions, virtually everything else in the song uses this pinch/picking pattern.

In terms of structure, Dust is very simple. There’s an introduction (that you’ve pretty much already learned to play if you’ve gone through the entire Add a Pinch lesson), a verse and a chorus, a second verse and chorus, a brief instrumental interlude, a final verse and chorus and then a short outro that fades out as the song ends.

As mentioned, we covered about ninety-eight point seven six seven percent of the intro in the Add a Pinch tutorial. The only thing missing is the “pickup,” which is a slight change of pattern at the very end of the introduction that carries us into the first verse. We would tack this change onto the very end of “Example 7″ from the Add a Pinch lesson:

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We’ve run into this particular use of chords in numerous lessons here at Guitar Noise, Blackbird being the first one that springs to mind. And speaking of Blackbird, you’ll notice that I took the liberty of adding a slight variation to this part (“Example 1A”) that uses the A and G notes on the G string to create a fuller pattern and it sounds a bit like Blackbird, no? My thought in adding this is that sometimes it’s hard to switch from the original pattern and give up on the sixteenth notes we’ve been using. So if you can’t keep your fingers from moving, why not just add an extra string to the pattern?

There are a lot of ways to finger the G/B – the important thing to remember is that, at the heart of all of this, you are simply making a slight detour in an Am to C chord change. You’re probably making the Am chord in the “normal” open position manner, that is, your index finger is on the first fret of the B string, your ring finger is on the second fret of the G and your middle finger is on the second fret of the D. Keeping this end goal of getting to a C chord in mind, you might find the best way to play the G/B is to shift your middle finger from the second fret of the D string to the second fret of the A and to use your pinky to get the D note at the third fret of the B string. Some people feel more comfortable shifting all the fingers and play the G/B with the index finger on the A string and the ring finger on the B string, but that seems like a lot of unnecessary movement. Plus, we’ll see that this G/B chord is going to pop up again several times, so it might be beneficial to feel comfortable with a couple of different fingerings.

So let’s try out the whole intro before getting into the verse, shall we?

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The verse consists of four measures that are then repeated, with a slight variation between the fourth measure and the eighth measure:

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Now, while this arrangement is pretty much taken directly from the guitar part of the original recording, I have to admit I don’t like it much for a single guitar performance. We go from having the guitar using the “pinch” technique to shadow the melody in the first line, only to lose it when we switch to the third measure. So, with your permission, I’d like to suggest that we try out a little alteration in the chording that will allow us to track the melody all the way through:

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The one “little alteration” simply means substituting Dm for Dm7. Granted, that’s not the most challenging of tasks, but it does free you up to play along with the melody line for these two measures of the verse. Use your pinky to pull off from the G note (third fret of the high E (sixth) string) to the F note at the first fret. Your pinky can then cover the D note at the third fret of the B string later in the measure. That is, if you’re like me and use your pinky to make a Dm chord. If not, then you should have even less trouble with it.

I deliberately give the melody a bit of a “hiccup” when returning to the Am chord in the next measure in order to make the finger picking easier. That’s a bit of artistic license on my part. Playing the fourth and eighth measures as outlined in Example 3 and Example 3A will certainly work as well.

All We Are…

Having covered the introduction and the verses, let’s turn our attention to the chorus. As with our verse, we can do it straight or go with a more melodic approach. Let’s look at each:

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Essentially, the chorus consists of a repeated two-measure chord progression of D (first two beats of first measure), G (second two beats of the first measure) and Am (second measure). Each cycle through the progression corresponds to one singing of “…dust in the wind…” To make the chord progression more interesting, Kerry Livgren (who wrote the song) used a walking bass line, starting with F# (second fret of the low E (sixth) string) played on the D chord (actually making it D/F#), which goes to G for the G chord, A for the Am chord and then back to G during the last two beats of Am, which technically makes the chord an Am7 or Am/G or even Am7/G depending on your mood when writing it out. I tend to use Am7/G (302010) simply because it’s easier to finger the G note in the bass with the ring finger rather than the pinky. If you’re okay with the stretch then by all means use the full Am/G (302210) fingering.

This pattern is, as mentioned, repeated, with a (yes, you guessed!) slight variation on the last measure, which also includes the “pick up” back into the verse. We could get truly annoying and call it a “turnaround,” but why make more trouble for ourselves at this point?

Adding touches of the melody to the chorus is easy to start with. The initial melody note is D (third fret of the B string), which we’re pinching in the original on the D chord. To keep this note when we change to G, just use a five-string G chord voicing (32003x), especially since you won’t be hitting the high E (first) string with your picking pattern.

I also drop out all of the background in the last beat of the first measure, focusing solely on the two melody notes of C and B (first fret of B string and open B string respectively). This is primarily a matter of making things simpler, but it also brings a moment of relative emptiness to the picking pattern, which has been going non-stop since the introduction. Sometimes a little touch like this can catch your listeners’ attention.

When we get to the Am chord, the melody note is the A at the second fret of the G string. You really want to nail this one good on the first beat as you’ll be covering it over with the same note an instant later in the picking pattern. Hit is hard first and then lightly the second time. And yes, that takes a little practice.

The second time through the progression, we add more D notes (“…all we are is…”) by either using two fingers to pick the B and G strings or by “sweeping” one finger across the two strings in an upward movement. In the MP3 example you can hear me use the latter technique.

Although I do like adding the melody line (or at least parts of it) to both the verse and chorus, I found that I also liked the B to C hammer-on on the B string in the choruses. So I tried to include that in the last measure of the chorus in this arrangement. Over time, it developed into the little flourish that I tabbed out for you in the last example.

This would probably be a good place to mention that the very last solo (after the third verse and just before the outro) is twice as long. In other words, it cycles through the chord changes four times.

Interlude and Outro

Having dealt with the intro, verse and chorus, we now have the interlude and outro to contend with. Except for one slight hiccup, the interlude is still the same basic picking pattern we’ve used all along. The only thing is that we now have some more interesting chord voices to work with:

You definitely want to take a few moments and simple work through the chord changes before working the picking pattern with them. Chances are likely you’ll use your index and ring fingers for most of the work, but I’d like to suggest using your pinky instead of the ring finger for the two F(#11) chords, mostly because it makes the switch from the first on to the second one easier, as you’ll see in a moment.

First, though, I should mention that this chord pattern for the interlude actually starts on the final measure of the second chorus. When you hit the word “wind” the second time around, you start in with the interlude chords, using the picking pattern you’ll see in a moment. The vocals continue (mostly going “oh oh oh”) the first time through the progression and then it plays two additional times while the strings play the instrumental break.

Now let’s look at that little hiccup I mentioned. You’ll find it at the very end of the first measure:

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You see, in Example 6, that there’s a pull off between the seventh and fifth frets of the D string. This actually isn’t that hard to accomplish with a little practice. But here is where a (very) little bit of fretboard knowledge can come in handy. Even if you rely on tablature to do everything for you, you might remember somewhere in the back of your mind that the fifth fret of the D string is G, same as the open G string. That’s one way to tune your guitar. So you can, if you’d like, simply open up the G string as I do in Example 6A to get the very same notes. I also like the sound of the ringing notes of the open strings, so I tend to use this way of playing the interlude on occasion. And, as you’ve hopefully heard in the last MP3 file, both ways sound perfectly fine.

Finally, we get to the outro. As I mentioned earlier, the final chorus is repeated twice and when you get to the very last word (“wind”) you begin the outro pattern that you’ll see in Example 7.

This is the only major deviation from the pinching/picking pattern used throughout the song, so you may want to take this very slowly, piece by piece. Start with using just your thumb on the A and D string to get yourself set and steady in the rhythm and then work on adding the higher strings:

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

Again, I can’t stress enough to work through this last part slowly and deliberately. With a little concentrated effort and a little more practice, you should be able to manage this change in pattern. If, however, you find yourself totally at a loss, then use the intro as your outro. Not many people will even notice the difference.

Alright then, here’s the whole package:

I deliberately didn’t include a “playing all the parts” MP3 for this. If you’ve gone through this lesson carefully, you really don’t need it. What’s more important is for you to play it through as best you can. Playing a pattern like this throughout an entire song is not easy, which is why you want to come up with little places of your own to change things up a bit. It also makes things more interesting for your listeners when they get to hear you play it instead of Kansas.

I hope you enjoyed this little outing and find ways to work in melody lines to other songs you already play or are in the process of learning. At the very least, being able to add a bit of melody to your picking can help you provide short leads when you’re performing a solo guitar act and don’t want to sound like you’ve lost your band!

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

Dust In The Wind – Kansas 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 there’s also a matter of what’s important in playing a song. If you’re going to be performing a song in a single-guitar arrangement, that means you have to be comfortable singing and playing. Do you really want to add “playing it exactly like the recording” to that agenda? While it may be vital for some songs (although nowhere near as vital as one might think), for the most part you can more than get by simply playing a song in the general style or “flavor” as the original. More on that in a moment…

One additional short note before we get going, and it’s the same one I gave at the start of the last lesson (Feelin’ Groovy): while we’ve put this lesson in with the “Songs for Intermediates,” it is certainly within the capabilities of a beginner who’s not shy of a bit of practice. If anything, it will hopefully encourage some of you not to be skittish when it comes to just ad-libbing a rhythm part.

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

To assist us in this examination of “how much of the original song do we really need” is the classic Who song, Behind Blue Eyes. And we have to deal with this question right from the very first note, so before we get into the structure and chords and everything else, let’s use the introduction as a way to all get on the same page.

Think about this: the first two measures of Behind Blue Eyes are an Esus4 (022200) arpeggio in sixteenth notes. That’s thirty-two sixteenth notes strung together. Even if we all agree on nailing the first note, the E of the open low E (sixth) string, that gives us thirty-one chances to screw up the beginning of the song!

More important – Do you think that Pete Townsend sat down and deliberately wrote out exactly what note should be played first, second, third, etc.,? Not very likely! He probably turned on the recorder and then “got up his guitar and played.” The second take he played he may have kept certain notes here and there but, in all probability, didn’t get it exactly the same. He might have – artists all have their own individual footprints, little stylistic touches that come from their own personal experiences in playing.

If you think of the sheer number of variations possible, just playing two measures of sixteenth notes, it’s kind of mind boggling. And that’s not even taking into account that you don’t have to play nothing but sixteenth notes. Notice in the following “Example 1B” the cool effect by tying together one pair of sixteenth notes into an eighth note. That gives the music a little breathing space and makes it sound even more natural.

So here, just to give you a concrete, audible idea of what we’ve been talking about, are three examples: first, the “note for note” recording, and then two variations that were simply put together in the same basic style, or “flavor” of the original:

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Now you can argue until doomsday as to which sounds “best,” but the bottom line is that anyone listening to you play any of these will immediately say, “Hey! That’s Behind Blue Eyes, isn’t it? I love that song!” And that’s all you’re looking for, unless your day job is being the guitarist in a Who tribute band (and wouldn’t “Who Are We?” be a great name for such a band?).

To repeat a point I can’t stress enough – if you’re playing a song and your brain is on overload because it’s trying to make sure every note is correct, you’re going to be way too tense to play.

But what if I just showed you an Esus4 chord and asked you to play an arpeggio for two measures? You’d have absolutely no trouble with that. You probably could sit right down and start playing and we’d be off on making music out of this song. And that’s what we want – to play a song. Any song is simply a bunch of chords and, for the most part, you can play those chords in all sorts of ways and styles.

Speaking of songs being a bunch of chords, let’s take a look at the structure of today’s song in question. Behind Blue Eyes begins with the two-measure introduction that we’ve just seen and listened to.

After that, we’ve got two verses. Each verse can be divided into an “A” section (the “no one knows what it’s like…” part), and a “B” section (which begins with the line “….but my dreams they aren’t as empty…”). The “A” section consists of four measures and the chords move from Em to G (first measure) to D (second measure) to Cadd9 (third measure) to Asus4 (fourth measure). Since we’ve a long time on the D, embellishing that chord by switching to a Dsus4 and back during the second half of the second measure is a nice touch. Using Cadd9 (x32030) sounds very cool and is a good example of the use of sustained notes that we’ve discussed in other song lessons, as well as in a Guitar Column all on its own. So here is a template of arpeggios to use as a starting point:

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What I didn’t do for this particular example is give you a number of variations already written out for you to try. Why? Well, that should seem fairly obvious at this point – there are so many different ones you can come up with yourself that you don’t really need my help with it. Trust your instincts and try out some on your own. The only guideline you need is to remember that the Em changes to G at the third beat of the second measure.

Now you may ask, “What about the D and Dsus4 change in the second measure of this section?” And my answer would be that you can fiddle around with that change. It’s all based on the D chord and slight variations will not hurt anything, even if you’re singing and playing at the same time because you’re not singing on the last two beats of this measure. Cool how that works out, isn’t it?

A few things that are important to note here – first, in all likelihood, this isn’t just going to happen on the first try. It might! But even if it does, chances are that you won’t think it sounds good because “it’s not the same as on the record.” Or you may not think it sounds good just because it’s you that’s playing it! We are, as a rule, not our own best judges. But remember that this is just background. It’s just chord arpeggios that happen while the lyrics are being sung. And whether we want to admit it or not, the lyrics are the important part of the song here. The guitar part is just part of the delivery service.

That doesn’t mean it can’t be stunning and stellar. It just means that we should play our part with the lyric in mind, keeping our playing, if you’ll pardon the pun, in harmony with the spirit of the song. Hopefully when you listen to the final MP3 in this lesson, you’ll have an understanding for this.

The other important thing to mention is that, in spite of yourself, you will find yourself changing what you do as you improve as a guitarist. You’ll have better command of your crosspicking, of your hammer-on and pull-off techniques. And, as silly as it may sound, this is another compelling reason to not be hung up on playing things exactly like a recording. The guitarist you’re intent on copying (hopefully) did not stop learning and growing as a musician after recording a song and undoubtedly began to incorporate new techniques and ideas into the old songs he or she played. That’s a natural part of evolving as an artist. Why wouldn’t you want to do the same?

The ability to create your own part becomes more interesting in the “B” section of the verse. Usually a person might be tempted to strictly strum this part, but why not add some picking and fills, too?

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Yes, again I didn’t write out anything but a basic template for you here. And again, that’s the point. Even a relative beginner is capable of putting together a rhythm that will work for this. Let the music talk to your senses and then channel it out through your guitar.

If you’re someone who’s been following along with the series of Guitar Noise Podcasts, I suspect you’re having a lot of fun with this. If you’re someone who’s always needed to have each and every note of music tabbed out, then this is your chance to branch out and see that you can create music, too. Have fun with it.

After the first two verses, we then reach a brief instrumental interlude, followed by the “Bridge” section (“…when my fist clenches crack it open…”). The basic rhythm pattern for both these parts is essentially the same and here it is:

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I want to note that while many Internet (and book) transcriptions and arrangements will use an E5 (or E power chord) here, I think that the E major chord is a better choice. First off, and this is especially true if you’re a beginner, you might have an easier time with this section playing all open position chords. You can easily avoid the full Bm barre chord by playing it with any of these options:

The last example (“Bm with E”) makes use of the open high E (first) string as a drone, something that Pete Townsend did on a regular basis. And since it’s the same shape as our standard open position E major chord, it’s relatively easy to move it from one place on the neck to the other.

It’s this ease, in fact, that helped me come up with a way to “borrow” the electric guitar lead line from the original recording and put it into our single guitar arrangement. On the original, the electric lead guitar is bending the F# note at the eleventh fret of the G string up to a G# (same sound as the thirteenth fret) while using the E and B notes at the twelfth frets of the first two strings as drones. It’s this sounding of the G# by the electric guitar, by the way, that gives us the true go-ahead to play an E major chord. After all, it’s the G# that makes it a E major and not just an E5.

With a little ingenuity, we can recreate the flavor of the electric guitar part, only an octave lower than the original, with our arrangement:

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Here we’re going to start by hitting the open low E (sixth) string on the first half of the first beat and let it ring throughout. This gives us a good “oomph” to the bass and helps cover up the fact that we’re not playing a full chord until the end of the measure!

While hitting this open note, get your fingers in position. Put your middle finger on the G note (fifth fret of the D string) and your index finger on the fourth fret of the G string, which is the same note as the open B string. This is insurance. Even though it’s not in the notation, when I hit the first two open strings later in the measure, I will also catch this note at the fourth fret of the G string, so that the B note is doubled. The chance of hitting the open G by accident is pretty good and that’s the note I least want to hear!

After I hit the G note at the fifth fret of the D string, I bend it up a half-step to G#, giving me, along with the ringing low E string, two thirds of an E chord. Then I make a short upstroke on the first two strings (both open) to flesh out the rest of the E chord. This all takes a little practice, but it’s pretty easy (especially since we’re only worried about a half-bend instead of the full bend of the original electric guitar part) and definitely fills things out for a single guitar arrangement.

The rest of the interlude uses a combination of chords and arpeggios. You’ll notice that using the “Bm with E” makes for very easy fingering. I also like the sound of the Asus2 here, but you can certainly go with a regular A for the third chord if you prefer.

This “Instrumental Interlude” is played three times – once at the start of the Bridge, once in the middle and then again at the end. In the final MP3 of this lesson, you’ll hear me use this “borrowed electric guitar part” for the first and third Interludes while using the “Basic Strum,” from Example 4, for the middle one.

The final Instrumental Interlude ends with what might be considered a “turnaround,” a short group of chords designed to get us ready for the Outro, which is a repeat of the very first line of the song (one pass through the “Section A” part of the Verse).

This “turnaround” is a typical Pete Townsend chording approach, and I’ve taken the liberty of adding another of his “footprints” to it:

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You can hear that while the initial B chord is ringing, I’m adding a drone of the B note in the bass (second fret of the A string). This is for two reasons – first (and most obvious), to keep time and to also keep the song driven. Totally dropping out seems way too abrupt and since I don’t have a bass or drummer to maintain the momentum it only makes sense to do it myself. Second, I think it sounds cool.

I should note that instead of playing the last eighth note of B in the second measure, using a sixteenth note triplet for that half beat will sound very cool, too.

After hitting the final B chord, we open up the A string in order to get “B/A” and lower the song’s dynamic by switching to an arpeggio of this chord. That leads us to playing our arpeggios throughout the Outro, until using a final Asus2 chord to close the song.

Okay, then, let’s put things together and see how it goes:

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As always, I hope that you’ve had fun with this lesson and that you take to heart the idea that it’s more than okay to come up with a great arrangement on your own instead of relying on the “note for note” tablature. For a song like this one, the chances are very good that what you come up with will work just as well as the original. The object is to play to your personal strengths and to have your arrangement grow and develop just as you are going to do as a guitarist.

So try things out and see how you do!

And, as always, until our next lesson…

Peace

Behind Blue Eyes – The Who was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

One additional short note of introduction: while we’ve labeled this lesson a “Song for Intermediates,” it is certainly within the capabilities of a beginner who’s not shy of a bit of practice. Or of learning a few things! I think that covers it, so let’s get tripping down the cobblestones, if you will…

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.

Today’s lesson is The 59th Street Bridge Song, a Paul Simon piece from back in the days of Simon and Garfunkel, probably better know to the general populace as Feelin’ Groovy. The song itself is a repeated pattern of three chords, although I’m sure we can, if you’re so inclined, spend some time arguing that there are four chords. Be that as it may, once you get a handle on it, you’ll find it actually easy and quite fun to play. We’re going to make a quick study of the structure, get the basic picking pattern in hand (and fingers) that will allow us to perform a ‘no-frills” version (which is, again, relatively easy even for beginners to play) and then add a few touches to make things a bit more interesting.

And I have to apologize in advance. When I first started preparing this lesson, I really got caught up in the “adding a few touches” stage, so much so that this lesson initially ended up being all over the place! So I’ve pared it down (quite) a bit to make things more manageable. Sorry for both my indulgence and the delay it caused in getting this lesson to you.

Let’s also take a moment to go over things we go over all the time. First, this lesson is, as are all the Guitar Noise song lessons, an arrangement of this particular song. It’s not a transcription from the actual recording. If anything, it’s taken from numerous recordings of song, from the original studio recording (off the Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme album) to the various live versions from albums like Simon & Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits and Concert in Central Park. And there are a few touches of my own that have developed from playing this song for a long time.

Second, not having a recording lying around the house at the time I’m writing this (all my Simon and Garfunkel CDs currently in the hands of students), you’ll have to rely on my memory a bit in terms of things like the key of the song. If I remember correctly, the original studio version is in Bb. So we’ll get out our trusty capos, put them on the third fret and play like we’re in the key of G. To make our lives easier, I’m going to write out all the notation and guitar tablature as if we’re playing the song in the key of G. But all the MP3 sound files will be played with a capo on the third fret. So, any of you who don’t read this paragraph and write me to say the MP3 files don’t match the tablature examples will end up reading this paragraph at some point as I’m very likely to copy it out of the text and email it back to you. So let’s pretend you did read it the first time and simply forgot, okay?

The Bass Line

At the heart of Feelin’ Groovy is, big surprise coming here, a simple descending walking bass line, running from C down the G major scale to G.

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You want to think of this bass line as your fallback, or default, position. In other words, you really, really want to get this into your brain and your fingers. I should say your thumb, because I want you to try to only use your thumb to play this bass line. Your thumb is actually going to serve as your metronome, keeping a steady “one, two, three, four” beat going for you.

So any time you happen to get lost, remember that your thumb playing this descending bass line is the thread that goes through the entire song, over and over and over and over again. It should give you a bit of security. Remember that no matter how complicated we try to make our playing as we progress through the lesson, this is where you come back to when things get wonky.

In fact, you can play the whole song just using this bass line with a simple strumming pattern, like this:

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This is probably a good time to talk about “swing eighths,” no? We’ve actually discussed this before, all the way back in our lesson on the “blues shuffle” rhythm, Before You Accuse Me.

Swing eighths, just like the blues shuffle rhythm, is based on triplets, but the middle note of each triplet is left out, leaving you with the following pattern:

Often times if you are reading this in a book, the author will write it out as a pair of eighth notes and have a remark somewhere on the page that a pair of eighth notes equals one of these triplet sets we’ve just spelled out (it is much easier than writing it out over and over (and over and over) again!).

If you want more discussion on swing eighths, not to mention audio examples (since folks seem to like a bit of an audio tutorial), then go to the Guitar Noise Podcast page and give Podcast #13, “Getting Into Swing,” a listen. Okay, back to our regularly scheduled program…

Looking at our strumming pattern once more, you’ll note that we’ve got three chords, C, G and Am7. We can also say that there’s a fourth chord, “G/B,” if we want to be nitpicky or we can say that “G/B” is simply a different voicing of G so it’s essentially the same chord. Some folks seriously love to argue about these things, but for now we’re going to press ahead. The important thing is to get comfortable making the changes between these chords. The whole song, as I’ve already mentioned, just repeats this chord progression over and over, so it’s essential that you feel up to the task.

Once you have, and assuming that you’ve also gotten your descending bass line down and understand a bit about swing eighths, and if you’re willing to work (a bit) on your finger picking, you truly have everything needed to play this song. Let’s walk though our “basic Travis style” pattern step by step:

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To make matters even simpler, we’re going to break this down into two mini-patterns. Each pattern will last for two beats. Our first mini-pattern will cover the first two beats of the first measure and then our second mini-pattern will hold for the rest of the way. Are you with me so far?

The first mini-pattern is incredibly easy. On the first beat, just hit the C note (third fret of the A string) with your thumb. On the second beat, hit it again while pinching the open high E (first) string with a finger. That’s all there is to it.

Our second mini-pattern, which begins on the third beat of the first measure, is slightly more involved but no less easy. We want to form a different voicing of “G/B” than we had in our earlier example. I’m also going to make a fingering suggestion that you may not like, but let’s try it anyway. Since you probably used your ring finger to get the C note at the third fret of the A string, use your middle finger to fret the B note at the second fret of the same string. At the same time, use your pinky to fret the D note at the third fret of the B string. Now pinch the A and B strings (with fingers in place) on the third beat and then strike the open G string with a finger on the second half of the third beat. Finally, follow that with another strike of the thumb on the A string (middle finger still on the second fret) for the fourth beat.

This “pinch / open G string / bass note” is the second mini-pattern. You’re going to use it again on, starting with the first beat of the second measure. This time, though, the pinch is with the open A string and the B string, where you’ve placed your index finger on the first fret to get the C note there. The final repetition of the second mini-pattern begins on the third beat of the second measure, where the pinch is performed using the third fret of the low E (sixth) string, played with either the middle or ring finger, and the open B string.

I can’t stress this enough: Take the time now to get this into your system. Once you find you’re handling things nicely, take a stab at Example 3A, which incorporates a short bass run as a “turnaround” to get us from the G back to the C that sends us through the pattern again. This ascending walking bass line might be familiar to many of you, especially since it’s taken straight from the You Are My Sunshine lesson here at Guitar Noise. It’s a classic example of how you sometimes have to tailor your bass lines to fit the timing involved to make them.

Another thing that’s very cool to notice is that if you get confident with your fingerings, you can actually play all of this only using one or two fingers at a time. You only need one finger for the C, Am7 and final G chord and two to play the G/B. That’s kind of nice!

Alright then, now that you’ve got the basic package down, you’re ready to spice things up a bit. As mentioned more times than even I care to count, Feelin’ Groovy is essentially the same pattern played over and over. And if you’re the one playing it, you don’t want to get bored. You probably don’t want your listeners to get bored either. So it’s a great idea to have some “slight variations” in hand to play when you want to mix things up a bit.

You should notice in the following examples that I’ve already made some modifications to the “basic” pattern from Examples 3 and 3A. Also, you will probably hear some variations in the MP3 sound files that may not always be reflected in the notation and tablature. Don’t panic about that. It’s just that when I’m recording (or playing for that matter) I sometimes get on automatic pilot and just do things. That’s ultimately what we want you to be able to do, too.

In the following example, we use the technique of anticipation:

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“Anticipation,” in case you’ve either forgotten or simply think it’s a song about ketchup, is when we come to a chord change at a slightly different time, usually a half-bear earlier than we might think the change would happen. Here, we get to the final G chord at the second half of the second beat in the second measure instead of at the third as we’d been doing in our previous examples. This is a technique you’ll hear in a lot of music; it gives the impression that the music is speeding up when the truth is that it’s not. We’re tricking our ears. Creating rhythmic tension, if you will.

We can also take some basic guitar techniques and add them to the mix. Let’s keep working on the anticipation, but add a slide to it and then tack on the turnaround from Example 3A:

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Another thing you can do, depending on how you feel about your finger-style technique, is add a few more notes to the basic Travis pattern, like this:

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The thing to remember here is to keep your thumb solely focused on the bass line. Have your fingers do the work on all the other strings. Since the extra notes we’re throwing into the pattern in Examples 6 and 6A are all G notes with the open string, then you might want to dedicate that string to the index finger and use your middle finger for the high E (first) and B strings. Another option would be to use your ring finger on the high E (first) string and your middle finger on the B, again reserving your index finger for the open G.

Assuming that many of you have read some of my other song lessons, you know I’m big on chord melodies, or at least incorporating the melody line (or parts of it) into a song arrangement. And that’s certainly something we can do here:

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Since there are already bits of the melody present in our basic Travis pattern, we only have to make a few adjustments in the second measure to bring out a few more. Example 7A, which you would want to use on the first and third lines of the verses, involves the use of a hammer-on (I suggest the ring finger or pinky, depending on what finger you have on the low E (sixth) string) to get the D note at the third fret of the B string.

In the second line of the verse, the melody (again, relative to the capo) ends on a swing from G to D. We get the same thing in Example 7B by covering the first and second strings at the third fret. The easiest way to do this is by using your pinky and ring fingers, while the index or middle finger plays the bass note of G at the third fret of the low E (sixth) string.

You might think that the last line of the verse (the “…feelin’ groovy…” part) might be a bit tricky as it jumps up to a B and then G note. But if we remember that we can also make G chord up the neck using a D shape (check out the Guitar Column, Moving On Up if you’re a little rusty on this) at the seventh and eighth frets, as shown in Example 7C.

And just to make matters slightly more interesting, you can use natural harmonics as well for the closing melody notes in the last line, as we do in Example 7D.

You can, of course, mix and match these variations or even create more of your own. That’s the whole point. Just because the song is a repeated pattern, it doesn’t mean that you have to be stuck repeating it. Try out things and have fun!

One last thing to point out is that the last verse has a bit of tricky melody. The second and third lines (beginning with “…I’m dappled and drowsy…”) are, for the most part, quarter note triplets. This means that you are trying to put three notes evenly into two beats. If you’re going to be singing this and playing it at the same time, it might be easier to incorporate this new rhythm into your accompaniment:

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In the MP3 example, I do the whole verse to demonstrate how it all fits together. It’s a lot easier than it looks. Picture yourself as part of an “oom-pah” band and you’ll get the meter into your system very quickly. Also, it doesn’t hurt to sing along!

And speaking of singing, here’s a complete cheat sheet for you:

You may note, hopefully with not too much dismay, that I didn’t include an MP3 file of the complete song here. The whole point of this lesson is for you to try out different variations and combine them as you see fit. It’s not to copy me playing it.

And in case you’ve not caught on to that from my other lessons, let me make this as clear as possible – I want you to be your own guitarist, not my clone. Trust me, there are many, many guitar players a whole lot better than me to copy if that’s all you want to do. But I’d rather you had your own style. If I want to hear Paul Simon, I’ve got CDs. If I want to hear me, I’ll pick up the guitar and play. In these lessons, I’m here for you – to help and to suggest. You’re the one who’s going to be doing the playing.

As always, I hope that you’ve had fun with this lesson and that you come up with a great arrangement (or two or three) on your own. I look forward to hearing it!

So, until our next lesson…

Peace

The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy) 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 sometimes it’s also a matter of preference. I can remember ordering the sheet music for today’s lesson, Harry Chapin’s Cat’s in the Cradle, from the music store by my high school shortly after Thanksgiving in 1974. Having just taken up the guitar less than five months before, I was a little dismayed to (a) see that it was in the key of F and (b) had a lot of chords I wasn’t ready to deal with quite yet, such as Ab and Eb.

I was also taking music theory that year in high school, so it wasn’t all that long before I had transposed this song into the key of E, using a capo on the first fret so I could play along with it whenever I put on the album. My arrangement was awkward, but I was pretty happy with the fact that I’d managed to come up with one.

Flash forward a few years and I found myself sitting second row at a Harry Chapin solo performance and watch while he played his “big hit.” I made note of the fact that he placed his capo higher up on the neck and, the next morning, tried working out a new arrangement with the capo on the eighth fret and playing in the key of A. This definitely sounded better.

But it still wasn’t right to my ears. And the more I listened to the recording (and to Chapin’s live recording of the song as well, since he’d recently released a live album) the more I realized I didn’t like what I was hearing in either of his versions either.

Flash forward a few more years to a day when, just by chance, I missed a few strings when strumming the A chord (now technically an F, since I was capoed up on eight) and got an A5 chord instead. And I finally got what my ears wanted to hear. In this case, changing the key from sounding like a major key was all that it took for me to say, “Now this sounds right.”

Suffice it to say, this arrangement may not be to everyone’s liking, but I think it definitely works and it certainly sounds close enough to the original than no one should give you any grief. And if you want it to sound more like what you think the original recording sounded like, just replace any A5 chords you see with regular old A and you should be fine.

Anyway, thanks for letting me go on like that. Now let’s get going on playing this song.

Structurally speaking, Cat’s in the Cradle consists of an introduction (which is also played before each of the first three verses and additionally serves as the outro for the song), four verses (the third one slightly shorter than the first two and the last one slightly longer from the first three), a chorus that is played after each verse (with some minor lyric changes), and a short instrumental bridge that is played between the third and final verse instead of the “introduction.” How about we tackle each section one at a time?

The Introduction

A couple of more quick notes: as you might guess from the notation and tablature examples, this song (or at least this arrangement of it) is more suited for finger style guitar. But it’s not particularly hard, despite how you may initially feel upon looking at it! Virtually all the finger patterns are either based on basic open chord shapes, based on basic Travis style picking (for more on this topic, check out the latest guitar column Let Your Fingers Do the Talking), or are simple arpeggios (also, sneakily enough, based on chord shapes). You might be tempted to go with just using a pick, as there are a number of places where we’ll be strumming, but there will also be many sections (starting with the Introduction) where you’ll find yourself performing “pinches” – using the thumb on the bass note while simultaneously picking a treble note with your finger.

The other thing I’d like to mention is capo placement. I’m using a capo on the eighth fret for the MP3 examples in order to be in the same key as the original recording. But I know that not everyone is comfortable using their fingers up that high, especially on an acoustic or a classical guitar. Also, some guitars are difficult to play when one is at that end of the fingerboard. So feel free to move down to the seventh, sixth or fifth fret if that’s more comfortable for you. Just remember that you’re not going to sound the same as in the MP3 files.

Alright then, onward! Let’s start with the first two measures of the Introduction:

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This, by the bye, is almost note-for-note perfect from the original recording. And it’s also the reason why I think my ears got so determined to hear this as a song without a distinct major or minor tonality. It sounds a bit like a snippet of Celtic music. The melody of the Introduction deliberately avoids any use of the third, whether major (which, for our A chord, capo or no, would be the note at the second fret of the B string) or minor (first fret of the B string).

While there are all sorts of ways to finger this A5 chord, I’d like to suggest going with your index finger on the D string and your middle finger on the G string. This frees up your ring finger for performing the pull-off on the second fret of the high E (first) string at the start of the second measure. You can them choose between using either your ring finger or your pinky to get the D note (third fret of the D string) later that measure.

As with all our Guitar Noise song arrangements, this one is meant to simply be a starting place for your own ideas. So you might, for instance, want to pair the E note located at the second fret of the D string to go along with the fist play of the open high E (first) string. That will definitely add a little bit of body to the melody of the Introduction.

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Using the fingering I mentioned will also make the transition from Measure Two to Measure Three quite easy. Again, your ring finger is free to get the C note at the third fret of the A string. This measure is a textbook use of Travis finger picking style.

But don’t get too settled into a groove because there’s a change of time signature in the very next measure. Here in Measure Four, you can either take your fingers in the A5 shape and simply move them to the next lower strings, or you can make a little jump and fret your Em the way most people tend to do, with their middle finger on the A string and the ring finger on the D string.

This brief side trip into 2 /4 timing lasts only a single measure. Measure Five finds us back in 4 /4 timing, and we’ll be here until we again come across the Introduction section when it is played between the first chorus and the second verse. Here we give ourselves a few resounding strums of the A5 chord.

Most transcriptions of this song are content to finish the Introduction with several measures of the A chord (A major, that is) being played until the verse starts up. I’ve opted to add a little “turnaround” (even though, technically, it’s not so much a “turnaround” as a “riff to play while we’re waiting for the beginning of the verse and we’re stuck on the same chord for a while”) that is patterned after the cello part in the original recording. Here we use an Am chord to give us our shape to play the riff. First we get the Am chord set up and then we pinch the open A string while picking the B string (where our index finger is on the first fret) at the same time. After the pinch, pull-off your index finger in order to sound the open B string and then pick the G and D strings to complete the arpeggio.

Having an Am chord may seem a little strange, especially after making such a big deal about the tonality of this song, but I prefer to think of it as foreshadowing for the C chord that’s coming up as a short, condensed reprise of the chords from Measures Three and Four. Indeed, many versions of Cat’s in the Cradle use the open A string for the bass note in those two measures. But if you listen to the original recording, you can hear the bassist playing the C and B notes that we’re playing on the A string. And even though we’re playing without a bass player, that doesn’t mean we should sound like we don’t care about the bass.

The strumming I chose here at the end of the Introduction is, needless to say, one of one hundred thousand and twenty-eight possible patterns. No, not literally! Well, maybe…

The point is that there are all sorts of ways to strum this, as there will be later on in the chorus. In the final MP3 (which I’ve not even recorded as I write this part of the lesson) you’ll probably hear numerous variations on the basic strumming patterns I write out. Why? Because I’m not worried about “the” strumming pattern. What I am worried about is not sounding stiff and lifeless. So patterns will definitely vary somewhat throughout a song. That’s what strumming is supposed to be about. And, if you’ve read any of my previous lessons, you know that this is the “obligatory tell the world that you should worry more about keeping a steady rhythm than about copying one particular strumming pattern” speech that I have to have (at least) one of in each lesson.

The Verses

Since the melody of the verses is derived from the Introduction, it only makes sense to use that melody as a guide for putting together a rhythm/picking pattern for this section of the song. So here a pattern that will work with the first four measures of the verse, which will then be repeated in the next four measures:

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You should be able to hear (as well as to see from the notation / tablature) that the first three measures are the same pattern. We obviously changed some of the notes when we changed chords from A5 to C. And we also obviously changed the string of the bass note when we got to the D chord.

In the fourth measure, I change the string of the initial pinch, using the open high E (first) string in order to shadow the melody of this part of the verse. I also drop an eighth note at the end of the pattern in order to give this verse section a little more of a natural breathing space.

As mentioned, we play this “first section” of the verse twice through. Then we move to the “second section, which is just a simple walking bass line / arpeggio combination that you’ve seen in lessons like Friend of the Devil or may have heard in the Guitar Noise Podcast #6 over at the Guitar Noise Blog. In fact, except for this song not being in 3 / 4 timing, the first four measures of the second section of Cat’s in the Cradle is a lot like the first half of that podcast:

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The idea here is fairly straightforward. Pick the bass note with your thumb and then play an arpeggio on the D, G and B strings. We’ll make an exception for the last half of the second measure (where we’re playing the Em/D chord – probably the guitarist’s all time favorite chord of all, by the way!) where the bass note is the open D string, so we alter the pattern slightly.

Sometimes, in the heat of playing the song, I may find myself substituting the fifth measure of this section for the third. Does it make that much of a difference? Not in the least!

This is also a good place to make the following important notes concerning the third and fourth verses of our song:

In the third verse, the last line of lyric is dropped, which means that we need to go from Measure Three of this section directly to the last two measures. You can, if you’d rather, go straight from the second measure to the fifth.

In the last verse, the entire second section of the verse is played twice in a row. The second time starts with the line “…and as I hung up the phone…” To add a little variation at this point, you might want to try going with less accompaniment during the repeat, switching from eighth note arpeggios to deliberately pinched half notes, like this:

You could also start your half notes earlier, perhaps in the third to last measure, as you’ll hear in the final MP3 later on.

The Chorus and The Bridge

The majority of the chorus is strummed, with the chord progression going from A5 to G to C and to D, and then repeating the A5 to G measures before finishing up just like the second section of the verse:

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As mentioned earlier, there’s no end to the ways you could strum this. The main thing is to try to keep to the lower strings. This is the section where many people want to play A major instead of A5. Please feel free to do so. To my ears, as I mentioned at the start of the lesson, the A major chord simply doesn’t sit well and I find I even prefer Aadd9 (x02200) to A major. In the MP3, you’ll hear I try to stick to strumming on the lowest strings to keep things simple.

In the fourth measure, where you play the D chord, and for who knows whatever reason, I got into the habit of throwing that single C note, giving it a bit of a edge by bending it around ever so slightly. A little rock ‘n’ roll throwback, perhaps. You’re more than welcome to totally ignore this note and simply keep to the D chord. Or, better still, make up your own little fill to play there.

After the third verse, there is a short instrumental bridge that gets played instead of the Introduction. It’s just four chords played in an over-the-top-can-you-tell-the-song’s-coming-to-the-big-hush-before-the-final-chorus manner. When I saw Chapin in concert, he played this part gleefully, laughingly telling the audience he stole it from the movie, Exodus:

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You can get away with playing Fmaj7 instead of F here. In fact, using the high E (first) string as a drone (which means playing G6 – 320000 – instead of G) sounds very nice.

Alright, then, here’s our final product:

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As always, I hope that you’ve had fun with this lesson and that you’ve picked up some ideas about arrangement that you can use in other songs in your ever-growing repertoire.

Remember the whole point of all these lessons is to discover techniques and tips that will help you with all of your playing. The songs are kind of like candy-coating to make learning taste a little less like learning and more like fun.

So, until our next lesson…

Peace

Cat’s In The Cradle – Harry Chapin 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 as good as that shuffle sounds when playing the recording, or playing in a group, it sounds a little bare when attempted with a single guitar. So I played around a bit with the song and with the idea of doing Walk of Life as a single guitar arrangement and came up with this lesson. More of a “mini-lesson,” really.

And even though this is on the “Intermediates” page (or perhaps the “Song Arranging” page…), it’s not beyond the grasp of a beginner who is willing to do a little concentrated practice and work.

So let’s get the preliminaries out of the way and get going…

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.

In terms of structure, Walk of Life is made up of an introduction and three verses. The introduction is the part that has the fun little organ / keyboard part that pretty much serves as the “signature riff” or main musical hook of the song.

In the original recording, the song is in the key of E and the timing is a quick 4 /4 (I think the BPM is around 176). And here’s a cheat sheet to guide you along:

Now I don’t know about you, but playing a B chord is not usually my idea of a good time. B7 would certainly be a fine substitution, but if I was intent on playing a rock shuffle style of rhythm, then I’d definitely find myself wishing my fingers were about two inches longer than they are.

Basically, any song arrangement that you decide to come up with has to ultimately meet certain criteria. First, can you play it? Second, if you’re singing the lyrics, can you play and sing it at the same time? Third, how much of the flavor of the original song can you take with you (and that’s assuming you want to do that)? And finally, do you (and hopefully your audience) like what you’ve come up with?

Because of my initial thoughts about Walk of Life and the rock shuffle rhythm of the guitar, I was a little bit annoyed to find that, given my voice at least, the song sounded pretty weak. So I knew that I was going to have to come up with a different approach to my rhythm for this arrangement.

The other thing that I really wanted to do was to incorporate the keyboard riff into this single-guitar version. I feel that it really defines the song and helps to keep it moving along. And it’s so silly and cheerful…

So the first thing I figured out was the keyboard part, putting it all on one string:

Having gotten this far, I now needed to find someplace on the guitar where I could play this all without having to shift hand positions too much. “Too much” meaning “not at all” if I could possible manage it. That also turned out to be easy:

So far so good! And it looks like I’m luckier than I deserve. Every note is within a two-fret span, all based around the seventh fret. A quick memory check reminds me that an A-shaped barre chord at the seventh fret is, indeed, E (X79997), so now I’ve got a different decision to make: barre chords or capo?

If you’ve read any of my lessons, you already know that this isn’t much of a decision, for me at least. One of the strengths of the single guitar is allowing the open strings to ring out and give you a bright, vibrant tone. And that’s certainly part of the atmosphere for this song.

So I placed a capo on the seventh fret and transposed the chords from the key of E to the key of A (and you’ve all ready our article titled Turning Notes Into Stone – The Basics of Transposing, so I don’t have to spell that out here, right?) and found nice, friendly first position chords of A, D and E. Then I tried out the riff, placing it into the context of the new chords:

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It was playing this riff out a few times that gave me a few more ideas. Hitting the D and G strings in the third measure, I played around with filling out the rhythm a bit. Nothing very fancy, just something to fill the space. And after some playing around, I found the basic strumming I was looking for, pretty much based off of the keyboard riff. Yes, it’s a bit generic, but it moves along and allows me to sing and play at the same time:

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Even better: using this pattern as a template, I could me to work the riff right into the strumming without missing a beat or having the whole bottom of the song drop out on me. I could even flub a note here and there and it wouldn’t matter all that much as long as I held the main chord shape in place:

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Toying around a little more, I also found that I could add a variation of the keyboard riff, using some harmony to spice it up a bit:

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That added some extra texture and only involved flattening out my index finger on the second fret and then adding the ring finger to the fifth. It did (and still does) require a little practice. And will probably still need more over the months to come.

So here’s the somewhat finished product:

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I say “somewhat” finished because all arrangements tend to be works in progress. The next time I play this song, I may find something else to do with it.

As always, I hope that you’ve had fun with this lesson and I thank you for taking the trip through making this arrangement of Walk of Life with me. Ultimately, any song arrangement that you come up with will evolve over time. The more you learn about guitar and music, the more you can put into an arrangement, even if it’s a matter of keeping things relatively sparse and tossing in a few hooks here and there.

And as a totally silly side note, I always thought that if someone wanted to open a restaurant combining Chinese and health food, “Wok of Life” might be a good name…

And my thanks to the Guitar Noise Forum member who goes by the name of “Shady Harrison” for posting his request in the first place.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Walk Of Life – Dire Straits was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

So guess what?

Yes, I know that I want to do some songs that involve more complicated bass lines, especially since that’s what we’ve been covering recently in the Guitar Columns here at Guitar Noise. But for now, let’s take a little break and have some fun. Besides, we’ll still be using a few tricks from our study of bass lines to make some cool riffs.

And I should mention early, particularly since it’s been a while since we’ve done an intermediate lesson, this level of lesson is not necessarily beyond the grasp of beginners. True, we’ll be discussing some more theory than usual and also be doing some techniques that will seem tricky at first, but do feel free to have a go at it. With a little bit of concerted practice, you might surprise yourself!

One of those intermediate ideas we’re going to be looking at is the age-old problem of arrangement. On most Neil Young songs, especially the electric ones, there are layers of different guitar parts. And since most of us don’t have a band living with us, we’re going to try to come up with an arrangement for a single guitar that will give us the flavor of the song, not to mention keeping as many of the cool riffs as possible. Sacrilege, you say? Hardly! Just think of how cool you’ll be at your next open mike night!

Oh, one quick note concerning the notation / tab files: For whatever reason (and after more failed attempts than I’ll ever admit to…) I had to write the music examples for this lesson with the guitar tablature on the top and the notation on the bottom, instead of the “usual” way (with the notation on top). I hope this doesn’t confuse anyone too much…

Double Drop D

Okay, first things first. Cinnamon Girl is one of Neil Young’s songs where the sound is dependent on an alternate tuning. In this case, we want what’s known as Double Drop D tuning. If you’ve read On The Tuning Awry, one of our old Guitar Columns from way back when, you know that Double Drop D involves tuning both E strings down a whole step to D. Neil Young uses this tuning on a number of his songs, such as No More from the Freedom album. It’s also used by many other artists. Two examples that spring immediately to mind are Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain and Black Water by the Doobie Brothers.

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To get Double Drop D, as mentioned, you want to tune both E strings down a whole step. If you don’t have a tuner, start with your high E (first) string and match it to the D note at the third fret of the B string. Then lower the low E (sixth) string until the note at the seventh fret of the newly tuned sixth string matches the open A string.

Double Drop D is a very interesting tuning, combining aspects of regular Drop D tuning and open G tuning. From low to high, your strings are now DADGBD. If you play just the three lowest strings (DAD), you get a D power chord, which is also called D5 (and for more on forming any kind of chord, check out our old Guitar Columns The Power of Three and Building Additions (and Suspensions) – the latter explains power chords pretty well). In Double Drop D tuning, any Root Six power chord (which is a power chord with its root note on the sixth (low E) string) is now a one-finger affair. This is why a lot of bands that specialize in songs primarily made up of fast power chords use Drop D tuning. Root Five power chords (power chords with the root note on the fifth (A) string) are still the same, as we’ll see.

Looking at Double Drop D again, you may notice that playing only the three highest strings (GBD) gives you a G chord. Adding the D string and playing the four highest strings open also gives you a G chord (and that’s going to be very important a little later). Using our brains, we realize that if we barre the first three strings (or four strings) at any fret, we’ll have a major chord with the root on the G string.

Since the D note is at the seventh fret of the G string, you get a D chord by laying a finger across the three or four highest strings at the seventh fret. Now, taking into account that D is the root note of the D chord and A is the fifth, you can make use of the low “power chord” strings and strum across all six strings with this 000777 fingering to get a resounding D major chord. And that’s where we’re going to start…

“Riff A”

Structurally speaking, Cinnamon Girl has an introduction, a verse, a repeat of the introduction as a break between the verses, a second verse, a bridge, an instrumental verse, and finally a free-style outro. The introduction is also what we might call one of the two signature riffs – musical hooks that pretty much identify the song simply by playing them. The second signature riff occurs twice in each verse.

For the sake of giving it a name, let’s call the introduction “Riff A.” Essentially it’s just about two measures long and, to make it even easier, let’s split it into two parts. We’ll begin not with the D chord, but rather with a C/D chord formed by laying a finger across the first three strings at the fifth fret and then sliding the finger up to the seventh fret to get the D chord, like this:

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I’ve taken the liberty of adding a suggested strum pattern to this particular example. You, of course, can also play it with all downstrokes or whatever combination of ups and downs that pleases you.

Right away, you begin to see both the fun and the problems. First, this riff definitely sounds like Cinnamon Girl. And yet, it’s not totally spot on. In the original recording, there are two guitars, one playing the top four strings while the second plays the middle four. While we’re playing more of the first guitar part in terms of voicing, we’re using the second guitar’s rhythm (in the original recording the first guitar plays eight eighth notes in the first measure).

This is what I meant earlier with the incredibly bad pun about getting the “flavor” of the song. No one who knows Cinnamon Girl is going to not know what you’re playing. If anyone does give you grief, you can always say “this is how Neil played it at a private invitation-only acoustic show he did in Williamstown in 1973″ and see what happens…

But back to the point, we’re trying to cover two guitar parts with a single guitar, so we’ll obviously be taking some liberties along the way. As always, what I’ve written out here is just one way of playing this. You could hit all six strings on the first downstroke. You could decide you want to cover the D string with your mini-barre as well and it will sound a little different, perhaps a little more to the original to your liking. Experiment – play around with it and see what you like.

Remember that since we are putting together a single guitar arrangement, it doesn’t hurt to flesh out our sound a bit whenever we can. This is something to think about when we look at the second half of the opening riff just for this reason. On the original recording, the first guitar is playing a few double-stops while the second guitar provides a descending walking bass line moving from C to B to A. By playing a full C chord (actually Cadd9, since our high string is now tuned to D), we can make a blend of the two original guitar parts like this:

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Again, I can’t stress enough that this is a template for you to tinker with. Just because I personally prefer all the ringing strings from the first stroke of the Cadd9 chord (and more on that chord in just a moment), it doesn’t mean you can’t do otherwise. Many books and tabs on the internet, in fact, will switch from C to G (just playing the open D and G strings) to C instead of what I’ve written out.

Another thing to note is that, as a single guitar arrangement, allowing the open strings to ring out whenever you can, along with hanging on to a chord (or as much of it as possible) for as long as you can will also help give depth to your sound. When you play the second half of Riff A, try to keep your index finger on the C note (second fret of the B string) while you play the descending bass line. The ringing of the top three strings will make you almost sound like you’re playing two guitars at once.

And with the last two chords, F5 and G5, it’s not absolutely essential to play all three low strings. If you just get the lowest two, it will still sound fine. Whatever you decide to do, take a moment and think about your finger position in regard to the chord progression. Since you’re coming to the F5 (333xxx) off of the C chord, it’s not that big of a deal to use your ring finger, which is hanging around the third fret anyway because of the C chord, to finger the F5. You can then not only slide it up two frets to get the G5 (555xxx), you can also simply adjust your finger to get the C (xx5555) or C/D (xx0555) that starts the riff all over again. So even though there’s a lot going on here, it requires very little finger movement.

In the last half of this MP3, you also heard both parts of Riff A pieced together. We’re sounding pretty good so far, no? This riff is repeated many times throughout this song; in fact it’s played four times as the introduction, so take some time to get comfortable with it before moving on to…

The Verses

You might be surprised to find that it’s here in the verses where you’ll probably have your biggest challenge. Not because the verses are the most difficult part, but rather because you’ve got more choices than you know what to do with. Basically, the verses run through the following chord progression:

One measure of D

One measure of Am7

One measure of C

One measure of G

And these four measures are followed by the second signature riff, which we’ll conveniently call “Riff B.” All that – the four measures along with Riff B – gets repeated to complete the verse.

On the original recording, the two guitars play single note arpeggios, with a bit of crosspicking and the occasional double-stop sneaking their way into the mix. In putting together a single-guitar arrangement, we’ve got a lot of options to choose from. We can play our own arpeggios. We can strum the chords with a similar rhythm to the introduction. We can combine the strumming of chords with some arpeggios and some picking.

Let’s take a listen to some possibilities, and also look at the shapes of the chords we want to use in Double Drop D tuning:

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As you see (and hear), I’m making a few chord substitutions in order to make the most of being in Double Drop D tuning. D5 is played like our normal open position D chord, only leaving the high string open. This D5 will come into play in a big way when we see it again in the outro.

I could easily use Dadd9, which is fingered exactly like the regular D in standard tuning only here we can also play the lowest string, since it’s tuned down to D. We can also make a regular sounding D chord with the fingering 000234, although that takes a bit of practice to get comfortable with.

Later on in the “solo verse” section, we’ll find ourselves using Am(add4) instead of Am7(add4) in order to play a bit of chord melody. I like the sound of this so much I often find myself using it in the verses.

So, which, if any, of these ideas should you go with? To answer this honestly, you also have to decide just what you’re going to do with the song. If you’re going to be singing it and you have a hard time picking individual notes while singing, then you might want to go for the straight strumming approach. If you feel comfortable picking individual strings, then try either all arpeggios or a combination of the two. Remember that because you’re doing this song on one guitar, you don’t have to worry about which arrangement is the “right” one. What you need to worry about is what you’re capable of playing without thinking too hard about it.

The other thing to remember is that you’re going to have to go straight from whatever you do in the verses to:

“Riff B”

Now that you’ve given your brain some work to do with the verses, it’s time to get your fingers working overtime again with Riff B. Believe it or not, it’s possible to play this riff with just two fingers. And, pardon the pun, your brain should have already given you a bit of a heads up, because it knows that you’re going into Riff B from a G chord in the verse. So you can make sure you’re playing just the four high strings when you finish the G, since they are all open strings. That makes life a little easier, doesn’t it?

Riff B is really nothing more than playing a few power chords in Drop D tuning and, as we mentioned earlier, power chords in Drop D are pretty easy:

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Let’s tackle this methodically. As just mentioned, we’re coming to Riff B from a G chord, so it totally makes sense to play the last beat or so of that G chord with just the first four open strings of the guitar. Doing so frees up our fretting fingers for a moment to get them set to play this riff. Position your index finger over the third fret. Your ring finger should be hovering over the fifth fret as you do so.

Lay your index finger across the third fret. You’re only worried about covering the two (or three) lowest strings, so you don’t have to be concerned about barring all six strings. You’re going to play the two low strings at the third fret (the G5 chord in Example 5) and then shift over to your ring finger to play the F5, which is done on the two low strings at the fifth fret. Even if you have small hands, this shouldn’t be all that big of a stretch.

And this is where you get a gift. When you’re done playing the first two pairs of notes, you simply lift your fingers off the strings to play the D5. Don’t let those fingers stray too far, though! You want to use this “break” to simply reposition yourself slightly so that you can play a more traditional power chord shape for the C5 (x355xx). Hit the C5 and then slide your fingers up two fret to play the D5 (x577xx) that finishes up the first measure of Riff B. Because you’ve gotten the hang of using just your index and ring fingers, you might find it easier to form these last two power chords with only those fingers. The index finger will get the root note on A string (third fret for the C5 and fifth fret for the D5) while you can flatten your ring finger out slightly to get both the D and G strings (fifth fret for the C5 and seventh fret for the D5).

Don’t congratulate yourself yet! The timing of this riff gives you a slight pause at the end of the measure to reposition your fingers into a normal open C chord (x32010). Yes, there’s still the D note at the high string, but try not to hit it when you strum. Even if you do, though, it won’t sound bad. After playing the C, keep your ring finger in place and remove the middle and index fingers and strum down only from the D string. That’s your G chord. Put your fingers back where they were for the next C chord and then just lay a finger across four strings at the second fret (keeping the A string open) to get the final A chord.

This A chord is another place where you can experiment a bit with the sound. Some folks like to play all five strings from the open A downward. Some like to stop the strum at the B string where the C# note is being played at the second fret. Others enjoy making a power chord (A5) out of it by only playing the A, D and G strings. And there are those who play it a bit differently each time they play the song!

However you play it, you want to be ready to either go to a D chord for the second half of the verse or to slide your mini-barre at the second fret up to the fifth fret to begin Riff A again.

The Bridge

Like the verses, the bridge offers you the choice of strumming or picking arpeggios and broken chords. The determining factor here, more likely than not, will be how comfortable you feel with the chords. The bridge starts with three measures of the C chord and, listening to the original recording, it sounds like both guitars are using the x35555 voicing of the chord. There’s a good reason for this, as the following chord is Gm7 (xx3333), with both guitars playing the same voicing and strumming in unison for two measures. This leads to two measures of A (x02222) where both guitars are again playing the same voicing.

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Playing this fingering of C as a barre chord (using your index finger on the third fret and your ring finger to get the notes on the fifth), makes the most sense because it allows a fairly simple transition to the rest of the bridge chords. All you need to do is to slide down two frets to get the Gm7 and then down one more to play the A.

If you want to have a little more “oomph” in your Gm7 chord, then you might want to consider barring that as well, using a fingering of 553333, which again is not too difficult to get to from the barred C shape we’ve been discussing.

Still, I can’t make up my mind whether or not I prefer this C chord to the Cadd9 we used in the verse. So sometime I play one and sometimes the other. Sometimes I’ll use both, starting with two measures of the Cadd9 and then switching to the x35555 fingering for the last two measures. Play around and see what strikes your fancy.

Likewise, occasionally I find myself playing a standard tuning A (x02220), which in Double Drop D tuning is Aadd4. It adds a bit of tension before starting the instrumental verse. And speaking of which…

An Easy Solo Verse

Okay, it’s not so much a “solo” as an instrumental. Better yet, think of this as an exercise on strumming, using a particular strumming pattern to emphasize certain notes, which will in turn sound a bit like a solo.

This isn’t even as involved as you might think it would have to be. Basically, we want to wail on the D note of the open D string, using it as a kind of drone. And knowing that I would have this empty verse to fill is part of the reason I chose the chord voicings I did earlier for the verses. All we have to do now is to vary our strumming pattern very slightly:

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I’ve taken the liberty of writing out a suggested strumming pattern here in order to help you create a bit of an accent with the playing. You can do yourself a huge favor by counting along out loud and stressing the down strokes, like this: “ONE and two AND three and FOUR and…” This slight change of strumming, combined with the accented beats helps you create an “instrumental solo” without changing what you’ve been doing all along in the verses. Sneaky, huh?

A Chord Melody Solo Verse

And by being even pickier about your strumming, it’s fairly easy to come up with a bit of chord melody. Like the “Easy Solo” we just did, this chord melody approach isn’t all that complicated to play either, and it sounds very cool:

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Just as in the “easy solo” verse, the chord melody approach is all about strumming. You want to nail the melody note with each strum and, conveniently enough, the melody note is almost always part of the chord serving as the accompaniment.

The easiest way to get this totally into your head is to take it slowly and don’t be afraid to sing along! You’ll note that we want to change the Am7 we previously used in the verses to an Am, and this is because the A note (second fret of the G string) is part of the melody.

The Big Finish

After we’ve played our choice of instrumental verse, finishing with Riff B, you get to reward yourself with a bit of fun. Cinnamon Girl closes with a big crashing C to D chord. You can use the same C and D fingering that you play for the introduction or you can also opt for the Cadd9 and D5 chords, as shown here:

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You let this last D (or D5) chord ring out for a while and then you go wild with what we’ll call the “hammer-on ad-lib.” This ad-lib is a great reason to close with the D5 chord, by the bye, because the D5 fingering totally sets you up for all the hammer-ons and pull-offs you could possibly need.

When you play the D5 chord, your index finger is on the second fret of the G string while your ring finger is sitting on the third fret of the B string. This leaves your middle finger free to perform hammer-ons and pull-off on any of the third frets of the lowest four strings. Do your best to hold on to the D5 while you do so and let all the notes ring out. It’s all done in free style, so you shouldn’t feel obligated to strictly follow the original recording. In fact, you should be able to come up with a lot more fun riffs than the original with very little work.

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

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As always, I hope that you’ve had fun with this lesson and that you enjoy playing this song. Just as (if not more!) important, I hope that you have learned a few things about arranging, about working in a different tuning and how it’s good to let the tuning give you some chord voicings and variations that you might not normally think about.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Cinnamon Girl – Neil Young 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 that matter, I’m not really sure how to answer when someone says, “I can’t play a song.” What does that mean? Maybe I’m incredibly old-fashioned or maybe I’m merely simple, but it seems to me that you want to play a song, any song, you go and get the chords and you just start playing. I never thought of it as being more complicated than that. You really shouldn’t, either. Otherwise, you’re setting yourself up for a lot of not playing when you should be playing.

You take out your guitar and you say to yourself, “I’m going to play a song.” What, exactly, does that mean? Well, obviously you’re going to play some music. Are you going to play it exactly as it is on a recording? Even if you’re an accomplished musician, chances are not likely that you’re carrying a band around in your pocket, let alone a band that knows all the bass and drum parts and anything else that may pop up in the musical score. Even if you’re just going to play “the guitar part,” you often have several guitar parts from which to choose. Rhythm? Lead? The one guitar riff that’s played only during the last chorus?

If that last paragraph sounds a tad on of the absurd side of life, then you may consider yourself fortunate. But judging by the frequent sightings of this question (or one of its myriad variations) on the Guitar Noise Forums, it seems to be high on many people’s list of concerns.

So let’s cut right to the quick of it – when you say you’re going to play a song, it means you’re going to play a version of that song. An arrangement, if you will. Even if you’re just strumming chords in the simplest of ways, as long as someone can sing the melody along with your strumming (or another instrument can play an identifiable melody), you’re playing a song. It is that simple.

This comes as no surprise to those of you who’ve been reading my lessons for any length of time. Almost all the Easy Songs for Beginners lessons, as well as those here on the Songs for Intermediates page, have been written as arrangements for one person on one guitar. The arrangements can be as simple as the strumming pattern in the Eleanor Rigby lesson or as complicated as the finger style playing in Julia. And there’s room for any number of levels of ease (or difficulty) in between. You’ve often read in my lessons that it’s my hope that you take what you’ve learned in one lesson and apply it to another. Or to any song that you know, for that matter! How does one go about that?

Time After Time, written by Cyndi Lauper and Robert Andrew Hyman,has been covered by many folks. Arrangements of this song for the single guitar can be very sparse to very complicated. With your indulgence, I’d like to show you how one goes from an arrangement that would easily be considered one of our “Easy Songs For Beginners” lessons and then develop into something incorporating more and more of the things you’ve (hopefully) learned in these lessons. By our third turn at it, we’ll find ourselves with an arrangement closer in style to a chord melody.

So let’s be getting on with things, then:

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 record (no pun intended), we’re going to be using two versions of Time After Time as our “template.” Cyndi Lauper’s original recording is in the key of C and is played at a moderate tempo. The “guitar part” of that recording is more what I’d call “ambient guitar” – some lead, some fills and some sparse (and palm muted) rhythm playing all combining to make a wonderful mood and texture for the song. Eva Cassidy’s cover version, the title track of her album of the same name, is more in the vein of the traditional “singer/songwriter” style of play. It’s slower than the original. Also, Eva plays in the key of C, but uses a capo on the second fret to raise the key of the song to D major, at least that’s what’s going on in the recording I have.

For our lesson, we’ll stick with the key of C and forgo the capo. All the MP3s will be in C, but if you want to play along with Eva rather than me, then slap that capo on second fret.

Okay, I’ve grabbed some chords off the Internet, now let’s first at what, structurally speaking, we’re dealing with. You can basically break this song down into three distinct parts: Sections “A” and “B” in the verse and “Section C,” which is the chorus. The chords from Section B of the verse are also the basis of the “interlude” between the first chorus and the third verse. Shall we take a peek and all get on the same page?

Please notice that there is a slight variation between the “Part B” in the first verse and the “Part B” of the second verse. This is because the first verse turns around and repeats the whole verse again while we move on to the chorus at the end of the second verse.

Arrangement 1 – The Basics

For the sake of moving along, bear with me for a moment concerning the chord selection. We’ll be looking at various options throughout this lesson, but you’ve got to start somewhere. You can, as we have in other lessons, use Fmaj7 instead of F if you’d like.

But I’d like to suggest using F6, as shown below:

Why? Mostly because the melody note begins on D and I like to hear it when I strum as it gives my voice a target. As you know from previous lessons, the melody of any song is an ideal place to find some ideas and help when it comes to sprucing up a song a bit. The first melody note of the song, D, is played over the F chord. This gives us the notes F, A, C and D, which can be called (among other things) F6 or Dm7. I want to target the strings of my strum to highlight the melody notes, much as we did in The Little Drummer Boy, among other lessons:

Let’s be clear: You don’t have to play F6, it’s simply my suggestion. F and Fmaj7, or even Dm or Dm7 are acceptable substitutes. I suggest you try out these different chords and see how you like the switch between any of them and C, since that is the main chord progression throughout Section A of the verses.

Once I have my chords, I need a basic strumming pattern. Since I want to keep it very simple, almost light and open, I’m going to go with what I call “generic pop song strum #4.” All right, I made that up! But I am going to use a typical easy pattern, which many of you might recognize from Easy Songs’ lesson on Nowhere Man. I’ll show you the rhythm and also play Section A in the following example:

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You can hear that just this one embellishment, using F6 instead of F or Fmaj7, has immediately given our arrangement more of a personal touch. It sounds less like someone strumming chords and more like someone playing a song, no?

If you like it, take a little time to practice switching between the F6 and C chord. Since you’re familiar with C, why not start there? When you perform a change from C to Fmaj7, you simply move your ring finger from the third fret of the A string to the third fret of the D string while shifting your middle finger from the second fret of the D string to the second fret of the A string. There’s no need to move the index finger at all from its position at the first fret of the B string. Here, changing from C to F6, it’s virtually the same thing. Only add your pinky to get the D note at the third fret of the B string. Again, keep the index finger in place. It’s not doing any harm sitting there and you’re going to need it there when you switch back in just a moment.

An important thing to note at this stage is that Time After Time uses a lot of anticipation in its timing of the chord changes. The C in the very first measure, as we noted earlier, falls on the second half of the second beat and not on the third beat. This is actually one reason that you might like using Fmaj7 instead of F6. It’s definitely easier. We’ve talked about anticipations before in many lessons, Three Marlenas being an excellent example. Be sure to get comfortable with the changes because the song will sound very different if you played all the changes on the beat instead of the offbeat.

Section B of the verse is basically more of the same. Because the Em chord lasts for four beats, a while longer than the other chords, I change it to Em7 after a beat and a half. This makes it a little more interesting to the ears. On the MP3s (and in the notation) I use Fmaj7, but regular F works fine here as well. And the strumming pattern stays the same. This example would go at the end of the first verse, as it cycles back to Section A of the second verse and not on to the chorus (Section C):

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Now let’s tack on the chorus, what we’re calling “Section C.” I decide to do a very easy arpeggio during the second half of the measures of Am, simply to bring a little more variety to the sound. Not only does this sound cool, it also gives us a sneaky chance to get our fingers back in place for the upcoming F maj7 chord. You can, if you like, stick with the basic strumming pattern throughout the entire chorus, but do give this a try. You should find it pretty easy to do:

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This is, obviously, only one line of the chorus. You need to repeat these four measures, playing them a total of four times to get a complete Section C.

Now you may be wondering why, out of all the possible places in the chorus, I picked this particular one to toss in a fill. Don’t laugh, but it’s the one place in the chorus where you have a break from singing! It pays to think ahead about these things. One good rule of thumb when it comes to single guitar arrangements is that you should always have something going on. As I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions, I’m not the world’s most mesmerizing vocalist. I need all the help I can get. So filling in on the guitar gives my voice (and the audience) a break.

And voila! We have a very basic arrangement of Time After Time.

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A tad monotonous perhaps, but certainly something a beginner can get a hold of with a little practice. And this arrangement has some big plusses. Being sparse, it’s easy to play at quicker tempos, like the original Cyndi Lauper pace. It’s also a good one to use if you’re worried about being able to sing along with yourself. And should you find yourself playing in a group situation, this version provides a solid foundation that will allow the other players plenty of room to play fills and leads and other musical touches.

Arrangement 2 – A la Eva

We’re off to a good start. Now let’s make our arrangement sound more complicated without making it more complicated for us to play. That may sound like a huge contradiction, but the truth is that where the guitar is concerned, it’s pretty easy to make things seem more work than they actually are. Arpeggios are a great example of this. We’re going to switch tracks for a moment and pattern a new arrangement more along the lines of Eva Cassidy’s version of Time After Time.

While you can play a lot of this version with a pick, you’re going to need to play the chorus in fingerstyle, so you might as well drop the pick at the start. Here we’re going to employ a steady stream of eighth note arpeggios throughout the song. Let’s start with “Part A” of the verse:

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Now you may be wondering, “Wait a minute! Where did the F chord go?” If you listen carefully to Eva’s arrangement, you’ll hear her use a Csus4 (C, F and G) instead of the F (or Fmaj7 or F6) that we’ve been playing up ’til now. If this sort of thing worries you, just remember that Csus4 uses the same notes as Fsus2, so feel free to think of this chord in those terms.

In our arrangement, I finger the Csus2 as the last chord in the measure and this is more a matter of convenience since it lets me stay in the same chord shape throughout the pattern. The reality is that I’m only playing the open D and G string for the last pair of notes, so you could call this a G chord instead. I simply find it easier to not move my fingers every chord change and I’ve labeled it as “Csus2″ in order to make you focus on the fingering. Rather, to not have to concentrate on the fingering but instead to be free to play and sing at the same time.

And ease of play is key here. If you’re going to be singing over your arrangement, then it helps to have something that requires little attention. Once you’ve practiced this, even for a short while, you’ll have it on “automatic pilot,” enabling you to sing and/or interact with your audience and band mates. It’s hard to enjoy performing if you’re spending all your time looking at your fingers! Notice, too, that playing with this arpeggio style takes a lot of the worry out of the anticipations in the chord changes.

After you’ve got Section A of the verse down, move on to Section B:

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This is probably the trickiest thing we’ve attempted so far. In Eva’s version, she uses Gadd9 instead of a regular G and this creates a very ear-catching arpeggio. The best way to tackle this is to not worry about fingering the full chords, but rather to concentrate on the shifting of the needed fingers. When you finger the F chord, you’re only interested in the notes on the low E, D and G strings. Fret the third fret of the D string with your ring finger and second fret of the G string with your middle finger, as you normally would with an F (or Fmaj7) chord. It will be up to you whether to use your thumb or your index finger for the F note on the first fret of the low E (sixth) string. After playing the first three notes, keep your middle finger in place on the second fret of the D string while shifting your ring finger to get the G note on the third fret of the low E string. This may take some practice to get used to the finger shift, but you’ll be surprised at how your fingers take to the challenge.

This Gadd9 gets used again as a substitute for G in the first part of each line in Section C (the chorus):

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Here we start with some simple arpeggios, first the Gadd9 and then two beats of Am, before using a simple descending walking bass to get from A to G to the F note that starts the F (or Fmaj7) arpeggio that begins the third measure. Then we go into two beats of the F arpeggio followed by two beats of a “normal” open G arpeggio and then end with a C arpeggio, complete with a little flourish.

This flourish sounds a lot trickier than it is. Get yourself set by fingering a C chord and strum the A, D and G strings (your middle finger will be on the second fret of the D and your ring finger on the third fret of the A). Then, keeping your middle finger in place on the D, pinch the D string and B string (where your index finger sits on the second fret) simultaneously and immediately hammer your pinky onto the third fret of the D string. Hold these notes for a full beat and then pinch off the remaining three pairs of notes.

This simple, unsophisticated embellishment can be heard on many, many songs and is a great trick to add to your repertoire. We’ll even use it in our final arrangement, so take some time now to get it into your fingers.

And this, when you connect Sections A, B and C, completes our second arrangement. It’s very stark and is great for showing off a singer’s voice, all the while providing an accompaniment that in both interesting and intricate.

Arrangement 3 – Moving Toward Chord Melody

As I mentioned on no end of occasions, I tend to arrange songs close to chord melody style in order to give my voice an assist or two. But there’s also another reason. When something is close to chord melody, you don’t even need to have a singer. You can play a song, like our arrangement of After The Gold Rush, and people will know what it is. This can be a big plus if you’re playing something like a dinner party and the host wants “quiet” music.

When I was fashioning this lesson, it struck me how much this song reminded me of Paul Simon’s Bookends, of all things. And that’s where I started out in Section A, using pairs of notes much like in the Simon song:

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Here again, even though this sounds complicated, it’s truly not. We’re using the F6 fingering from our first arrangement and finger picking in a Blackbird-style manner, starting with a pinch of the B and D stings and alternating that with a pick of the G string. As long as we keep our fingers on the chord shapes in questions, we can’t go wrong.

Another thing I especially like about this particular arrangement is that it lays off the two lowest strings. You don’t hear any “bass” at all until Section B, and when that first F note rings out in the lower registers, it’s like the rest of the band has joined in the song. How’s that for instant dynamics?

Section B not only gets even more into the chord melody style, combing it with the arpeggios of the Eva Cassidy version, it also makes a good place for what I think is an important chord substitution. – the Am for F (or Fmaj7) that comes immediately after the Em chord:

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It’s important to point out that I could have come up with any number of chord arpeggio patterns at this point. In fact, I don’t think I ever did the same pattern twice for the fourth measure, the one of the Em (or Em7). All I was concerned with was getting the melody notes in the right places. This particular arrangement of this particular section might be the easiest one we’ve done yet.

And because that’s so simple, I decide to go for broke in the chorus. For starters, I’m going to use what I call a “country G” chord, namely a G chord with the D note added at the third fret of the B string for added measure. And, since the first three lines of our Section C are the same, let’s try them out first:

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To me, this is where working in chord melody style can add a lot of interest. We start out really emphasizing the G and D notes on the third frets of the top two strings and then we slide them both up to the fifth frets at the start of the second measure to get to our Am chord in the accompaniment. This will take a little concentrated effort, and it’s well worth it. Once we’re back to our normal open position Am, we can do a semi-fancy hammer-on / pull-off combo on the B string before going back to a measure of chord-melody-and-arpeggio and then tack on Eva’s C chord flourish for good luck. I don’t think we missed anything…

…Except for the very last line of the chorus. Here we’ll start off with the same approach as the first three lines, but we’ll substitute Am7 for Am, shifting to a two-thirds-barre at the fifth fret, which will enable our pinky to get the melody note at the eighth fret of the high E (first) string:

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This little phrase demonstrates that knowing where various chord shapes are located up and down the neck can be a good thing. And they say that music theory is worthless…

And speaking of “worthless” theory, what about that little instrumental part that sounds so cool in the Cyndi Lauper version but doesn’t even lift its head in Eva’s? So glad you asked!

As mentioned earlier, this “interlude” uses the chords of the first four measures of Section B as its foundation. In essence, it’s basically chord arpeggios, but it’s almost impossible for most people to get a low F (root of the first chord) while finding the C note at the eighth fret of the high (first) E string that is the apex of the melody. What’s a person to do?

Well, we can remember that D minor is the relative minor of F major and act accordingly:

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We start out by getting our fingers in place: index finger gets the fifth fret of the G string, while the middle finger sits on the sixth fret of the B. Our pinky will play the aforementioned C note on the eighth fret of the E string and then slide down and play the B note at the seventh fret. And that completes the first phrase.

We need to make our only full barre chord of the day to play the second phrase. Barre the third fret and add your middle finger to the fourth fret of the G string. The pinky again gets to play the highest note of the phrase, this one being the A note at the fifth fret of the high E (first) string.

Now, keeping the middle finger in place at the fourth fret of the G, reposition the index finger to the third fret of the B string. Once more the pinky gets the fifth fret of the high E. Hang onto the note for a beat and then slide the little finger down to the third fret. Or use your middle and index fingers to get the last two notes of this third phrase.

Finally, form an open position Am chord, but add your pinky to the third fret of the B string. Strum the whole chord from the A string down, making certain to not hit the first (high E) string until you’ve gotten that D note cleanly.

Let’s put all these various parts together, shall we?

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And there you have it! I hope you had fun with this lesson and that you enjoy playing around with Time After Time and, pardon the pun, spend some time coming up with your own arrangement of this song. Try different strumming patterns, maybe a combination of strumming and single note picking or even a totally different rhythm or perhaps some chord substitutions of your own. There is no end to the musical ideas one can come up with, and that’s simply part of the learning process.

Most important of all, the next time you want to learn a song, maybe you’ll feel confident enough to try it out on your own and not rely on someone else to do the work for you. It’s all part of this wonderful musical journey we’re on and you owe it to yourself to do a little of the driving!

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

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Time After Time 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 most people, at the mention of the term “chord melody,” think of jazz standards or perhaps some classical pieces, a lot of other songs adapt to this style very handily.

We’re going to look at an arrangement of Neil Young’s After The Gold Rush (from the album of the same name), which can work well either as a chord melody or as a single guitar accompaniment. It’s fairly easy in that almost all the fingerings work around open chords that you (probably) already know. We’ll also discuss a few chord substitutions (got to get some theory into the lesson, you know!) as well as examine a very simple technique for giving your guitar a little more of a piano style.

Since this song is structured in three verses, we’ll take a look at each of the four lines that make up a verse. There are actually five lines, as I’m sure that folks will write and tell me. The fifth line is a repeat of the fourth, so for our purposes we’ll leave it at that. And one more thing:

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.

Okay, then! Here we go:

Line One:

After The Gold Rush is in the key of D and, as mentioned, uses very simple open chords. If we were to look at a “chord chart” of the song, it would probably look like this:

One of the inherent problems many people have with arranging chord melodies is that we don’t always know what or where the melody is. And then it often changes on you! Take a look at this comparison between the first line as sung in the first verse and the first line as sung in the second:

It’s subtle and most people don’t even think twice about it when arranging a chord melody. That’s a good thing. You don’t have to worry about catching every syllable or slurred note in your melody. Getting the “gist” will often be fine as your listeners will do the work of filling in the slight gaps.

What you do need to decide, though, is how to accompany your melody. Some might opt for the “play a chord with every note” approach, like this one we used back in our first chord melody lesson (Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star):

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This sounds perfectly fine, but it also sounds very busy. A reason that many pop or rock songs don’t translate well into chord melodies is that some of them are very wordy. That means a lot of syllables, which, in turn, means a lot of notes.

In a case like this, it helps to soften things up a bit. That doesn’t necessarily mean playing fewer notes, but rather coming up with a more stylized arrangement. And “stylized,” as you’ll see, doesn’t mean “harder.” A simple take can create a very elegant version of a song.

Let’s try to combine a little of this “play a chord with every note” with what I think of as the “piano for guitar” style. It’s a simple formula – you know how people talk about the “boom-chuck” or “bass-strum” styles? That’s when you play a bass note and then strum the chord over it and it’s used in all sorts of songs. You’ve seen it, in an alternating bass pattern, in lessons like Margaritaville. Well, instead of a “boom-chuck,” we’re going to go with a “chuck-boom.” We’ll play a melody note (or two) first, with the chord or a few notes of the chord, and then add the bass note under it. Something like this:

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Using your fingers, as opposed to a pick, would be the best way to tackle this style. You certainly can use a pick, but you might find it easier to pluck the melody note with your index or middle finger, while pinching the chord with your thumb. Another option, which you hear on the MP3s, is to use your ring, middle and index fingers to pick both the melody note and two notes of the accompanying chord, playing the bass note again with the thumb. It gives a full sound while feeling somewhat spontaneous. Depending on the number of strings in the chord, use your ring finger on the high E (first) string, your middle finger on the B string and your index finger to play the G string.

The really cool thing about this type of accompaniment is that you can add flourishes that are obviously more guitar than piano, such as hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides and the like. You can hear this going on in the second version of Example 3.

Besides the hammer-ons and pull-off, you’ll also hear that I added the bass note to the first beat of measures with the D chord. This helps to add a bit of bottom while performing the hammers. It also gives the song a little variety, keeping things interesting for both you and your audience.

Which brings up a very important thing to note here. It’s something that I try to touch on with each lesson, and I’m sure you can recite it by heart by now: These arrangements are simply guidelines. Depending on the abilities you already have and the comfort level you using various techniques, you should make this as simple or complicated as you’d like. In the final MP3, I play through two whole verses and I’ve not tabbed it out simply because I don’t know what I’m going to play. At heart, it will be just like this line we’ve gone through. It might occur to me to use a trill here or there or to totally go by the book. That’s the point. You want to use these ideas as a starting place from which to develop your own arrangement.

Line Two:

One thing I hope you’re noticing is that even though we’re using the basic chords given to us in the original chord sheet, there are times when the melody note, played together with the basic chord, gives us a different chord. For instance, when we use the open high E string on top of the D chord, it becomes a Dsus2 or Dadd9, depending on whatever way you woke up this morning. The open high E over the G chord produces a G6 chord.

Lots of folks like to quibble about this sort of thing. Do you think of the chord in terms of all its notes or do you regard it as a basic chord whose melody is, for the moment at least, bringing something new to the table? Thinking in terms of the basic chord helps most people when it comes to deciding how to finger the chord while playing the melody. But if you’re someone who knows seventeen thousand and twenty-six chords without breaking a sweat, then you don’t even wonder what all the trouble’s about.

Ultimately, though, you need to look at it in the best way that helps you to play it. So when we add a G note (third string on the high E string) to our D chord toward the start of Line 2, you should feel free to think, “Okay, this is a Dsus4 chord.” Or, “Gee, that’s the cool thing I do with my pinky when I play a D chord” will work, too!

Speaking of which, let’s take a look at the second line of After The Gold Rush:

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We’ve got a slight change of rhythm in the first two measures – instead of all eighth notes, as has mostly been the case, there are two sets of three eighth notes broken up by a quarter note in the middle. There’s a quick change in the second measure from a D to an A chord, but you should be able to handle that as well.

The whole naming the chord thing comes into play in the third measure, when we’ve got a G chord with an F# holding center stage in the melody line. Many of you will think of this as a Gmaj7. Those of you who might stare for a while at that, wondering where to put your fingers, relax! Because of the way we’re playing the accompaniment, you don’t have to worry about fretting the B note on the second fret of the A string. This means you only have to deal with placing two fingers. Try using your middle finger on the bass note, your index finger for the F# (second fret of the high E) and your ring finger when you get to the D (third fret of the A). That should be effective even for folks with small hands like mine.

In the last measure of Line 2, we come back to the A chord and the open A string in the bass. This open string is important because it will allow us time to make a shift up the neck to start the next phrase in:

Line Three:

If you remember our discussion on chord shapes in the (very old) Guitar Column called Moving On Up, you know that we can play A chords all over the neck. Here we use an “E shaped” A chord (or “F shape” if you prefer) at the fifth fret. The easiest way to do this is to make a “mini-barre” at the fifth fret, covering the first two strings with your index finger. Then use your middle finger to get the C# note at the sixth fret of the G string. Your pinky or ring finger will do the honor of playing the B note (located at the seventh fret of the high E string) in the melody line:

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After these three melody notes, hit the open A string in the bass again to give you time to change over to a Bm7 chord (X20202). Even though the chord sheet shows reads Bm, this open position shape allows your fingers more freedom to reach the other melody notes while still using the B (second fret of the A string) as your bass note.

From the Bm we go to C major, using the pinky to play the D note (third fret of the B string) when it appears in the melody line. Then it’s back to Bm for a measure not unlike the measure of G in Line 2. Again, I like to use this voicing of Bm7 as a substitute for the G listed in the chord sheet. If that bothers you, then think of it as “Gmaj9/B” or simply use the G chord, with G in the bass, as we did in Line 2. Your ears should be the final judge as to which chord makes it in your arrangement.

Finally you end on C. Here you actually have two measures to have some fun in. Play some arpeggios with the C major chord to fill in the space or just let the chord ring for a while before starting the fourth line.

If you’d prefer to hang around in open position, you can begin Line 3 with a simple ascent from the C# (second fret of the B string) to D to E, as shown in the “Alternate Start of Third Line” above.

Line Four (and Five):

Line 4 begins the same way that Line 2 did. Here I’m throwing in a hammer-on to mimic the vocal, but you can just start with the F# note if you’d like:

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In the third measure, we have one more go ’round with the descending melody line we encountered in the third measure of the last two lines. But here the accompanying chord is C. I’ve found that using Cmaj7 as a “basic chord” here works best with my fingers. And I also like the spooky sound the F# in the melody gives to the underlying chord.

You probably want to finger this the same way you did the measure of G in Line 2, using your middle finger on the bass and your index finger on the F#. This also allows you to shift the index finger over to the E note at the second fret of the D string with no trouble at all.

You end this line with a measure of G. I’ve notated a simple sample arpeggio, but you should feel free to try out some of your own or to just let the chord ring out. While the end of Line 4 gives you another chance to mess around with arpeggios, you might want to tame things down a little at the end of Line 5 just to create a space between the verses. You can also use this as a way to end the song at the close of the third verse:

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I hope you had fun with this lesson and that you enjoy playing, and playing around with, After The Gold Rush. This is a wonderful song for getting comfortable with chord melodies and chord melody-styled arrangements.

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

Peace

After The Gold Rush – Neil Young was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

As mentioned in the aforementioned lesson (note to self – stop writing so self-consciously!), I had the dickens of a time figuring out which song to put on which lesson page. They are both relatively easy to play and both offer wonderful things to learn in terms of chord voicing and arrangement. So do me a favor – if you are someone who only reads the Intermediates lessons, take a hop over to the Beginners page and check out God Put A Smile Upon Your Face. Try out both lessons and feel free to write me where you would have put each one (and why).

And if you’re here at Guitar Noise’s Songs for Intermediates page for the very first time, a hearty welcome to you! Our Intermediates Song Lessons are, quite often, not that difficult as far as playing them, but sometimes they can be involved in terms of the ideas going on behind the music. Get a seat, grab your guitar and let’s go!

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.

If you’re a newcomer to these lessons, it’s probably also a good idea to bore you with a little philosophy. Many of these lessons are geared toward playing a particular song but with a single guitar. Since many of us tend to play as solo performers, I tend to write the lessons with that in mind. Each song lesson is meant to work on many levels – not simply to learn a particular song, but to learn about music theory, song arrangement and a score of other little things that you can use in whatever song you play. In other words, don’t dismiss a lesson simply because of the song (or style of song or the artist who originally did the song, etc.,) in question. It’s my humble hope that you will find some small bit of advice in each lesson that will help you to become a better guitarist, a smarter guitarist and a well-rounded musician.

That being said, and if you’re at all familiar with Don’t Panic, you’ll understand the gist of today’s lesson – how do we take a song with multiple layers of guitars and effects and turn it into something we can perform with (relative) ease and a single guitar?

The answer to that is the answer to most of our lessons – we do it with some thought. On the surface, Don’t Panic is a very simple song. In terms of structure, we have an introduction, which is four measures of Fmaj7, followed by three verses. Using the first verse as an example, each verse can be broken down as follows, with each part being repeated twice:

If you want to, you can think of this as a “verse – chorus” structure. What I’ve labeled as “Part One” would be the verse and “Part Two” (the “…we live in a beautiful world…” part) would be the chorus. Either way you think of it, these two parts make up the entire song, that is, outside of the short introduction.

On the recording, we get the Intro, then the first verse (or verse and chorus if you will), and then the second verse. “Part One” of the third verse is an instrumental break while “Part Two” is sung. Then “Part One” is played four more times, the first two as an instrumental and the last two with what we might call the “outro,” which ends the song.

So let’s get right into things, shall we? The Intro, as I mentioned, is four measures of Fmaj7 being strummed. But, naturally, that’s not all there is to it! We’re going to use a little technique that I described in the Fall 2005 issue of Play Guitar! Magazine to make the strumming a little more fun and interesting:

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What we’re doing here is a simple thing – we start with our Fmaj7 chord. You can use the three-finger approach (open first (high E) string, index finger on the first fret of the B string, middle finger on the second fret of the G string and ring finger on the third fret of the D) or make a “four finger” voicing (this is what I show in the above notation – fingering is the same except the pinky is on the third fret of the D string while the ring finger plays the third fret of the A), either is perfectly fine. If you want a little more bass, you can also wrap the tip of your thumb around to grasp the first fret of the low E (sixth) string. Whichever way you decide to form this chord is perfectly all right.

Once we have it in place, we’re going to strum it with a downstroke on the first beat and then with an upstroke on the second half of the second half of the second beat. You may hear me hit the string with a percussive stroke on the “down” of the second beat. That’s totally optional. For me, this helps me to keep the tempo steady. And you’ll hear me use it to that effect later when we come to the “solo” section. On the second half of the fourth be, we remove our index and middle fingers from the chord, letting the open B and G strings ring for a moment before reforming the chord by hammering our index and middle fingers back on to their original notes for the downstroke on the first beat of the following measure. You can either hit the full chord on the downbeat or simply let the hammer-on create that first beat of the second measure.

By the way, in case you’re wondering what chord we’re forming by taking our fingers off those two strings, it’s Fmaj9(#11). Aren’t you glad you asked? Or look at it this way – you can now go and show off to your friends (“I can play Fmaj9(#11)! I’ll show you how for a dollar!”) And if for some reason the sound of the Fma9(#11) doesn’t appeal to you, just go with a simple Fmaj9, which you’ll get by opening up only the G string (meaning you want to keep your index finger on the first fret of the B).

As always, take your time getting this down. You’ll find you can embellish this pattern at least seven thousand, two hundred and eighteen ways once you’re comfortable with it. But you have to start with getting it right at the start. I find that, more often than not, I end up in this pattern:

This is, obviously, a little different from the original recording. To me, it’s a little more “filled out” and, since it’s the same pattern I use to strum “Part One” of the verse, it helps me to get the song going without worrying about having to immediately change my strumming pattern. And speaking of “Part One,” let’s look at how that shapes up:

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As I just mentioned, this pattern is so close to what you’ve practiced it on the Intro (and it’s the same one as Pattern 1A), you should have little problem with it on this part of the verses. Because the Fmaj7 covers two measures, I tend to throw in that little embellishment we discussed in the Intro section, where you hammer on and off if the B and G strings. You can even get more into it by creating your Fmaj9(#11) in the middle of the second third and fourth measures like this:

We’ve got more than half of the song done now, but don’t congratulate yourself too quickly as we’re not quite done with “Part One” just yet! Let’s come back to it in a moment, though, and for now concentrate on “Part Two.” On the original recording, this is where you can hear a second electric guitar part quite distinctly. According to the TABs for this song that I’ve read (both in books and on the Internet), this is what it’s doing:

That’s all fine and dandy, but there’s no way that I’m going to make a transition from the simple, open position strumming of “Part One” to this guitar part seamlessly. Or is there?

Let’s go back to what’s being played in the original recording and ask ourselves a question; “I know what the guitarist is playing but what, actually, do I hear?” Chances are likely that the notes you hear clearly are the ones being played on the B string, which are A, B and C, and this makes sense because these notes are also shadowing the melody line (“…we live in a beautiful world…”).

We also know from our charts that, at this point in the song, Dm is the chord we’ll be carrying in the rhythm. So I think of playing Dm in such a way that the A note will stick out most and, because I’ve read that wonderful article Moving On Up, I know to use this form:

Strumming this voicing of Dm, I realize two important things: First, coming from the Fmaj7 that immediately precedes it, I’m not sacrificing anything in terms of speed (how fast I can change chords) or body (whether or not it sounds like I’ve lost my rhythm section!). Secondly, and this is the big bonus, in position I can actually fret all the notes that the second guitar part plays on the B string on my first (high E) string. If I finger this Dm voicing with my index finger on the fifth fret of the high E (first) string, my middle finger on the sixth fret of the B string and my ring finger on the seventh fret of the G (leaving the D and A strings open for my bass notes), it’s no trouble at all to use my pinky to get the B note (seventh fret) and C note (eighth fret) of the high E (first) string. Try it and see:

I have to change my strumming pattern to straight eighth notes to make it sound like the original second guitar part, but that’s a piece of cake. But now I have a new question to deal with: I want to go from my Dm to Am, so do I stay where I am or do I go back to first position? Let’s look at and then try some possibilities:

I’m not really enamored of doing the full barre Am of the first scenario. I’ve grown to liking the ringing strings and I see (and hear) no reason to stop using them. But the switch back to the open position Am of the last example seems too abrupt. Even though the second example uses Am7 instead of Am, I’m very happy with both the sound and the ease with which I can shift from my Dm to this voicing. So it’s a winner. And it also comes with a wonderful “bonus” point that I’ll tell you about shortly.

First, I want to break up the rhythm a little bit. After doing two straight measures of eighth notes, I’m thinking that it might be nice to have a little strumming rest. This would also be good with the break in the vocals (right before the “yeah we do, yeah we do” part). So I’m going to try using the same rhythm in the next measure, the one with G, that’s coming up.

And speaking of the G in measure four of “Part Two,” listening again to the original recording (or reading the TABs), I hear that it’s actually a Gsus4 resolving to G, played up on the fifteenth fret of the first (high E) string and the thirteenth (for the Gsus4) and twelfth (for the G) frets of the B string. Since that it simply an octave higher than the same chords in open position, I decide to give them a try and I find out that they sound fine.

After trying this a few times, though, I find I’d like to add just a touch more. So, taking my cue again from the melody, I tack on the F (first fret of the high E (first) string) and the E of the open first string, almost as an afterthought that nicely fills out the rest of this measure. So now I’ve got the first go-’round of “Part Two” down to the point where I’m happy with them:

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As we noted earlier, the only difference in the second pass of “Part Two” is that the fourth measure is Am and not G. Actually, a close listen to the original recording tells us that the second electric guitar is playing single notes: E to F to A and then E to F, like a trill but very slowly. This is not the easiest thing to do with an open position Am or even an Fmaj7, but it is quite simple to accomplish when we’re using a partial barre on the fifth fret as we did earlier. While barring (actually partially barring) the fifth fret with my index finger, I use my ring or middle finger to hammer on and off of the sixth fret of the B string. So let’s add that to the mix and take a look (and listen) to the second half of “Part Two,” shall we?

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So, for all intents and purposes, we’ve got a finished song here. Well, I don’t know about you, but I haven’t forgotten the “Instrumental” pass of “Part One” which makes up the third verse. In fact, since on the original recording, the lead line pretty much follows the vocal, and since the vocal line is, pardon the pun, readily within our grasp while playing first position chords, I think we might want to give it a try:

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Here we start with the Am chord and (after a short percussive downstroke) place the pinky on the third fret of the high E (first) string to get the G note of the melody. We then need to shift our index finger up to the first fret of the first string to get the F and then remove it to get the E of the open string.

Basically, we repeat the same pattern for the measure of C, but add an extra F note be hammering onto the first fret with our index finger once again. I like to use Cmaj7 instead of C here in order to have the index finger free at the start. It’s a little thing and it does change the sound in a subtle way, but it does work fine. We end with two measures of Fmaj7, taken almost verbatim from the introduction.

If you’d like a little more of a challenge, then come up with a short fill for the second measure of Fmaj7. Here’s one off the top of my head (and no jokes about that, please):

By using the “three finger” form of Fmaj7, my pinky is free to get the D note at the third fret of the B string. The rest of the fill is simply lifting my fingers on and off the B and G strings. One thing to note is that I finish this fill with an open string. My reasons for that is that it allows me to change easily to either Am (when we do a repeat of these four measures) or Dm (which is the start of “Part Two”). Your fill doesn’t have to do so, but I do find it helps me to not be losing the rhythm because I’ve lost my fingers!

The use of a fill is also helpful when we come to the outro. As mentioned earlier, it’s simply a repeat of “Part One” again, but that’s no reason for us to repeat what we’ve done earlier. On the original recording, the second electric guitar plays E and C (twelfth fret of the high E (first) string and thirteenth fret of the B string respectively) in alternating eighth notes over the measures of Am and C before going back to the E and F trill pattern it uses at the very end of “Part Two.” This is not the easiest thing to do while trying to hold together the rhythm (not to mention using open position chords!) as well. So let’s try a variation of that, staggering the rhythm a little bit. We can even use it throughout the two measures of Fmaj7 if we’d like. It certainly fits and it sounds pretty cool. But, instead, let’s add a fill much like the one we just tacked onto the Instrumental section for the second measure, perhaps something like this:

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Again, by using a three-finger version of Fmaj7 along with opening up the B string for the second measure, we’re nicely freed up both the index finger and pinky so that they can easily accommodate this little fill.

And that pretty much gets us through the whole of Don’t Panic. For the last two lines of the outro, which are sung, simply play what we’ve played for “Part One,” only on the last line you hang onto the Fmaj7 you play and let the chord (and the vocal) trail off. Oh, and just in case (pardon the pun) your someone who keeps tabs on theses things, the original recording is played at a tempo of about 122 BPM.

I’ve done all these examples up to this point on a plain ol’ acoustic guitar. Just to give you an idea of other things you can do, here is a version of the Intro, a verse and chorus, the solo (with chorus) and Outro performed on the acoustic with a little bit of chorus and echo:

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As you can hear, there’s a world of difference a little bit of effects can make. But it’s very important that your arrangements, or at least the majority of your arrangements, can be played just as effectively (no pun intended) without any added paraphernalia. Being able to play the basics should always come before your worries about tone and effects.

I hope you had fun with this lesson and that you enjoy playing Don’t Panic, either on your own or with some friends or even just along with the original CD.

Remember not every song you know will translate so readily into a single-guitar arrangement. With some you might have to sacrifice a lot more of the material from the original recording. With others, it just might be that it’s not the sound that you want – and it’s important to know how to tell between the sound you “want” and the sound you’re used to from the original. A song like Don’t Panic works well because you’re not asking your listeners to take too far a trip from what they are already familiar with. But that doesn’t mean you couldn’t come up with a radically different version and still have it be both fun to play and appreciated by your audience.

Remember too how all these lessons, both here on the Songs for Intermediates page and on the Easy Songs for Beginners page, are meant to be more than just “how to play a song you like” lessons. Try to take some time (and effort) to apply the lessons on chord voicing and arranging (and listening!) that you learned here to other songs you know. Most musicians will tell you that the ability to improvise and to think on one’s feet comes from time spent experimenting, from trial and error. Don’t be afraid to make errors! And be certain to take notes of what you do so you don’t have to spend a lot of time trying to recreate something that you forgot how you did it in the first place!

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

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Don’t Panic – Coldplay was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise