There are days when I could use the services of the Sorting Hat. This song lesson, a look at John Prine’s Hello In There, from his eponymous 1971 debut album, could easily be place in the Easy Songs for Beginners section. It’s not really all that hard, once you get the picking pattern into your fingers. And, as always, the picking pattern is simply a guideline. You could come up with all sorts of ways of playing it, even simply strumming instead of picking when you know the chord progression.

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:

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

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

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

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

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

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:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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:

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

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

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

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Good songs, like any works of art, are multi-dimensional. They have layers that don’t reveal themselves on a first listen. It’s only after repeated exposure that you even begin to glimpse a hint of the various parts and start to hear how they all work together. This is one reason why coming up with single guitar arrangements for songs is both frustrating and also immensely satisfying.

Sailing to Philadelphia, from the 2000 album of the same name by Mark Knopler, 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:

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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:

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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:

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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:

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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:

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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?

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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

Since we’ve been doing a lot of finger style guitar work of late here in the Songs for Intermediates pages, and since we’re celebrating Bob Dylan’s birthday by having him as Guitar Noise’s featured artist this month, let’s try our hand at Buckets of Rain, the closing song from the classic Blood on the Tracks album. It may seem like it’s going to be a lot of work, but once you’re comfortable with the basic pattern, it’s not all that hard to play. And it also offers us a chance to develop our ability to play syncopated rhythms, not to mention making us sharpen our sliding technique.

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.

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:

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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:

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

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.

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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

Originally, I had intended this lesson to be part of the “Easy Songs for Beginners” series here at Guitar Noise. Why? Well, if you’ve taken a shot at our two lessons on basic Travis finger style guitar, Let Your Fingers Do the Talking or Add a Pinch, then you should find a song like Dust in the Wind to be relatively easy to work out. In fact, those of you who’ve worked through Add a Pinch probably already have the introduction to this song down cold. And I guess that this is a good time to mention that if you’ve not looked at either of those lessons, you might want to do so. You’ll actually get everything you need to play this song.

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:

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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

One of the (many) recurring themes throughout Guitar Noise, whether you’re working through the various song lessons, reading the Guitar Columns, playing along with the Podcasts or even chatting with folks on the Forum pages, is that we truly want you to know it’s okay to not play a song exactly the way it is on the original recording. Yes, there are all sorts of good reasons to be able to make a musical carbon copy of a song, just as there are numerous compelling reasons not to. My own philosophy is that I’d like to hear someone create music more than I’d like to hear someone copy music. Personal tastes, I’m sure, and you’re more than welcome to your own thoughts on this matter.

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

Okay, one more lesson featuring a descending walking bass line! Oh, and we’ll throw in some Travis picking and pinching), too, so we can keep those skills practiced with some regularity. And how about we also look at the whole idea of picking and chord voicings in general? Sound like fun?

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

Tonality, or thinking of a song in terms of a key or tonal center, is an interesting thing. Sometimes you can play a chord and think, “This just doesn’t fit.” This is especially true if you rely on Internet tablature sites!

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

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.

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

Not too long ago, someone posted a request up our “Easy Song Database” page over on the Guitar Noise Forums concerning the Dire Straits song Walk of Life. The request wasn’t for the chords or tab, but rather for help with strumming the song. It’d been ages since I’d heard it but I did remember that the rhythm guitar part is simply a rock shuffle, such as those covered in our Easy Songs for Beginners’ lesson on Roll Over Beethoven.

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

So I’m sitting and thinking to myself, “Self, it’s been ages it seems since we’ve had an intermediate song lesson. It also seems like it’s been ages since we’ve done something with an alternate tuning. And when was the last time we did a Neil Young song?”

So guess what?

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.

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

I never know how to answer when someone asks me if a particular song is “easy” or “intermediate” or “hard.” To my mind it’s all a matter of arrangements. You can make a “hard” song easier. And you can easily take any “easy” song and make it harder

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

As I’ve mentioned more than enough times on these pages, singing is not my strong point. Playing isn’t either, but you go with what you’ve got in either case. The arrangements I come up with tend to rely a lot of the various techniques of chord melody, if for no other reason than to give my voice some extra support.

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

If you’ve read my last Easy Songs For Beginners lesson, God Put A Smile Upon Your Face, the choice for this Intermediates lesson will be no surprise to you. We’re going to tackle, Don’t Panic, the opening cut of Coldplay’s album Parachutes, as well as the first song on the Garden State movie soundtrack.

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

I had originally planned to write this lesson ages ago. First as part of the Christmas stuff, (for Christmas back in 2002!), and then again with last year’s holiday songs. Somehow, though, other things that needed attention kept popping up and I kept saying to myself, “Tomorrow.” At one point, I think I even toyed with the idea of saving this for my “swan song,” whenever that moment came when I knew this would be my last lesson for Guitar Noise. Talk about being silly!

But, as part of my own New Year’s Resolutions, I’d like to start replacing whatever “tomorrows” I can with “todays.” And even though I know I won’t always be able to live up to this resolution, I can’t think of a better song than this one, John Lennon’s Imagine, to at least start my resolution off on the right foot.

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.

Imagine is well known to just about everyone. And just about everyone pegs it as a “piano song” and so you don’t often hear a guitarist do an interesting version of it. And to me that’s very sad. A beautiful song like this should be played whenever one has the chance to do it. So let’s play it, shall we? After all, that’s what these lessons are all about.

First, a bit of history that has nothing at all to do with the actual song, but quite a bit with the arrangement you’re about to learn. I was going through a book of classical guitar exercises at some point in the early 1980s. One particular piece involved playing inverted thirds over a pedal point and, for whatever reason, it was in the key of D major. Part of the exercise involved going from A7 to D and used these particular notes to do so:

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And when I played it, I said to myself, “Hey! That’s Imagine!” Truly, I did. And I had to stop right then and there and figure out how to do the whole song, incorporating this phrase. Not having a recording of the song in the house to work off of didn’t stop me in the least! This is why my version of Imagine is done in the key of D and also why my version, while incorporating familiar parts of the original recording, sounds a little different. D major also happens to be a key in which I can sing this song. Not owning a copy of the original recording, I can’t even tell you the key John Lennon plays this in. But I’m certain that many of you will be happy to write me and let me know. And if you’re reading this lesson in, say, the year 2008, rest assured I’ve gotten thousands of emails telling me what key it’s in.

In terms of structure, we can’t have it too much easier. Imagine consists of a verse, then a second verse, then a chorus, then a final verse and chorus. Let’s take a look at the chords that go along with the lyrics:

You can see that this song is going to be reasonably friendly to learn. Simplifying the chords as much as possible to start with, the first four lines of each verse alternate between one measure of D and one of G. The last two lines of the verses are one measure of G, one measure of Em and two measures of A7. The chorus is a repeated pattern of G, A (or A7), D and F# for two beats each. In the very last line of the chorus, we replace the F# with two extra beats of D.

Using this simple chord chart (or “cheat sheet”) version as a template, we now have the task of arranging Imagine into something more than just strumming the chords along with the singing. First thing we want to do is to once again think about turning our guitar into a piano. We’ve done this sort of thing, this “disguising” of the guitar, before in some of our past lessons, like Your Song, where we tried to mimic the phrasing of a piano, and in Losing My Religion, where we created some nice mandolin-like parts for our instrument.

In Imaginewe want to again be thinking like a piano. One way of doing that is to use a bit of partial chord playing, like this:

Here we’re basically playing a D chord, but adding the E note (the open first (high E) string) and then going back to the D note on the third fret of the B string. This use of the Dsus2 creates a little bit of tonal tension, which is very quickly resolved. It’s catchy and easy and something that pianists do a lot.

This would be a good place for me to mention (in case you didn’t read it at the start of Example #1) that you want to try to let the strings ring out as much as possible. The overtones of the open high E (first) string, for instance, create a big part of the sound we’re striving for. In the various MP3s you’ll hear this ringing adds a lot to the song’s arrangement.

I’ve given you four different ways of picking this, three using your fingers and one with a pick, or general strumming. In all three finger-style methods, you use your thumb to get the D note of the open fourth string. When you pick with your thumb (labeled ” T” in the notation), you also use you your ring finger (labeled ” a“) or your middle finger (labeled ” m“) to pluck the open high E (first) string. For the next pair of notes, the D on the third fret of the B string and the A at the second fret of the G string, you can use any of the following methods: (1) your middle and index (labeled ” i“) fingers, on the B and G strings respectively. This is very much in the classical style of playing and, if you can manage it (which I highly recommend), you’ll find yourself able to handle many complex patterns with relative ease. The second method (2) uses the index finger to strike both the B and G strings. This is done with a short, upward “sweep” of the finger. I use this technique a lot and you’ll hear this version of the picking done in the MP3s that go along with our lesson. Method three (3) uses the thumb to strike both the open D string and then the A note on the G string. Even though I’ve indicated using your middle finger on the open high E (first) string, many people might find it easier to use your index finger instead. In other words, you can essentially play this with just your thumb and index finger, which may make some of you very happy!

And, of course, you can also use a pick and strum, which is demonstrated in the last part of Example #2. You don’t have to use a pick to do this. In our final MP3, which is done on the twelve-string guitar, you’ll occasionally hear me use my thumb to get all the notes on the downstroke and then get back into the regular picking pattern. So you see you’ve got a lot of options and, personally, I think that you might want to take the time to try each method and see what you like. But you already knew I was going to say that, right?

Me, I’m sticking with “method two” for now and trying to move on to the G chord. In my mind (because, as you’ll remember, I’m doing this without the benefit of an original recording to listen to), I can hear Lennon’s piano doing something like this:

And as pretty as this is, I’m thinking that it’s also going to get pretty monotonous as a guitar part. But what part of this do I want to change? I like the beginning part of the measure and the end as well. Also they seem pretty essential to the song. So why not replace the second and third beats of the measure of G with something like this:

Here, I’m being very careful to use both my middle finger and index finger for the notes on the B and G strings, respectively. I definitely don’t want the first two sets of notes to be a pull-off; they sound much nicer if fully articulated. On the last beat, though, a hammer-on to get the C# on the second fret of the B string works perfectly fine.

And while coming up with this arrangement, I’m thinking to myself that I’ve found a nice balance – I am evoking the original piano music while still letting people clearly hear that this is a guitar. That’s not always an easy balance to achieve, but I believe we have done so in a simple, yet elegant, fashion.

As always, take the time to practice this, as much time as you need in order to make the changes smoothly and cleanly. And when you’re ready, let’s attempt the first four lines of the verse:

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And guess what? You’ve now got better than half the song down cold! It’s also good in that you’ve got a nice pattern going in both your head and fingers and that will help you throughout the rest of Imagine. Before I forget, you can use this pattern of two measures as an introduction, repeating it as often as you’d like. Usually two times through the chord changes is good enough to get things going.

Speaking of the rest of the song, let’s finish up the verse. The last two lines of each verse end the same, but the first verse, as we’ve seen, goes directly into verse two while the second and third verses are followed by the chorus. Fortunately for us, this does not involve a lot of extra work. Let’s take the last two lines in and of themselves first and then look at how they make their turnarounds into either the verse or the chorus. Here we go:

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Now the first thing you may be wondering to yourself is probably, “Hey! Where did those new chords come from?” Well, that’s me just using some theory to make our arrangement a tad bit more interesting. Let’s back up a moment and pretend we stuck with our cheat sheet, which, as you recall, has one full measure of G and one of Em. We could have easily come up with some simple G and Em arpeggios like this:

Compared to what we’ve been doing so far in Imagine, this seems a little static. It’s nice and all, but even though it’s all arpeggios it seems to lack movement. So we’re going to use a bit of a descending bass line to generate some motion. First, why don’t we try going from G to Em by using the F# note (second fret of the low E (sixth) string) in our bass, comme ca:

This is definitely an improvement. But I think I would like something a bit more dramatic. Using the F# in the bass is certainly a good idea, at least to my ears (and if you’re wondering why I chose F# instead of F, just remember that we’re in the key of D. These are simply notes found in the D major scale), and since F# is also part of the D chord, what say we try something like this:

I really like the sound of this! Now I’m going to punch up the changes a little by giving the G to F# to E a little more emphasis. And while we’re at it, let’s expand on this use of the D scale in order to run our bass line down one more step from E (in the first two beats of Em) to D, creating an Em/D chord for the last two beats.

And that sounds just like the MP3 of Example #6, no? Two other things I like about this are that (a) I can pretty much pick any of my guitar’s six strings and as long as I’m holding onto the chord in question, nothing will sound bad and (b) the Em/D gives me a chance to remove all my fingers from the neck and give them a bit of a break. It’s good to be nice to your hands every now and then!

How does one decide to do any of these particular changes? First off, having played a while I know that whenever you’ve got a G to Em chord progression, this is always a possibility. It doesn’t always sound good and quite often the timing is not always as simple as this one is. But I’m always on the lookout for this progression as well as any other movement between one chord and its relative minor (or I to VI, for those of you into the Roman Numeral aspect of theory). You can do the same thing we’ve done here when switching between C and Am, F and Dm or D and Bm, just to name a few. And it’s things like this why I tell you that knowing theory, even the tiniest bit of it, is not the handicap that many would lead you to believe.

(And if you’d like to think and learn a little more about this sort of thing, keep an eye out for the upcoming Easy Songs for Beginners piece on, no lie, You Are My Sunshine.)

Finally, the last line of the verse brings us to A7 and the little classical exercise I showed you at the beginning of this lesson. We’re actually tracking the melody notes on the B string while creating a harmony line on the D string. And to top it all off, we’re using the open A string as a pedal point. If there’s a trick to this, it’s using your middle finger to fret all of the notes on the D string. When the accompanying note on the B string is on the same fret (the second and fifth frets in this case), use your ring finger on the B string. When you need a finger on a different fret, like when you want the F# on the fourth fret of the D string and the D at the third fret of the B string, then your index finger is in perfect position to play that note. This is something we’ve run into time and again in our lessons and I hope it’s a habit you get into. It will certainly make your playing smooth as you change from note to note. And if I ever write up a lesson on Brown Eyed Girl, then you’ll have had plenty of practice to play the intro!

Meanwhile, though, we’ve still got to continue here with Imagine. Once we’ve reached the end of the verse, we will either move on to the second verse or start in on the chorus. And, for me anyway, this is a tricky part of the song. In the original recording, this is where John does a little lilting “Ah ah ah ah ah” with his voice and I cannot do that without sounding pretty silly. So I let my guitar do it instead. Since we’re already tracking along the melody line, it’s not all that hard to keep doing that. It involves doing a double slide on the B and D strings (ring and middle fingers, respectively) and adding the A note at the fifth fret of the high E (first) string with our index finger:

Occasionally, as you’ll hear in the upcoming MP3s, I hit the open A string again, usually simply to keep the beat going. You can, if you’d like, change the timing a little, making the last two sets of notes eighth notes instead of sixteenths, as I do in the next MP3. That’s a matter of personal style. Mixing it up a little during a performance also adds a bit of flair.

As I mentioned earlier, the only thing you have to worry about at this juncture of the song is where you’re going. If you’ve just finished the first verse and are starting the second, you’ll want to nail that D note but then get right back into your original picking pattern. This will mean sacrificing a few notes at the start, but you’ll soon be right back into the swing of things:

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If you’re moving on to the chorus, from either the second or the third verse, then you’ll be going to a G chord. The D note (third fret of the B string) will still be your target, but you’ll want to obviously change the chord accompaniment like this:

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Of course, we’re not going to simply stop on a whole note of G when we get to the chorus! I just wanted to get us here. And now that we have finally reached the chorus, you’ll find it very much like the picking pattern we’ve used throughout the song thus far, but slightly sparser. Let’s take a look and a listen:

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We only have four chords to worry about here, but it’s also important to give each one its due. The G is pretty straightforward; the only noticeable thing about it is that we’re using the D note (third fret of the B string) as our high note and not playing the high E (first) string at all. I prefer using A7 to A, but either chord will sound fine. I particularly like the way the A7 sounds when I switch from the C# (second fret of the B string) to the open B string. This is, as if you needed me to tell you (!), just me following along the melody line whenever I can. The D is played, picking-wise, almost exactly as the G. And that leaves the F# chord. As you’ll note, I like to play one beat of F# and one of F#7. The reason for this is that it creates a nice descending melody on the high E string. Since this takes part in a section where there is no singing, it brings some dynamics to the chorus that it wouldn’t normally have with just a single instrument. It’s a little reminiscent of the piano and the strings in the original recording.

In the last MP3 you’ll hear me play these two chords with straight downstrokes as opposed to the arpeggios you just heard. Something like this:

And before you ask, there are all sorts of ways to play these particular chord voicings. I usually play the F# as a straight barre chord and the F#7 with the open E string, my index finger on the second fret of the B string, my middle finger on the third fret of the G string, my pinky on the fourth fret of the D string, my ring finger on the fourth fret of the A string and my thumb grabbing the F# in the bass (second fret of the low E (sixth) string). But sometimes I will start out with the fully barred F# and then slightly raise my index finger to get the open high E (first) string in order to make the F#7. Sometimes I will also play the F# in much the same way I described the F#7, that is with my thumb grabbing the bass note and my index finger catching the second fret on both the high E (first) string and the B string.

In the second line of the chorus, I change the D chord slightly, hitting the A note (second fret of the G string) first in order to (surprise!) echo the melody. You don’t have to. I just find it nice to change my patterns every now and then.

And I take this “follow the melody” pattern to task in the last line of the chorus:

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To do this, I use my pinky to get all the notes “non-A7″ notes (the F# at the second fret of the high E (first) string and the D at the third fret of the B string) in the last two beats of this first measure. Once again the spirit of The Little Drummer Boy raises his head!

Because this is a little busy, I give myself a breather on the measure of D, just letting it ring and not worrying about doing an ascending bass line up to the next verse as they do on the original recording. If you’re younger than me or feel you need the exercise or simply want to show off, you can do something like this:

And I think that, ladies and gentlemen, pretty much covers things. I hope you had fun with this lesson and that you enjoy playing around with this song. And I truly hope that you go out of your way to include it in your repertoire and play it whenever you have the chance. It’s beautiful and relatively easy to get into your fingers. Take the time to practice it and you’ll also find yourself using little bits of it when you least expect it!

I particularly want to take a moment to thank everyone in the Guitar Noise community for their support over the past five years, and this past year in particular. Consider this lesson my Chinese New Year’s gift to you all. Here’s an MP3 of two verses and the chorus done on the twelve-string guitar:

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And, as always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns, criticisms or whatever 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

Before I forget, I’d like to thank Tim, otherwise known as Musenfreund, the Guitar Noise Forum Page’s resident Beatlephile, for his assistance with this lesson. And not just this one, but the Easy Songs for Beginners’ piece, Nowhere Man, as well.

And I guess that while I’m trying not to forget things that I should get this out of the way:

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.

I hope you’ve brought your fingers with you today! We’re going to add another Beatles’ song to our repertoire, the hauntingly beautiful Julia, written by John Lennon and originally released on the group’s self titled album that we all tend to call The White Album.

And I also hope you’ve brought a bit of patience, because, as I’m certain you all know by now, I’m not going to teach you the note-by-note transcription. Far from it, actually! For starters, I don’t think that it’s fair to use this particular song as a lesson in what’s called “Travis picking” (more on that in just a moment), especially as we’ve never truly attempted that in any of our lessons as yet. But I want you to be able to learn that just because a song seems incredibly complex and difficult, it doesn’t mean that you can’t come up with a version of it that not only you can play, but play well enough so that everyone will want to hear you play it, too!

This doesn’t mean that we’re going to have a completely easy go of it, though! After all, this is the “Intermediates” section, so you’re going to have to do a bit of work! But I think that, with some time and energy on your part, you’ll find yourself more than up to the task.

Yet another reason for my choosing this song as a lesson is that Julia is, to put it mildly, a quirky song. The structure, as folks are more than happy to point out, is slightly askew; the chord progressions enchanting in their gentle dissonances and even gentler resolutions.

We’ll also take the time, as we did in Nowhere Man, to look at some basic (and not so basic) chord substitutions and to even throw in a small flourish or two of our own.

So take a deep breath and blow on your fingertips and let’s get started!

As I mentioned a moment ago, Julia doesn’t fit very well into what we tend to think of as a “typical” song structure. People can (and do!) wrangle over what to call the “verse” and “chorus” and I can’t help but wonder what the point is in doing so. To me, it’s far simpler to break the song into “sections” as opposed to the traditional verse/chorus approach. Let’s take a look at a “cheat sheet” for Julia and

I hope it will help better explain things. By the bye, if you’re going to play along with the original recording (or this lesson’s MP3 examples), it’s once again time to get your trusty capo. On the recording, Julia is in the key of D. We’ll be using our capo on the second fret and playing in the key of C. As usual, all of the music notation, TAB and even this cheat sheet are written with that in mind:

What I’ve done here is to break the song down in terms of structure – not a verse/chorus sort of structure, but rather one based on what the song does in terms of chord progressions and measures. The very first part I call “Section A.” It is eight measures long and runs through two cycles of the chord progression C, Am7, Em and G (each chord holds for one measure of four beats). Normally, I would call this an “Introduction,” (you’ll hear me call it the “prologue” in an upcoming MP3) but this identical section repeats later on, about two thirds of the way through the song.

Likewise, Section B, which I consider the main body of this piece, repeats itself several times. It starts with the same two chords (C and Am7) as Section A and then goes wildly off on its own before coming back to the final two chords of Section A, namely Em and G.

There is a Section C, which is totally unlike either of these other two segments. This could truly be called the “bridge” of the song without too much fear of an endless and pointless debate. But, of course, having just said that, I now have to wait and see what kind of debate I’ve stirred up!

And finally, just to make our lives more interesting, there is also an “OUTRO,” Section D, if you’re so inclined. It’s the last of many of the little treasures of this song, and by no means worth slighting.

There’s one other thing in this cheat sheet that might confuse you. Some of the “Section Bs” have an “a” in parentheses underneath the word Julia. This indicates places on the original recording where the vocal part overlaps. While this effect is beautiful on the record, it’s pretty close to impossible for the single singer/guitarist trying to get by on his or her lonesome. Stick a red flag on that as we’re bound to come back to it!

And now that we’ve broken things down, shall we tackle them one by one?

Section A

Listening to the original recording, Julia is a classic example of what’s called Travis picking. The story goes that Donovan, another sixties pop icon, taught John and Paul this very popular and extremely versatile style of play. Simply put, Travis picking uses an alternating bass pattern, the likes of which we’ve seen in a number of our lessons (the first instance being, I believe, Margaritaville). The thumb plays the bass note on the beat, keeping the tempo steady and true. The fingers, meanwhile, can play either on or off the beat. Quite often they do both. Here is the finger pattern John Lennon used all those years ago:

Okay, if we haven’t gone over this before, now’s a good time to understand a bit of notation. You might be looking at that and saying to yourself, “Poor Dave’s gone off again! There’s no less than seven quarter notes in that first measure and I know there should only be four!”

Let’s approach this by starting with something you already know about playing the guitar: each finger could be playing notes of different lengths during any given measure. A conventional way of dealing with this is to write the “thumb’s” notes (that is the bass notes) with downturned stems and uses notes with upturned stems to indicate the notes meant to be played with the fingers. And indeed, if you count the notes with downturned stems, you’ll find that there are four quarter notes in each measure. So far so good!

Looking at the upturned stems, though, I count only three. That means we’ve dropped a beat somewhere, right? Well, fortunately, there are also two half-beat rests. That would account for the missing beat. If I were to divide this measure into half-beats, this is how we’d play it:

And now I hate to throw cold water over everything, but we’re not even going to deal with this picking pattern in today’s lesson. However, it never hurts to get a head start on something we’ll be using in the future, no?

The reasons we’re going to simplify this are many, and I’ve touched upon a few of them earlier. But if you need one immediately, then try singing the first line of this song while picking this pattern. That’s a bit tough, isn’t it?

As I’ve noted in many of our lessons, most of these arrangements have come from my desire to perform a particular song, and, as you undoubtedly know by now, “perform” is not synonymous with “copy.” When I’m performing, I have to know that there are going to be as few glitches as possible in my playing and I also want my playing to compliment and strengthen my voice wherever and whenever possible.

So the first thing I want to do with our arrangement of Julia is to simplify the basic finger pattern a bit, something along these lines:

The idea here is twofold. First, hold onto the chord as much as possible (one less thing to worry about while singing). Second, let the strings ring as much as possible, again while hanging on to the chord whenever I can. Using this pattern, we can adjust our “chart” to read like this:

You can see by comparing our two charts that we’ve only dropped one note, the one on the third beat, from the pattern. In addition, we’ve changed the last note, played on the fourth beat, from the E on the second fret of the D string to the open G. Why? No real reason, as you’ll see in a minute. And, as you’ll hear in a moment, you don’t lose as much as you think you might.

But before we lock into a pattern, I want to do one more thing. I want to add an additional ringing note on the first beat, like this:

The only difference here, as I mentioned, is in the first beat:

By the way, which finger should you use? As per convention, I try to use my ring finger for striking the high E (first) string, my middle finger to play the B string and my index finger takes on the G string. But, try as I might, that’s not what always happens. Often my ring finger totally misses the boat, leaving the middle and index finger to play the top three strings. Sometimes, too, my thumb will decide to catch the D string on the fourth beat:

The only real reason I’ve included this pattern is that I found myself playing it while getting ready to write and record this piece. But, having listened to the MP3s more times than is probably good for one’s health, I think I pretty much used Pattern #1c throughout. The important thing is to keep the rhythm of the basic pattern going as automatically as possible. What does it sound like? I’m glad you asked! What I’ve done here is play Pattern #1b and Pattern #1c over the chord progression used in Section A:

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I can’t stress enough how important it is to take this slowly and to get the pattern into your hands. You’ll see it repeating pretty much throughout this song, so why rush things if it means never getting to the point of being able to play smoothly. Tempo should not be an issue at all at this point.

While you’re working on this finger pattern, take the time to listen to it and appreciate the little things about it that make it interesting. First off, there’s that almost hypnotic quality of the repeated G and E notes on the first string. Some people like to play the Am7 with the open G string, but I like the sound of the subtle change in the arpeggio when I use the A note on the second fret. Likewise, you’ll find a lot of TABs will say to play two full measures of Em (or Em7) instead of the Em and G that I use, but again, to me at least, it’s a matter of the sound. I use a full measure of Em instead of Em7 because I like the subtle change of sound in using the E note (second fret of the D string) in the Em chord to the open D string for the pattern of the G chord. You should feel free to use these chords as substitutes for each other. Play around and hear which sounds best to you.

When you’re ready, take another deep breath and remember that we’ve got one last thing with which to deal before moving on to Section B. You might recall my mentioning that some of the Section Bs, at least on the original recording, begin with an overdubbed vocal part. Lennon finishes the last syllable of “Julia” on the C chord and magically sings the first syllable of “Julia” at the same moment. I don’t know about you, but I’m not capable of that when playing live.

So what shall we do? In cases like this, I tend to opt for the easiest solution. We’re going to finish the “a” of “Julia” on the first beat of the first measure of Section B and then follow that up with the “Ju” in the second half of the second beat. We’ll even throw in the “li” as well, in the next half beat. To make this work, I feel I need to stress the melody in this part of the song, to think of as a turnaround of sorts, getting us smoothly from the G chord to the C. So in that last measure of G, I need to bring the melody to the fore. Let’s give it a try, shall we, starting with the measure of Em:

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As you can see and hear, the measure of Em is the same as we played it earlier. The measure of G starts out the same, but when we go for the open high E (first) string, I take the finger that was on the G note (third fret of the first string), usually my ring finger as that’s how I play a G chord, and place it on the D note at the third fret of the B string. This note is played immediately after the open E note and you should be able to hear how it follows the melody line (the “-li-” of “Julia”). Occasionally my thumb will then catch the open G string, which is why that note is in parentheses. Since that open G is part of the G chord, there’s no harm in it.

The real fancy footwork (I should probably say “fingerwork”) occurs in the following measure, the one with the C chord. When I first learned this song, I couldn’t always change from the G to the C quickly enough to make the transition sound smooth. But I knew that I had to get the bass note in on time. After all sorts of trials, I ended up playing the bass note (C at the third fret of the A string) and the open B string and the open G string on the first beat and then hammering-on to the C note (first fret of the B string) on the second half-beat of the first measure as I got the rest of my C chord in place with my fingers. After doing that, I went back to the original G to E notes of the pattern, but, of course, I had to get them to fit into the rest of the measure.

When confronted by something that looks tough, it never hurts to sit and work it out measure by measure and beat by beat. Here’s how we’d chart out this measure of C, which starts Section B:

After that, we’re back to our normal measure of Am7 and we’re ready to tackle the rest of Section B. But before going on, I again advise you to take whatever time you need to practice this until you’ve got it down fairly smoothly. When playing any sort of finger style guitar pattern, holding the tempo has to be your priority. You can’t be speeding up at the parts you know well and then slowing down when you reach a place you need work. Keep things at the slowest pace possible in order to play everything evenly. Once you’ve done this for a while, and often it’s simply a matter of a (relatively) few repetitions, then you’ll find the speed will come to you.

Section B

This, to me, is the heart of the song and where a lot of the challenge lies. Let’s give it a look and listen first and then break it down measure by measure. By the bye, on the MP3 I start with Section A (I call it the “prologue”) and then play through Section B twice. I know on the recording I say I’m only going to start it, but you know how that goes!

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We don’t have to cover the first two measures of Section B, as we just did that in Example #2. So, having played one measure of C and one of Am7, we move on to the third measure. And please don’t freak out by looking at the Gm7 and Gm9 chords! This is actually going to be very simple, in no small part thanks to the picking pattern I’ve chosen to use. Imagine that! Here, in the measure of Gm7, just barre your index finger across all six strings of the third fret. This will actually be a good exercise to see how well you’re barring the fret. All the notes of the pattern should still ring out clearly. If you’re getting some “tunks,” then you might want to examine which strings you’re not getting on the barre.

After playing the series of notes on the third fret, I add my pinky to the sixth fret of the B string to get the F note. When I’m done with that note I then move my pinky to the fifth fret of the high E (first) string for the A note (that’s the ninth of the Gm9) that starts the next measure. Note that we’re simply following along the melody line with our pinky here. And that’s all that we have to do for to change between these two measures. The index finger stays in place, fully barring the third fret. And it might be good news to you that this is the only full barre chord we’ll do in this song. Amazingly true!

But we will, however, do some interesting partial barre chord, starting right with the next measure. Here we have two measures of A (some TABs use A7 here; that’s ultimately your call) and this fingering is a very easy move from the Gm9 of the last measure. I keep my pinky in place and then slide my index finger down from the third fret to the second, but only barring across the first four strings. This sets up a partial barre chord of A, using the open A string as our initial bass note.

For the next-to-last note of the first measure, I merely re-grip the fifth fret with my pinky, getting the first two strings instead only the first. When I first started playing this song, I would totally ignore the C# note at the second fret of the B string and play it like this:

This is actually an interesting A power chord voicing. There’s no third at all. Pete Townsend uses it a lot, particularly in the classic Who anthem, Won’t Get Fooled Again.

As I got better at playing, I found I liked having the C# note in the mix in order to get the full tone of the A major chord. Again, I can’t stress enough that it’s simply a matter of personal taste combined with playing within the skills I have.

And it’s personal taste that makes me want to stress the melody line, especially in the next two measures. In most TABs you’ll see this written out as Fm7add9. That’s an F minor chord (F, Ab, C) with an Eb (the seventh) and G (the ninth) thrown in. This would be the best way of doing that:

This, however, involves the use of another fully barred chord and I seem to recall promising that I wouldn’t do that to you again in this song. After playing around a little bit I’ve also decided that I want to use the sixth (D) instead of the seventh (Eb) as part of a descending bass line to the C that starts the next measure. In addition to that, I also like the dramatic change of going from a measure of F to a measure of Fm, instead of the two measures of Fm. And, to top things off, I want something simple to reward myself for getting through the last four measures! So, this is what I’ve come up with:

Here we’re using Fadd9 for the first measure. This is simply your ordinary Fmaj7 chord (XX3210) with the G note added to the third fret of the high E (first) string. From this chord we go to Fm6, technically “Fm6/D” since the D note is in the bass. If you want to, or need to, impress your friends, call it Dm7b5 instead. It still works. To get this chord we partial barre the first fret, using our index finger to cover the first three strings. That, to me anyway, is easier than barring across all six. To this partial barre we add our pinky on the fourth fret of the high E (first) string. These two notes on the first string, G in the first measure and Ab in the second, are the melody and you should let them ring out long and true.

Another advantages of playing these two particular chords, besides allowing myself a respite from full barre chords, is that I can throw in a short descending bass line, from F to E to D, as I’ve shown in the second half of this example. It’s not much, but it is a small break from the possible monotony of being locked into a particular picking pattern. It gives the audience something new to listen to as well.

And now we’re almost done with Section B. We go back to the C, Am7, Em and G chord progression but we’re once again going to use our melody line as an inspiration to change the Am7 to Am9:

You may ask why do something like this and the only answer I can give you is because you can. To me, it’s an aid for the vocal. Also it just sounds more interesting than playing another measure of the Am7 pattern that we’ve used throughout Julia thus far. And, even though it sounds impressive, it’s very easy to do! This is another partial barre, using the index finger across the first four strings of the fifth fret and leaving the A string open to serve as your bass note. Use whatever finger is comfortable to get the B at the seventh fret of the high E (first) string and then release it for the A note that’s already covered by your index finger.

Of course, feel free to substitute our “regular” measure of Am7 here. That’s totally your call.

SECTION C

Even though I made a big deal of breaking down this song into “sections,” I still tend to call this the “bridge.” Here we’re going to make a pretty drastic change in terms of chords, going immediately from C to Bm. Believe it or not, in order to make this less abrupt, I’m going to throw in a short but flashy riff to get us from the C to the Bm, and I’m also going to use Bm7 (X20202) because I want to have that B in the bass without breaking my promise of using another full barre chord! We’ll pick things up with the last “Julia” in Section B(2):

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Let’s start with the little riff in measure four. If you keep hold of the C chord from measure three, it’s simply a matter of a couple of pull-offs and one hammer-on thrown in for good measure.

Beginning with the C chord in place (index finger on the first fret of the B string, middle finger on the second fret of the D and ring finger on the third fret of the A) from measure three, simultaneously pick the C in the bass (third fret, A string) with your thumb and the C note on the first fret of the B string with a finger. Then pull off your index finger to get the open B string. Now sound the open G with a finger (usually index) while removing your middle finger from the D string. Using your thumb, pluck the open D string and then hammer-on the middle finger back in place. Hit the open G string again with the finger and finally strike string with your thumb and then pull off your ring finger to sound the note of the open A.

Needless to say, on the MP3 I’ve played this with deliberate slowness for clarity. You should take your time practicing it. This is one of those “fancy” things that you admire in other guitarists, but it’s certainly within your capabilities. In other words, it’s just an elaborate way of getting from one chord to another while not breaking up your playing. The secret, as in many of these we’ve learned, is in keeping the C chord form in place as much as possible. Your fingers are already where you need them to be; it’s now simply a matter of picking them on and off the strings at the right time.

You’ll be relieved to know that this is about as hard as things are going to get here in Section C. The rest of the bridge is straightforward, but there are, naturally, a couple of things to point out.

First, beginning with the Bm7, I start off each measure with the striking of three strings of the chord in addition to the bass note. Usually I’ll do this by using my ring finger on the first (high E) string, my middle finger on the B and index finger on the G. This is to give a little more punch to the chord.

And, yet again, I make a point of incorporating the melody into my picking pattern. This is particularly true of the lines “shimmering” and “glimmering” which are sung over the C and Am7 in measures three through six of the bridge:

Again, if there’s any secret to making this sound smooth, it’s in keeping most of the C and Am7 chord intact and just using your pinky to create the melody line. You’ll also note that in the second measure of each of these pair I switch to a single-note arpeggio of the chord. That is again to recreate the resting of the melody in those measures. And as we’ve seen in other lessons, it’s important to let your playing breathe. It can’t be busy all the time or you’ll tire out both your listeners and yourself!

We continue to ride the melody (“…in the sun…”) in the next two measures and then we drop back into single note arpeggios. The focal point here is the series of descending notes along the first two strings. Essentially, we’re playing Em under all of these notes. But there are interesting, if not dramatic, changes in the tonal quality of that Em depending on which note is getting the “featured treatment” of the highest voicing of the chord.

For example, the word “in” is F# (second fret of the high E (first) string) which creates an Em(add9). We add our pinky to get the G note (for the word “the”) and totally open the high E string for word “sun.” Then we create Em7 by stressing the D note at the thrd fret of the B string and continue down that string fret by fret. The second fret gives us C#, which makes an Em6 and the C natural at the first fret leads us to Em(b6). This is a lazy, languid would actually be a better word, progression that reflects the song’s prevailing mood of listlessness.

Finally, almost gratefully, we arrive at the C chord that signals the start of Section B(3) and we can move on ahead. I’ve taken the liberty of recording an MP3, which puts these different sections together, pretty much at tempo. Here are Section A followed by Section B followed by Section C and then back to Section B again. As always, I appreciate your forgiveness for the (more than) occasional flub:

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What else to go over? Well, don’t forget that after Section B(3) you go back to Section A again. That can be a bit confusing, but just remember to stick an extra measure of C in there and you should have no problems with that.

The only thing left to point out is the coda at the very end. Here Lennon decides to drop the Em from the final sequence of chords, only to return to the original Am7 to Em to G progression for the finale:

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Again, there’s nothing there that you can’t handle. You’ve probably already picked up on the fact that my little ending in the last two measures is simply a slight redoing of the “riff” we used to introduce the bridge.

It’s important to approach songs like Julia, which can truly seem very complicated, much in the same manner we’ve approached all of the songs in our lessons. Break it down into parts. Then don’t be afraid to break those down into even smaller parts. Most guitarists and teachers will tell you that there’s no harm in practicing a sequence as small as two notes over and over again until you’re ready to move on. After all, what is a song but a bunch of parts pieced together?

I hope you had fun with this lesson and that you get to enjoy playing Julia as often as possible. This is a great song for any guitar, whether acoustic, electric, classical or twelve-string. Since most of you know that I mainly play the twelve-string, you probably understand why I went out of my way to create an arrangement that dealt with as few full barre chords as possible!

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

As you might imagine, I get a lot of requests for songs here at Guitar Noise. You’ll notice I said “songs” and not “song lessons.” It’s a fine distinction and it’s why a lot of requests may not make it onto our pages. If there’s not more to a lesson than “Here’s how to strum this song,” then there’s really no lesson.

And don’t get me wrong. It’s not that some songs have nothing to teach us; it’s far more often that I simply am not certain what the song lesson should be about. Take today’s song, Neil Young’s The Needle and The Damage Done, originally from the Harvest album. But before you take it, let’s take a moment for this:

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.

On the surface, there’s not an awful lot to this short, yet powerfully moving song. It consists of eight measures that get repeated over and over again. And, believe it or not, the brevity of the song is precisely what makes it worth discussing with you. Because of the structure of the song, it’s very much up to the single guitarist to make this an interesting arrangement. And that’s (hopefully) what we’ll do! Let’s take a look at the very basics of The Needle and the Damage Done and then work up an arrangement that is interesting, challenging and (because this is a lesson, remember!) also gives us some things that we can use in our every day guitar playing.

I probably should point out that I’ve heard this song done in numerous ways over the past thirty years! We’re going to opt for a version much like the one Neil Young uses in his Unplugged album of 1993 (1993? I’ve got to stop looking these things up!).

As I mentioned, this song is basically eight measures that repeat over and over again. Initially, two repetitions of the eight bars make up the introduction and then each subsequent repetition is a verse, which is sung. After two verses, there’s an interlude, made up of (yes, you guessed it!) the same eight measures. Then two more verses are sung, the last verse is sung a second time and then the outro is made up (wait for it) those same eight measures again. Okay, I fooled you! The outro uses only the first four measures and leaves everyone hanging.

The first four measures of Needle involve the use of a descending bass line that pretty much defines the chord progression. Let’s look:

We’ve run into this sort of bass line before in many of our earlier lessons. By now it must be old hat to you! We start with the D note in the bass for a D major chord. Then, as the bass line descends from D to C to B and then to Bb, the chords change along with the bass notes; the D chord moves to C which then goes to G (with the B note in the bass) and finally Gm, which uses the Bb note as its bass tone . One of the things we’re going to do today is to use this descending bass line to change our chord and still try to keep a lot of the initial D chord alive.

Here’s what I mean: if you listen to the very first measure of the Unplugged arrangement, you can hear Neil play something like this on his guitar:

This is a very basic technique that you’ve undoubtedly heard time and time again. After strumming the first two single notes of the D chord (the open D string and the A note on the second fret of the G string), he plays a downstroke on the rest of the D chord and, immediately removing his finger from the second fret of the high E (first) string, gets a Dsus2 on the upstroke. He then finished the measure with a couple of partial chord strikes on the B, G and D strings, which allow that open high E string to ring out. It makes a very nice effect.

So what I want to do, and what he does a lot, is to recreate this effect in the following chords. This means changing the chords slightly from what you’ll normally see in a TAB version on the internet:

Now, I’m truly being anal here in listing these chords out this way! What I want you to understand is that people often don’t even think of things like Example #2 as being much other than “playing around” with the D chord. As I told the folks who attended the first Guitar Noise Seminar a few weeks back, it never hurts to keep your fingers moving!

But there is a reason that some things will sound better than others. That is truly what music theory is all about, seeing the reasons. Or, to put it more aptly, hearing the reasons. You should be able to see that these chords are simply variations of the chords we listed in Example #1. D becomes Dsus2 by removing the F# (second fret) from the first string. Keeping the D note (third fret of the B string) in place when we change from D to C will give us Cadd9. Adding the F# again to the first string, instead of the G note (third fret) we usually play when we play the G chord makes it Gmaj7, here with the B note in the bass. And finally, we create G6/B and Gm6/Bb by having the open high E (first) string ring out over the G and Gm chords with which we started.

Now that I know what chords I want to use, I want to come up with a good way of strumming them. Since I like the way the first measure sounds, I use that as a template for the other three measures:

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This looks trickier than it actually is. The key is to realize that you’re not playing the D string during the measures of C, G and Gm. So your fingers will be free to maneuver. Start with your normal D chord. You’ll remove your middle finger from the second fret of the high E (first) string in order to get the open E string for the fourth set of notes. That’s the finger you’ll place on the C note (third fret of the A string) to start the next measure. As you place the middle finger on the C, simply remove your index from the G string. Don’t move it too far! When you start the third measure, place the index finger on the second fret of the A string (the B note in the bass) and place your middle finger back on the second fret of the first (high E string). Again, you’ll remove the middle finger at the appropriate place during the third measure, creating a G6/B to replace the Gmaj7/B. For the fourth measure, all you need do is slide the index finger down from the second fret of the A string to the first.

You should note how economical this is. The strumming pattern holds the same in all four measures and you can hear how the similarities between measures one and three and between measures two and four hold this portion of the song together. And not being hampered by fretting the D string during the measure of C ensures that you can let the strings ring out.

Also (and always) remember that you should feel free to use this pattern as a starting point. Using partial chords during measures two and four will certainly sound good. Using single notes for the last three eighth notes in measures one and three will also sound fine. Play around with it and see what you come up with and be sure to take notes of what you like!

What Neil does in the last four measures is very interesting, at least to me. In terms of theory, one can argue this in all sorts of ways. You might see the Gm6/Bb as a pivot chord so that the song modulates from D major to D minor (which is the relative minor of F major). You might also pose that it abruptly switches tonality from D to Am. Does it truly matter? Only if you enjoy arguing things long into the night…

What we’re concerned with is what happens in the measures of C and F. Here Neil takes a classic little boogie-woogie / blues / rock lick and makes it part of the strumming pattern. First, let’s look at the riff:

There’s no MP3 with this because I want you to play it yourself! Sound at all familiar? I’m certain you’ve heard this a million times or more. It usually pops up as a bass line, but here in The Needle and The Damage Done we’ll use it, as I mentioned, as part of the rhythm. How? Glad you asked:

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If there’s any trick to this, it’s to remember to keep in motion, and that means both hands. Sometimes it’s best to concentrate on one hand at a time and I almost always suggest that you start with the rhythm. You want your picking hand to make short, concise strokes. The first measure, the one of the C chord, keeps the same pattern we used in the first four measures. But then you’ve got two measures (the F and the Esus4) that are straight eighth notes – just down and up and down and up and it really couldn’t be much simpler.

When you feel you’ve got the strumming down, work on the chords. Begin with the C chord. Your middle finger does all the moving here. Use it to hammer-on to the second fret of the D for the E note and then use it to finger the A note at the second fret of the G string.

The measure of F (or Fsus4, F, Fsus2, F if you want me to go back to being anal about things!) is easy because we’re only going to be picking the B, G and D strings. So begin by making a very basic F chord (fingering: XX321X) with your index finger on the first fret of the B, your middle finger on the second fret of the G and your ring finger on the third fret of the D string. Now add your pinky to the third fret of the G and you’re all set to play the Fsus4! Stroke down on the D and G strings and then up on the B string. And kudos to those of you who recognize this use of the C note (first fret of the B string) as a pedal point. It has been a while since we’ve seen that! Take your pinky off and when you stroke down and up again you get the F chord. Now remove your middle finger (which should be getting a lot of exercise today, no?) and you’ve got the Fsus2. And place the middle finger back where it came from for the final F of this measure.

I should mention that this measure of F is an excellent exercise to use to practice your partial chord picking. This whole song is, really, but especially this measure since you’re working solely on the middle strings of the guitar. Take you time and get comfortable with this now and you’ll find other songs you might have passed up before are a breeze to you now that you’ve taken the time to sharpen your skills.

Before we move on to the lest two measures, I’d also like to point out that while this is pretty close to what Neil Young plays in the intro (and interludes) of this song, during the verses when he’s singing, he tends to use a straight strumming of these two voicings of these chords:

If you can play this version and sing the song at the same time, more power to you!

Okay, back to the final two measures! What I’ve given you here is, like all the other patterns, a starting place. I find that when I’m performing this song, or playing it while someone else is singing, that these two measures tend to be played in all sorts of ways, depending on the emotional vibe going on. But I do almost always find myself playing something very close to this.

I start out with the E chord instead of the Esus4 so that I can hammer-on from the G# (first fret of the G) to the A (second fret). Then I can play around on that A note before going back to the G# in the next measure. Also, I find that when I play this song strictly finger style (I am using a pick in all these examples), that I often switch to the “E to Am” walk that we learned in the lesson, Your Song:

Now when you put it all together, that is, the first four measures and the second four measures, it should sound something like this:

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And once you’ve got the music all squared away, all you need are the lyrics to sing along with:

And that’s the whole thing! I hope you had fun with this lesson and that you enjoy playing around with this song. It’s amazing how involved some of these short pieces can be and there’s a lot here that you can work on and use in the other songs you know. Just remember to keep your fingers moving!

Remember, too, that this is a very powerfully moving piece. You want to make the arrangement interesting and involving, but you certainly don’t want it to overpower the singing. Try different things out and see what you can come up with.

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

If you’re an intermediate who sneaks a peek at the Easy Songs for Beginners Lessons (and hey, aren’t we all?), then you’ll know precisely what you’re in for today! Well, maybe not “precisely!” In this installment of “Songs for Intermediates” we’ll look at arranging a classic “piano song,” in this case Your Song by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, for the single guitarist. So let’s get right to it, 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.

Our last Beginners’ piece, Carole King’s It’s Too Late, allowed us to explore the driving, rhythmic pulsing style of accompaniment. Here we’re going to focus on an opposite approach, that of graceful arpeggios. Yes, that means to get ready for some finger picking! And I do know that some of you have waited breathlessly to read those words!

Before we go, though, let’s examine the song itself. Again, I have to apologize that it’s been ages since I’ve heard this and I don’t have the sheet music (or even a recording of it!), so we’re going to have to rely on my memory. And yes, feel free to make whatever jokes you wish about that! For whatever reason, I learned this song in Eb, which leads me to believe that at some point in my life I either originally figured it out that way from the recording (listening to the old radio back in the mid-seventies!) or that I saw this written out on some sheet music, perhaps glancing through a book at a music store. That’s how a lot of folks (gasp!) my age learned songs, you know. We’d go into a music store and memorize as much as we could and then buy a string or two so that we wouldn’t get thrown out for loitering. On occasion I might even buy a set of strings…But that’s enough reminiscing!

Kudos to those of you already reaching for your capo! I certainly don’t want to play in Eb major! But what shall we do? The logical choices would be either to put the capo on the first fret and play in D or put it on the third fret and play in C. We’re going to go with the latter solution and I’m hoping you’ll see why as we move along. But do, by all means, feel free to write it out in D as part of a transposition exercise.

As you can see, Your Song is very simple in terms of structure. There is a verse, then a chorus, then a second verse and a repeat of the chorus and then the last part of the chorus serves as an outro. To make matters even easier, the verse pretty much repeats itself – lines five, six and seven are mirrors of the first three lines and the last line is marginally different from the fourth.

We’ll begin with the first two chords, C and Fmaj7. I’m opting to use these as our introduction as well. Why? Believe it or not, mostly to not copy the original! Big surprise there, right? This is the sort of song I want to get into immediately, with as little fanfare as possible, so I’ll play the opening chords once or twice and then get right into the first verse.

But this doesn’t mean that I can’t be having fun or setting the tone of the piece. Let’s look at (and listen to!) some examples:

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As I mentioned, our focus of this lesson is to imitate the tinkling piano’s flowing lines. But unlike a song such as Fields of Gold, for instance, where the arpeggios faithfully track the melody line, this will be more of an straight arpeggio accompaniment. We are going to rely solely on the singer for our melody lines while the guitar gracefully provides a thoughtfully flowing backdrop for the voice.

Yet, even though I’m going to essentially be finger picking throughout most of the song, I also want to punctuate the accompaniment with the occasional straight strum. It’s good for mixing things up as well as for providing a little nudge to the nuances of the phrasing. So I find that a downstroke (I usually use with just the thumb) on the Fmaj7 does just that; it’s a nice emphasis on the word “funny,” giving a short pause before continuing on with more arpeggios.

Example 1A gives you the absolute basic model – a slow, lilting arpeggio on the C chord, complete with a little hammer-on (done with the index finger) between the B and C notes to make it more interesting, and a slow downstroke on the Fmaj7 chord. I immediately dampen this to cut it short and then do a second downstroke to let it ring throughout the remainder of the measure. This is (as those of you who read the It’s Too Late lesson know) to imitate the use of the pedals a pianist might use.

This “basic” approach is certainly good. But I want you to feel free to experiment. A pianist will often fill in the “blank spaces” as a guitarist might. The thing I try to do, whether as a guitarist or in those frightful (for the audience!) instances when I sit behind a keyboard, is to keep my flourishes “within” me. That is, I’m not going to play something that is bound to go beyond my control (or maybe not! read on…). I want to maintain either the chord shape I am on or move onto the next one in a fluid manner.

By the bye, you’re going to see me use a lot of different variations of F and Fmaj7 in this lesson. Here I am using the fingering X33210 because I like keeping the C note in the bass.

Example 1B illustrates a graceful downward arpeggio on the Fmaj7 chord, complete with a mirror-image pull-off on the B string (C note to B). Remember that arpeggios can run in both directions! They don’t (and shouldn’t!) always go upward.

In the third example, 1C, I use what’s called a “trill.” This is a rapid and continuous change between two notes, usually a step or half-step from each other. Many instruments employ this technique. You’re probably most used to hearing it done on a woodwind, such as a flute or saxophone. What you want to do is pluck the open B string and then hammer-on and pull-of your index finger as many times as it will go during the duration of that beat (the third beat in this case). For the record, I’ve tried counting how many times I did this, but I lose track after six. The note will often start to fade on its own. I follow up the trill with the last two notes of the Fmaj7 chord arpeggio.

1D, the last example, has me tossing in all sorts of things. Actually, it’s just using a very fast hammer-on and pull-off on both the B and G strings. It’s vaguely reminiscent of the little flourish I stuck on at the end of last month’s lesson on the opening acoustic solo of Wish You Were Here. Perhaps it’s even a bit too much, I don’t know. The point is that the song is offering you a space. How you decide to fill it, or even if you decide to do so is totally up to you.

The Verses

Before we move on, I want to point out a few things about the transcription. As far as the finger picking is concerned, for the most part I’m using my thumb on the three low strings (the D, A and low E) and my index finger on the G, my middle finger on the B and my ring finger on the high E. Anyplace where I’m striking two of the two three strings at the same time, I’m usually using my middle finger on the higher string and my index finger on the low note. Most of the “full chords,” such as the Fmaj7 in the second measure, I play with a downstroke of the thumb. Yes, there will be exceptions and I’ll try to cover them all!

One other thing that I can’t really stress enough (even though I’m sure you’ve heard it enough, especially from me!) is that you should consider this is transcription as a template. If you’ve read the beginners’ lesson on Wish You Were Here you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. You will find the occasional glitch in this notation because when I’d get to playing, my fingers might do one thing even though I wrote another! I tried to make this TAB as accurate to the MP3s as possible, but I know that you’ll find some slight deviations from the notation.

But the point, as I’ve tried my best to bring to your attention out time and time again, is that you don’t want to be a machine in your playing. As long as you’re holding your chord shapes, you won’t hear any disastrous notes. I promise! If your Am arpeggio, for example, skips the D string and instead hits the B string, people aren’t going to notice.

Now let’s proceed with the first half of the verse:

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Okay, you’re probably sick of the first two measures by now! Let me just point out that here I opted to go with the “trill” fill. Maybe because I just can’t resist writing “trill fill!” You should, as I mentioned earlier, feel free to (trill) fill it (or not) to your own liking.

In the third and fourth measure, you’ll find the two rhythm patterns I’m going to use pretty much throughout the song:

The second measure here (the one of the E7 chord) is straight eighth notes and should prove simple enough. On the measure of G, the tempo is a little staggered. We begin with three eight notes, then play a quarter note and finish up with three more eighth notes. This breaks up the measure in an interesting way. The lengthy note comes on an offbeat (the second half of the second, to be precise), and although the measure is symmetrical in tempo, it is decidedly more interesting than going with straight eighth notes. This gives our arrangement so breathing room; it allows you places to pause instead of blindly charging on at straight eighth note speed. Remember we’re playing a love song here! It should have all sorts of room to breathe!

I sometimes play this pattern in the following manner: I start the first notes by playing my thumb on the base and a finger (here my middle finger) on an harmony note and then continue on to strike the next two strings with my thumb. Then I will sweep upward with my other fingers, letting them grab whatever strings of the chord they happen to (in this case the high E and the B) and let that ring before finishing off the downward end of the arpeggio with my index finger on the first notes and then my thumb on the last two. This is all, at this point in my playing, very subconscious, which is precisely why I tell you to practice an unfamiliar pattern until you can play it without thinking. As long as it’s in your fingers, your fingers will rarely let you down. And again, if you play a different string, remember that you’re probably the only one who thinks it’s a mistake.

The next section is the equivalent of the musical “hook” to this particular arrangement:

Here we’re using a time-honored technique of playing a short series of notes, a motif, if you will, over a number of chord changes. This creates the same kind of effect as a sustained tone (see the article of the same name), only we are using several notes instead of one (or two in the case of a song like Oasis’ Wonderwall). Look, or listen, closely, and you’ll see (or hear) that the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh notes of these first three measures are the same. Not only that, but they are also the same as the notes of the very first measure of the song. We’ve created a musical “theme” of sorts.

While this motif is going on, we’re changing from one chord to another simply, for the most part, by changing the bass note. You’ll run into this sort of thing so many times in so many songs that I can’t even begin to list them! By the way, the ability to do this is my main reason for playing Your Song in the key of C. It is fair easier to play this motif, along with the descending bass line (A, G, F# and F) that provide the interesting harmonies in C than in D. Also, if you so desire, you can play this by keeping the A note (second fret of the G string) intact throughout.

I want to mention that originally, I’d plan on doing the same picking pattern with the Fmaj7. However, that did not occur when I recorded it, so you have what I’ve notated. I was kind enough to include the TAB for the way I originally intended to play it! It’s listed as “alternate Fmaj7 pattern” in this example. Again, I’d like to stress that they both sound fine. No one will shun you for preferring one to the other.

When playing this, I start out with a normal Am chord – my index finger is on the B string, my ring finger plays the second fret of the G string and my middle finger is on the second fret of the D. After I do the upward arpeggio, usually right after the hammer-on, I shift my ring finger down to the third fret of the low E (sixth) string to get ready for the second measure. This is why the “Am” arpeggio has the open G string on the way down! It’s already technically an Am7.

This is the first of several interesting bass lines in this piece. Since our ring finger is on the third fret of the sixth string, we now have an Am7/G. Again note that if you want to hold the A note on the G string, then you’ll need to use your pinky to get the bass note. It’s not the easiest thing to do but it’s far from impossible. Be sure to arch your fingers so as not to get any dampened notes in your arpeggio.

For the D9/F#, I move my middle finger from the second fret of the D string to the second fret of the sixth, giving me my F# note in the base. Simultaneously, my ring finger returns to its original position at the second fret of the G string.

On the Fmaj7 (this fingering is 103210), I play the first fret of the low E string with my thumb and use my other fingers as I normally would: index finger on the B, middle finger on the G and ring finger on the D. Playing an Fmaj7 this way might be new for some of you, so take your time with this. It’s actually not that hard at all. You can use a barre F chord here, but it makes doing the hammer-on on the B string quite difficult.

This particular chord progression not only comes up twice in the verse, but also again at the height of the chorus. So I can’t help but suggest that you set these four measures aside for special attention as you will want to have them flowing smoothly when you get to them.

Bass lines take center stage in the next section of the song. This is another reason why I prefer the key of C for this piece; I find the bass lines a little more accessible for my (short) fingers! Have a look-see:

Beginning with the C chord, we string the bass notes down to G in the second measure. Nothing new here, it’s all just part of the C major scale which I’m sure you can handle. Going from G to E, though, we’ll liven things up a tad by using chromatic steps (G to F# to F) in our bass line. This provides an interesting change.

Going from E to Am, we’ll notch it up even higher by adding a harmony line to the bass. This is something that I’ve seen done in numerous classical pieces, not to mention in Paul Simon’s song, American Tune, the melody and harmony of which are taken directly from a Back chorale. This progression may remind you vaguely of something else we’ve done in the past, but let’s save that surprise for a just a bit… In case you’re interested, here I simply spread out my fingers from the initial E chord – my ring finger goes from the second fret of the D string to the second fret of the G string and my middle fingers shifts position from the second fret of the A to the second fret of the low E (sixth) string. I use the same fingers on the next set of notes at the fourth fret of these strings as well.

Continuing apace, you’ll also see that we tack on a brief ascending bass line, on the D string, during the change from the Dm to F. Nothing here you can’t handle, either.

At the close of the first half of the verse, you might be surprised to see an old friend:

Yes, that’s indeed the opening of Blackbird with an additional pair of notes thrown in, no pun intended, for good measure. You never know where this particular musical phrase will turn up, do you? This is what you were undoubtedly thinking about when playing the E to Am transition.

The additional final pair of notes technically turns our G chord into a G7, since we’ve got the F note on the first fret of the first (high E) string. This helps to solidify the change from G to C and we’ll discuss that a bit later on.

By the bye, on all these “optional” notations I just showed the phrase in question and then a measure of resolution. If you use one of these, you’ll obviously want to continue on with the patterns and not just play a measure of whole notes!

Anyway, the second half of the verse (last four lines of lyrics) is musically identical to the first half, until you get to the last line. I guess I should say it’s as musically identical as you choose it to be. Feel free to experiment with different variations.

Going From The Verse To The Chorus (And Beyond!)

It’s the last line of the verse, the one immediately preceding the chorus, that is different from the rest, so let’s look at the last line and then go on and check out the chorus. See you on the other side!

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Notice I used the “E to Am variation” to start this MP3. Also notice that both versions sound perfectly fine!

The first two measures of the last line (“…my gift is my song…”) start out the same as the fourth line of the verse, that is, a measure of C major arpeggio followed by a measure of Dm. It’s when we reach the F that we find we can’t simply repeat things:

Here we’re going from F to C, instead of F to G as we did at the midpoint of the verse. A little theory (hey! you didn’t think I’d let you off that easy, right?): Since we are in the key of C, the F to C progression is called a plagal cadence. In technical terms it’s IV to I. G (or G7) to C is called a perfect cadence (and if you want more to read on this subject, check out the old columns Five To One and You Say You Want A Resolution). Plagal cadences, as far as the ear is concerned,

aren’t as “strong” as perfect cadences. They’re pleasant, I guess you could say. What can help make them more dynamic is using a descending bass line, going from the IV to the root.

And that’s what we’re doing here, starting with the F note (third fret of the D string) and continuing on down through the E and the D ’til we reach the C that starts the second measure. I use the “beginners” version of the F chord (fingering XX3211) for this, but you can use a barre F equally as well. Personally, I find I can do the bass line better with the simpler fingering.

In measure three I play an “all thumb” downstroke of the F chord and then repeat the E to D bass line and finish with a full strum of the C chord, again with the thumb. And just to keep things going, I then immediately launch into a C to G bass line, which takes us to the chorus. And yes, this is yet another example of echoing a musical phrase. The descending bass from F to C has the same intervals as the one from C to G. It adds musical continuity to your arrangement.

The chorus begins with measure-long arpeggios of G, Am, Dm and F. These four measures are then repeated. The only new thing here is that I’m using a barre F chord in order to get the low F bass note in measure four of the chorus. I do this pretty much throughout the chorus, in fact. After this we recycle the Am to Am7/G to D9/F# to Fmaj7 progression that we covered in the verse section.

But when we get to the Fmaj7? Well, here is a good example of what I tried to talk with you about earlier. I had absolutely no idea as to what I was going to play! My thought was, “Let’s see what happens when we get there.” I knew I had two measures to fill and I knew I wanted to start it off like the second verse of the song (that old quot;echo a musical idea thing!”), but after that, I’d just let the muse take over.

And what the muse said was, basically, not something I’d write in a family-friendly piece. Or any piece, for that matter! So my fingers, in a sheer state of panic, did this:

As I mentioned, it started out well, mirroring the second measure of the opening right down to the trill (“trill fill! trill fill!”). For the second measure I kind of wimped out and just played a descending C major scale from B down to F, all in quarter notes. Very simple and elegant, I must say, if only to save face! Ah well, there’s another chance at this in the second chorus!

Before we get to the second chorus, though, I’ve got to get to the second verse. So we cycle through the C to Dm to F to G progression, absolutely like the midpoint of the verse, using an extra measure of G to do the Blackbird-turnaround thing, here done with straight quarter notes.

You might observe that I changed up the rhythm of the measure of C (“…wonderful…”), opting for full chords instead of an arpeggio. Again, this is simply a change of pace, a way to punctuate the word “wonderful.” You can play a straight arpeggio if you’d like.

In fact, that’s precisely what I do when we reach the turnaround in the final chorus:

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The “outro” of Your Song is simply a repeat of the final three lines of the chorus, only ultimately resolving to C instead of to G as we’ve just done. This is accomplished in precisely the same way we ended the verse (going from F to C and then briefly repeating that progression with full chords), so you should be able to follow along with it very easily.

The only potentially “sticky” area is immediately before we actually start the outro. We’re on G and we want to go to the whole Am to Am7/G to D9/F# to Fmaj7 thing (“…I hope you don’t mind…”) one last time. While going from G to Am is certainly an easy thing to do (try it! use our patented Blackbird turnaround, only end on Am instead of C), I want to give this part a little more punch. So I opt for this:

We start out with our Blackbird run, in full quarter notes this time. But instead of tacking on the G7 pairing at the end, I switch to an E7 chord. This is a particularly easy thing to do. On the third pair of notes in this measure, have your pinky on the D note (third fret of the B string) and your middle finger on the B note (second fret of the A string). Now, keeping those two fingers in place, simply add your ring finger to the second fret of the D and your index finger to the first fret of the G. Voila! E7! I play this with a sweeping down stroke of the thumb. I do the same with the Am that starts the next measure. In fact, I give that a little extra space to ring out, not starting on the arpeggio until the second half of the second beat.

And what about that Fmaj7 at the end of this progression? The same one I shamelessly botched the first time out? Well, the results here are certainly more promising:

It’s definitely a bit of an improvement over the last pass of this part of the song! The point is that you can fill (or not fill) these spaces as you see fit. Do try, though, to keep harmony with the spirit of the song. One time, just because I was a bit out of sorts, I played the signature riff of Satisfaction in this space. It worked surprisingly well. But that’s the sort of thing you do once in a lifetime!

I hope you had fun with this lesson and that you enjoyed this venture into making a piano-style arrangement. The range of the emotions one can get from a guitar, whether acoustic or electric, is mind-boggling. While it’s great to be able to get one style down to a science, I think it’s also important to continually explore other avenues. Always be willing to take an adventure with your guitar. It will rarely let you down.

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

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Again, let’s get this out of the way right off the bat:

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.

I’m assuming that many of you read the “Easy Songs for Beginners” lesson that just went up a little while ago on this same song, Wish You Were Here, from the Pink Floyd album of the same name. In this Intermediate’s lesson, we’re going to go over how to play the second acoustic guitar part in the introduction. Originally, I thought I’d throw in a few other things that you might find interesting, but I’m thinking at this point that perhaps a “part III” is in order. That will cover playing both parts at once and some additional nifty ideas for you solo guitarists/singers. Maybe I’ll give you a teaser at the end of this lesson…

I have to assume for the sake of this lesson that you are familiar with the structure of the song, not to mention that you are very familiar with what the song sounds like. That’s a lot of assuming on my part (and yes I do know what they say about what happens when you assume something…). But I do think that it’s a safe bet at this juncture.

As we discussed in the Beginners’ Lesson, the introduction of Wish You Were Here consists of two acoustic guitar parts. The first one is pretty much all strumming and (hopefully) we learned that part in that particular lesson.

Speaking of that lesson, many of you wrote and asked me why the MP3 was different from the notation I wrote out. Well, the main focus of that lesson was to get you to not worry about copying a strumming part exactly. All I was doing was adding an extra bass note (an eighth note in duration) usually in the second half of the first beat of each measure. In case you’re wondering, here it is written out:

What happens in the song is that, after the first guitar has played the complete intro once through, a second guitar comes in and plays some very tasteful fills. It’s a short lead, if you prefer to think of it that way and it’s very much in the style of “call and response” that we’ve discussed in numerous lessons here at Guitar Noise. The first guitar plays the short riff and then the second guitar answers while the first guitar is strumming.

In this lesson, we’re going to learn to play that second guitar part. It’s actually not that hard at all and it is a great way to start learning some of the various aspects of soloing. In fact, since it combines hammer-ons, pick-offs, slides and bends, I probably should have used it as the showcase example in my old column, Tricks of the Trade. And since I’ve gone and brought up that old column, you might want to take the time to read it, especially if you have no idea what a hammer-on, pull-off (I called them “pick-offs” when I wrote it!), slide or bend is!

As always, let’s take a minute to figure out how best to approach learning this solo. This second guitar part can be broken down into four distinct phrases, each phrase being a “response” to the first guitar’s “call.” It would make the most sense, then, to examine each separate phrase, learning each one well, and then put them all together as a finished product. Remember, again as always, to learn each part as slowly as necessary. Clarity and smoothness are our goals. You will see that we’ll even end up tackling segments of each phrase separately in order to get a better handle on things. Are you ready to start?

Before we do, let me give you a few quick tips that I hope will help you out. There are lots of different ways of learning solos. I’m certain that you knew that one was coming! If you are reading off of music notation or TAB (instead of sussing it out by ear, which, by the bye, is how I initially learned this piece), take the time to read it without playing first. Look at things like the range of frets in a particular phrase; this will often give you a good guide as to which fingers you’ll want to use and where. More importantly, be open and observant of making changes. You may find that you cannot make a certain stretch or that your fingers work smoother in a different combination than the one you first used. By experimenting, you fill ultimately find what works best for you.

Phrase One

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We’re in luck already because the first cluster of three notes not only starts off phrase one, but phrases three and four as well! How about that?

As I mentioned earlier, having the TAB in front of you gives you the opportunity to plan ahead. This first phrase is an excellent example of this. If you’ve read some of my other lessons, you might already know that my first instinct would be to play the first two notes on the G string with my middle finger, since I often plant it there when doing little fills like this. And that would serve me fine up to a point. I would then use my ring finger to fret the E note (fifth fret on the B string) and my index finger to fret the D (third fret on the B string). But when I get to the last three notes in the first measure, I now find I’ve somewhat boxed myself in.

These last three notes comprise what is essentially a “double pick-off.” What we want to do is to have a finger planted on the second fret of the G string and the fourth fret as well. We strike the note with our strumming hand and then pull-off the finger on the fourth fret, which (because of the finger on the second fret) sounds the note of the second fret before we pick that finger off on get the note of the open G string. A bit complicated, perhaps?

Well, let’s take those last three notes first! Place you index finger on the second fret of the G string (the A note) and then place, preferably, your ring finger on the B note at the fourth fret. Use your pinky as an alternative if it works better for you, but do try to use the ring finger if you can. Strike the string, sounding the B note. Now pull that finger off (remember (and, again, refer back to Tricks of the Trade if you have to) that you want to pull slightly down in order to help sound the next note) and you should hear the A note. Now pull your index finger off and you should hear the note of the open G string.

This technique of the double pull-off is used a lot in rock, particularly in faster solos, so it’s a good idea to practice doing this. You only want to strike the string once and let your fretting fingers do the rest of the work. Practice this over and over, making certain you are hearing all three notes distinctly and evenly. Speed will come with repetition, trust me. And, for this song anyway, you don’t want to be that fast.

Now that have the last three notes of the first measure, let’s go back and try out the first part of the measure again. Since I now know I want to have my index finger free to get set for the last three notes, I now opt to play the first two notes with my ring finger instead of the middle finger. I place my ring finger on the second fret of the G string, strike the note and then slide my ring finger up to the fourth fret to get that note. I also decide to plan ahead even more – I place my middle finger on the first fret of the B string at the same time I place my ring finger on the second fret of the G. Now when I slide the ring finger, the middle finger follows along and is in perfect position for its note on the third fret. All I have to do is place my pinky on the fifth fret of the B, play that note and then remove the pinky, leaving the middle finger ready to do its job when the time comes. Not too bad!

So let’s play the first six notes over again, slowly and evenly. Play it over and over until you’re ready to add the last three notes onto the whole thing. You should find that, since your index finger is free, you’ll have all the time in the world to set up for that part of the phrase.

The final grouping of notes in the second measure is one of those places where you can have fun experimenting. After striking the open D, take your index finger and place it on the first fret of the A string. Quickly slide to the B note at the second fret and then strike the open D twice more. I find that, instead of starting on the B flat note on the first fret, I like to strike the open A string and hammer-on to the first and second frets of the A string. This is “double hammer-on,” the reverse, if you will, of the double pull-off. Some people play this part of the phrase simply by hammering-on to the second fret of the A from the open A. Some play it as notated, but use a hammer-on instead of a slide. It’s truly up to you, as it should be.

Phrase Two

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Most people consider this the hardest part of the introduction, but, like almost everything we’ve learned, it’s simply a matter of practicing and perfecting your technique before going all gung-ho.

Phrase two is all double-note sliding. And, once again, finger placement can make or break you here. Let me offer my suggestions, but do feel free to try out various combinations on your own.

First, place your ring finger on the third fret of the high E (first) string and your middle finger on the third fret of the B. Strike those two strings and then immediately slide up to the fifth fret. Sliding as soon as you strum is, no pun intended, the key to this part of the solo. Go over this as many times as you have to get a good feel for it. Then, with the same fingers on the fifth fret, strike the strings and immediately slide your fingers back to the third fret. Again, repeat this until you feel you’ve got it down. Then put the two parts together.

And that’s just the first two notes! The rest of the notes are on the B and G strings. Since my middle finger is already in position (planning ahead again!), I use my index finger on the G string, placing it on the second fret, and away I go! If you keep your fingers in this position, you’ll find this whole section a lot easier than you thought it was going to be. I usually do more of a pull-off to get the sound of the open strings. Some people like to strike them instead. Also, many notations and TAB indicate that the final notes should be on the G (fourth fret) and D (fifth fret) strings instead of the open B and G as I’ve notated. They are the same notes. After all that sliding, I like to give my fingers a break by getting them off the fretboard! Also, that frees me to play a bit of harmonics…Oh, sorry, that’s for Part III ! Anyway, it’s totally up to you.

And, just to prove the same point (albeit in another way), this notation isn’t written in stone. If you’ve read my piece, Applied Science, which deals with the middle solo (the slide/dobro) of Wish You Were Here, then you’ll already know where I’m headed with this. When I first learned this solo, I did it by ear. As a result, I initially played it like this:

Why? Because it didn’t involve my changing strings! My fingers could stay in the same position and play the exact same notes. I’ve gotten a bit faster since those days, and if I’m not playing with an alternate tuning for this song in order to play the slide part (read the whole article!) , I do tend to go with the first notation I’ve given you. But, again, the choice is yours.

Phrases Three And Four

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Okay, we’re almost home! Since phrases three and four are fairly similar, not only in notes and phrasing but also in that they employ bending techniques, let’s take them both on at once. But now I have to make a huge confession: I’m not great at bending strings (especially on an acoustic!) with my pinky. So, keeping that in mind, I now have to totally change my approach to those first three notes again!

Since my ring finger is the best bender of the bunch, it’s important for me to approach these phrases in a way that allows me to play to my strengths. So I’ll start out with my middle finger on the second fret of the G string (which is what I tried to do in the first place!), and again for good measure, place the index finger on the first fret of the B string. I strike and slide on the G string and find, to my delight, that the index finger is right in place for third note (the D on the third fret of the B string). Now I hit the B note again (fourth fret G string) and place my ring finger on the fifth fret of the B; I’m ready to bend!

This also turns out to be a smart move for a couple of other reasons. First, I can keep my index finger on the third fret of the B string and use it to help me do the bend. This isn’t cheating! In fact, using more than one finger on a bend can help you have more control of the tone of your bending. Secondly, I see that after I release the bend, all I have to do is remove the ring finger and my index finger (since it hasn’t left the third fret) is already to sound its note. Also, since my middle finger hasn’t moved, it is also ready to play its note.

The tricky part to this phrase is moving my index finger from the third fret of the B string to the second fret of the G. Tricky, but not impossible. And, after doing it slowly, slowly, slowly for a couple of hundred times, I find I can do it with ease. Which is good, because I have to reverse this maneuver in the second measure of this phrase.

So, let’s go over this again: Middle finger on the second fret of the G string, index finger on the first fret of the B string. Strike and slide on the G string, strike the D note (index finger on the third fret of the B string), strum the B note again (fourth fret G string). Now, ring finger on the fifth fret of the B and index finger on the third fret of the B, do a full bend to get the next note, release the bend and then pick off the ring finger for the D note (index finger again). Strum the G string (still covered by the middle finger), then the B string again and then jump with the index finger to the second fret of the G string and voila! we’ve done the first two thirds of this phrase.

And this is a good time to add another important point – I don’t know how many times I’ve played Wish You Were Here and simply ignored the next to last note in this section. If you’re having trouble getting both notes, try leaving it out. Chances are that you’ll find it sounds just as good and I’ll bet you anything most people won’t even notice it (unless, of course, you point it out!).

For the last grouping of notes, the bending is on the G string and I do that using my middle finger (with an assist from the index finger again, since it’s right there!). Do take the time to make certain there’s a difference between the first bend, which is a half-bend (the B note should rise only to C) and the full bend at the end (B to C#). It may not seem like much to you, but if you listen to it, it makes a lot of difference expression-wise. Think of it as an ear training exercise if you like.

Phrase four starts out exactly as phrase three does, but then gets much easier. After the full bend on the B string, pick off the ring finger to play the D note on the third fret (covered by our trusty index finger), then put the ring finger back on for the E note at the fifth fret. Now you have ample time (and freedom of fingers!) to get the index finger onto the second fret of the G string for the final measure.

Bonus

But wait! There’s more!

Before we put this all together, I’d like to give you two small gifts. Actually, it’s one gift – freedom of expression. We’ve just learned how this part is played on the recording. But if I were to hear you play it, I would want to hear you play it. I can hear David Gilmour anytime I put on a CD.

So when you play it, don’t worry about being note-for note perfect. There are all sorts of things you can do to make a piece of music, even a “signature” piece such as this, more of a personal interpretation. Here are a couple of quick (and relatively easy) things you might want to try to get you going:

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“Bonus one” is a very simple use of a hammer-on and pull-off that I play at the end of phrase two. After hitting the open B and G strings for the final time, I strike the open D string, and then strike it again, this time quickly hammering onto the second fret and holding my finger (usually index) there. I hit the open G string and then return to D string where my finger is still on the second fret. I do a pull-off to the open D string and then strike the open G string once more to complete the phrase. It’s very basic and, since it’s reminiscent of the riffs that the first guitar plays, creates a nice sense of unity.

My second “bonus riff” comes at the very end of the intro solo and is another use of the double pull-off, only this time I stick a hammer-on in front of it. If it sounds familiar, it’s because I lifted it from Led Zeppelin’s Over the Hills and Far Away:

Now don’t go thinking that this is too hard for you! It’s a great exercise, if nothing else. Your index finger is already on the second fret of the G string. Hammer-on the fourth fret with your ring finger and then immediately pull-off back to the index finger, which in turn does a pull-off to the open G string. Sounds pretty nifty, no? Now repeat the exact same process only playing on the D string and finish with a strike on the open G string. It may take you a while to get up to speed on this, but once you set your fingers in motion, you should find that you catch on pretty quickly.

Finally, I simply do an arpeggio on the G chord at the very end, simply in order to not duplicate the first guitar part. It’s primarily even upstrokes on the first three strings, in case you’re wondering.

Alright then, let’s do the whole introduction now. I took the liberty of recording both guitar parts, so you’ll first hear the basic strumming all the way through and then the second guitar will come in. I’ve also thrown in the “bonus riffs” into this MP3. By the way, I did this on my old Yamaha guitar, since at the time of this recording, my Seagull (which I used to record the Beginners’ Lesson) was already in Massachusetts. My apologies that the intonation is a bit off in places. I’m hoping it doesn’t detract too much from the lesson at hand.

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I hope you had fun with this lesson and learning the intro solo to this beautiful song. As this year progresses, we’ll be looking more and more at soloing, what it involves, what makes an interesting solo, the little techniques that can help you a lot. A great way to learn how to solo is to take apart ones you know and examine what went into them.

More importantly, I hope that you begin to get a feel that, with practice, patience and persistence, you can play things that you may have only yesterday thought to be beyond your abilities. It doesn’t happen overnight, so don’t get discouraged. Even if all you manage to get down today is the first three notes, that’s more than you could do before. Playing the guitar is a wonderful process and I hope that you enjoy the journey almost more than the destination.

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

For the most part, simply playing a song doesn’t involve a lot of work. You learn the chords, figure out a way to strum them, add (or don’t add) an occasional fill and off you go!

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.

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?

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, 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 the strumming pattern I usually use:

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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 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, I 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 my patterns 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 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 Help or 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 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 Dadd6add9 and yes, that’s not what I called it in our first beginner’s lesson. I should go back and just call it the “horse chord” but this software won’t let me do that!

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

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

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

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

Bridge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you listen carefully, you’ll find quite a few mistakes here. I don’t catch the verse strumming pattern 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

Okay, we’ve spent the last few lessons, both here and in the “Easy Songs for Beginners” section covering bass lines. But, as I’m sure you’re aware (or at least suspect), bass lines are simply one dimension of a song arrangement. Today let’s look at melodies and how one might incorporate them into one’s playing. We’ll also continue to work on some arpeggio and partial-chord strumming styles and I might even throw in a simple bass line to keep you on your toes.

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 we’ll expand a bit on our Neil Young catalogue by working on Like A Hurricane. As I mentioned, the purpose of this lesson will be to incorporate a song’s melody into the arrangement and I think you’ll find this more than fits the bill.

Even though I intend to play this song with a pick, I’d like to flash back to something I wrote for the finger style lesson on Silent Night because I think it gives us a good place to start:

There are three essential things to playing in solo finger style – melody, bass and “accompaniment.” You want the melody of the song to ring out, if for no other reason than letting people know what the song is! The bass and accompaniment, usually chord arpeggios, should enhance your presentation – adding color and texture.

The melody of Like A Hurricane conveniently resides along the top three strings. Actually, only one note is on the G string and the rest are on the first two:

What we’re going to do is to work up ways of showcasing the melody in our strumming. This is good for two reasons: First, it allows you to play a melodic solo on the single guitar without sacrificing dynamics. Playing the melody along with the chords always sounds fuller than playing single notes. Second, if you’re like me and need to give your voice all the support it can get, hearing the melody is always a helpful thing!

Now that we have the melody, how about some lyrics and chord changes? As always, my apologies for the odd wrong word…

After the second chorus, the chords of the verse are repeated, playing under a guitar solo. Then there is a third verse, which is essentially a repeat of the second one. One more chorus and then repeat and fade with the verse chords again. Really not much to it, is there?

So let’s make something of it. First off, I’d like to suggest a small chord substitution. You may have already noticed, particularly if you’ve seen this song before on the internet, that I use Fmaj7 and Em7 where many charts list these chords as F and Em, respectively. But if you look at our melody, this mystery should immediately solve itself. Since the melody note in the fourth measure starts on E (open first string), I’ve added that note to the F chord and gotten Fmaj7. The D that is the final note of the melody is added to Em to get Em7. Nice how that works out, no?

But my concern is the G chord. The melody note at the start of the third measure is a D, which while part of the G chord, is not usually played with a standard open G chord (320003). So what I’d like to do is use this as a substitute:

Technically, it’s a G6 chord, but since, as you’ll soon see, we won’t be strumming the high E string on this chord. So let’s just call it a G for the sake of simplicity, okay? We’re friends; we can do that.

All right, then. We’ve got our melody and our chords so let’s play around with the verses. First I want to strum out the melody while starting each chord change with a fully strummed chord:

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

If there’s any trick to playing in this style, it’s in getting the chord to ring out the entire duration of the melodic phrase (meaning “until you change the chord!”). Keeping the chord intact as long as possible is essential, so you might have to do a bit of thinking about your fingering.

In the first two measures, you can hold the lower part of the Am chord (the E note on the D string and the A note on the G string) with ease. Strum from the fifth string down (the sixth string is okay, too, if you’d like – personally I prefer the root in the bass) and then pick the individual notes on the B string. I recommend keeping your index finger on the first fret of the B string, even when you use your pinky to play the D note (third fret). Only remove it when you play the open B. This shouldn’t take any of you too long to perfect.

When we go to the G chord (in reality our G6), you’ll see the importance of thinking out your finger placement. Usually I will play a G chord this way:

E open (or don’t play)
B 3rd fret ring finger
G open
D open
A 2nd fret index finger
E 3rd fret middle finger

But since I want to be able to play that C note on the first fret of the B string with my index finger, I’m going to play the G like this:

E open (or don’t play)
B 3rd fret pinky
G open
D open
A 2nd fret middle finger
E 3rd fret ring finger

That makes things a lot easier for me as it allows me to keep a finger on the B note (second fret on the A string) during this entire melodic phrase.

The third melodic phrase (measures four and five) is, note for note, exactly the same as the one in the first two measures. The only thing that has changed is the chord underneath. So simply keeping the Fmaj7 intact as long as possible should work fine. I will have to open up the B string at one point, but again, just as with the Am, it should work out fine.

After all this moving around, the Em7 is going to be a breeze. But do yourself a favor and note that we want to also play a chord when we change to the G, so try to use whatever finger you’ve got on the third fret of the B string for both chords. Me, I’m comfortable with either the ring finger or pinky.

We’ve just done half a verse, two lines if you will. Repeat the whole sequence again and you’ve a complete verse. Not too bad.

This is, I feel, the simplest way to incorporate the melody. But I know that a lot of people like to use this method:

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

Here we’re essentially strumming a chord for each note of the melody. What we’re trying to do is to be careful about our strums, so that the melody note is always the last note we hit. It rings out, and usually the listener hears it very clearly. This is what’s known as “chord melody” in jazz teaching. Granted, what we’re doing here is an incredibly simplistic version of it.

But that doesn’t mean that it’s easy. This is a great exercise for learning to strum accurately. For the record, I’m doing this all as downstrokes on the MP3. On the first note, we’ll strike all of the first five strings but throughout the rest of the measure, I want to make certain I don’t strum the high E (first) string again. Likewise, on the first note of the second measure, the A note (second fret, G string) is the one I want to sound last, so hitting the B string is strictly taboo. Take your time getting this right. You’ll be surprised how doing something like this will make all your strumming better in the long run.

The phrase in the two measures of G should prove easier than those with the Am or Fmaj7, since the G melody is all on the same string (the B), while the Am and Fmaj7 melody phrases use notes on the first three strings. And, again, the Em7 should provide you with a welcome resting spot.

So now we have two different ways of strumming with the melody. Which one shall we use? To those of you who said “Both” or “Neither,” well, maybe you know me too well…

While both of these methods have their charm, they both are fairly, I don’t know, rigid, for lack of a better word. They don’t flow. Music should flow. I don’t think that this is a problem with the style as much as with the song itself. Both of these methods have their place and we will certainly be seeing them again in the course of our lessons.

What I’d like to do is combine these along with some of the partial chord arpeggio-style strumming we used in America. Something like this:

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

Now we’re getting somewhere! First, a word that you’ve heard from me enough to be able to repeat it verbatim: THIS IS JUST A SUGGESTION!!! Please feel free to come up with as many different strumming ideas as you can.

What we’re doing here is starting out each chord change with a downstroke in order to get the first melody note. After that I use downstrokes for the “accompaniment,” mostly single bass notes or partial chords, and upstrokes for the melody. Often I’ll add a few harmony notes to the melody, striking two or three strings at once, but because that’s on the upstroke, the melody note should ring out the longest. Funny how these things work out.

At measure four, where there’d normally be a whole note (four beats) of D in the melody, I switch to doing more of a straight arpeggio. To simply stop for a whole note would bring everything to a crashing halt (try it and hear for yourself). Arpeggios, even simple ones, fill the space in a manner more consistent with the first three measures and keep the song flowing.

I cannot stress enough the importance of taking all of this one step at a time. Use the concentration you developed on the second strumming method (example #3) to strike the strings you want, but remember that because you’ve got your fingers in the right place to begin with (thanks to example #2!), even if you “miss” it’s going to sound okay. Any notes you hit will be part of the chord so it won’t sound bad. What you want to do is to try to focus on bringing out the melody, getting it heard above all the business in the background.

I also want to give you a second version of the last measure of the verse:

I tend to use the first version I showed you as a way to go into the chorus, as you can use the rhythm (and your own volume) to build some dramatic tension. This “optional” last measure is good for going back into the verse progression.

And I’ve got good news! After all this work, the chorus is going to be a walk in the park! Most of it consists of this strumming pattern:

Now that’s a piece of cake compared to what we’ve been through, right? Take a moment or two to get it down and then let’s tackle the whole chorus:

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

You’ll note I break the rhythm pattern in the second measure, using an eighth note and quarter note for both the F and G chords to punctuate the words “like a hurricane.” This technique of matching your rhythm playing to the vocals is another way to add to the dynamics of a song. And if you’re one of those people who have trouble singing and keeping rhythm, then you’ve got a built in place to do a quick spot-check and get everything back in line.

In measure four of the chorus, we match our strumming to the vocals again (…”in your eyes…”) and then, because I promised, throw in a brief walking bass line, going from G up to the C that starts the next measure.

Beginning with measure seven, though, we run into something that we’ve not dealt with before. Starting with the line “…to somewhere safer…” we’ve essentially got four measures of F. Since this is one of the dramatic points of the song, I’ve changed the rhythm to give things a little more breathing room:

I’ve also switched from F to Fmaj7 again in order to do a simple trick: on the last beat of measure eight, I’m going to slide my Fmaj7 up two frets where it (magically!) becomes a G6 and then slide it back down to start measure nine with the Fmaj7 again. Why? Just to do something different. It’s a small touch, but it makes a long stretch of the same chord a little more interesting.

At the very end of the chorus, I switch to our “chord melody” strumming because I want to get set to return to the verse progression again. Since the melody here is C (“blown” and D (“a” from “a-way”), this is easy enough to do since we’ve become good at it from all of our earlier practice.

And so we set forth onto the next verse or simple end the song by playing half a verse and then ending on Am.

I hope you had fun with this lesson and have fun with this song. While this may not have seemed as involved as some of our intermediate lessons, what you have (no pun intended) picked up here will be something that you can use in almost all the songs you play.

I hope that you continue to experiment with strumming patterns – using full chords, partial chords, single notes and arpeggios. Work in the melody lines or add a bass line. This is how you learn to develop your own arrangements and this is why people will listen to you with interest.

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

Some of you may notice that, on occasion, I try to link up my “Easy Songs for Beginners” lessons with these on the Intermediate page. I sincerely hope it doesn’t offend anyone to learn that I don’t consider my Songs for Intermediates lessons are all that much harder than the Beginner lessons, at least from a technical standpoint.

But I do believe the Songs for Intermediates lessons require more skill in that you do have to think. Please understand one thing about me: I’m probably the only teacher you’ll ever have whose primary philosophy is to get you to the point where you don’t need me! Nothing thrills me more than getting an email from someone who tells me, “I took the ideas from your lesson and used them in a song I’ve been playing for a long time. Now I’m finding all sorts of other ways to use them!” That’s my plan.

Today we’re going to carry on a little deeper with developing bass lines, as we did in Simple Twist of Fate, as well as in Fire and (Sitting On) The Dock of the Bay over on the beginners’ side of things. Our lesson is Paul Simon’s America, from the Simon and Garfunkel album, Bookends. You can also find it on many of their greatest hits or boxed sets.

In addition to working on the bass lines, I want to throw in some picking and strumming techniques, not to mention developing your arrangements with a fill or two. What the hey, let’s throw in a little chord progression theory while we’re at it! And did I happen to mention that this song is a waltz? As usual, if it sounds like we’ve bitten off a bit more than we can chew, then we’re in for fun, right? Speaking of fun:

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.

Before we get involved in the mechanics of the lesson, though, I want to touch upon where this particular arrangement came from. All of the song lessons I bring you come, originally, from the music itself. I’ll hear a song and think, “That would be good to play for people” and I come up with arrangement that (a) I can play and (b) I can play well enough so that people would want me to play.

Nowadays, just as when I just started learning the instrument, I do most of my arranging on my twelve-string guitar. I guess I figure that if I can play it on a twelve I can play it on anything! But also, as I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions, the twelve-string is my first preference when performing. This helps explain why many of my arrangements involve both straight strumming and arpeggios, as well as walking bass lines and chord voicings which highlight the natural qualities of the twelve-string.

America, like Fields of Gold, lends itself nicely to being broken down into specific segments. We’re going to think of the song in terms of verses and a bridge. This is a bit of a misnomer, as you’ll see. “Verse 1″ and “verse 2,” while starting the same, finish with different chord progressions. Fortunately, “verse 3″ is the same as “verse 1″ and “verse 4,” disregarding the outro, is a mirror image of “verse 2.”

I first learned this song from a book (The Songs of Paul Simon), and in that particular sheet music it’s in the key of Bb major. Those of you who’ve been reading my lessons for a while know full well that I’m already reaching for my capo. If I tell you that I intend to play in G, will that help? For the purpose of our lesson, we will put our capo on the third fret and discuss things in the key of G. Yes, this means that we will be playing in Bb (and the MP3s will also be in Bb) but this allows us to discuss things in terms of the incredibly friendly key of G.

And just to confuse you even further, I just listened to this song on my Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits CD (the really old one) and on that recording (which is, I believe, a remixed version of the original) it’s in the key of D!

But, doggone it, we’re going to play it in G and I want to take a moment now to bring up a few things about the key of G. This probably seems like old hat to most of you, but I want to show you where some of the things we’re going to do come from. First, let’s look at the G major scale and how nicely we can fit two of them into the first four frets of the guitar:

Pay careful attention to the fact that we can also go down from our G note on the sixth string. There’s an F# on the second fret and, of course, the open sixth string is E. This is important to understand in order to move ahead. You see, we’re going to play this song with a bass line that moves in two directions.

Intro and Verse 1

Have I mentioned that I love waltzes? I know that 3/4 time throws off a lot of people, but I think it’s a lot of fun. Songs in this time signature lend themselves very easily to a bass-and-chord strumming approach. You play the bass note on the first beat and then follow up with the chord on the second and third beats, like this:

You might also notice how the lyrics of the song fit right into this pattern:

Comparing these lines to the chord chart, I see (and hear) that I’ve got four measures of G before switching to C. Four measures of C will bring me back to G for the second line. That’s a lot of time in a moderately paced song to be playing the same thing! What to do?

This is where knowing a little about theory and a little more about scales can help you out. In the key of G, C is the fourth. But the important thing you have to always remember about music is that it’s not all in one direction. In our scale, C is the fourth note when we ascend from G, but it is the fifth note when we descend. But let’s suppose for a second that we were in the key of C. Starting and ascending from C, G would be the fifth of the scale. This is a vital relationship to understand, especially when it comes to the guitar, and even more so when we learn the bass.

Tuck this away someplace in your brain and keep it safe forever: If you have two notes (and let’s call them “1″ and “2″ in order not to confuse them with the names of actual notes) and 1 is the fourth of 2, then 2 will, without fail, be the fifth of 1.

Okay, enough of this particular digression. Thinking about the first line of the song, and thinking about the fact that I have four measures of G to deal with and remembering that I want to end up on C, the following idea takes shape in my brain: I’m going to play a descending bass line under the G chord, going from G to C. G for one measure, F# on measure two and E in measure three. Measure four will have the D note in the bass and voila! We are at C for the start of measure five.

It sounds feasible, but when you take into account that if I start with the G on the third fret of the low E (sixth) string, I’m going to run out of space. However, I’m a flexible person and the guitar is a flexible instrument. Let me come up with a couple of ways of working this out.

The first one (example #3A), if played in 4/4 time, would sound a little like the Grateful Dead’s Friend of the Devil, no? Note to self: there’s a possible Easy Song for Beginners lesson! By starting my descending bass line an octave higher, I get all the notes in a smooth, uninterrupted sequence. Example #3B isn’t bad, either! We get this by following the notes of the scale, even though the scale gets interrupted by our running out of notes at the open E string. We simply jump from the E (open sixth string) to the closest D note, which happens to be the open D string. Tell you what, let’s save this one for later!

But for now, guess what? I’ve decided that both of these ideas are too easy for my intermediates! As I mentioned earlier, we want a bass line that moves in two directions. And I want to add to your lesson by mixing up single notes and strumming, so I’ve decided to try a bass line like this:

Before we go any further, I want to both point out and stress something. I have deliberately written this example out in two different styles. 4A shows you what I’ve been calling, for obvious reasons, “bass and chord” style. The first beat belongs to our chosen bass note while beats two and three are filled with strummed chords. In example 4B I use arpeggios, all in eighth notes, based on our full chords. The particular arpeggio pattern I use works well for me but you can use many others.

I guess I should also point out that I usually use a pick for both of these examples. You can use your fingers and fingerpick if you’d like, but if you’d like to work a little on your picking technique, grab a pick to play this. It will allow you a chance to both strum and work on arpeggios. When I play this song myself, as you’ll soon hear, I’m more likely to use a combination of these two styles, like this:

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

When picking the arpeggios, especially using a pick (by the way, I’m using a medium one in these examples), there are all sorts of options. You might want to try to use alternating picking – that is, alternating your downstrokes and upstrokes. I have a tendency, when playing in this style, to wield the pick as I would my fingers. I’ll play the lower three strings (D, A and E) with downstrokes and use upstrokes on the first three strings (E, B and G). We could discuss the pros and cons of both ways from now to New Year’s.

My point here, and always, is that these examples are simply guidelines. I’ve been playing so long that I just play and trust what happens (and it’s not always pretty!). Believe me, you will get to this stage of playing as well. Don’t get yourself all worked up about not sounding exactly like the MP3 or even about the MP3 not matching the transcription note per note. I could play this (and just about every other song) a hundred times and you’ll get a hundred different (albeit slightly) versions. Play around and have fun. If you’re more comfortable with hitting a different sequence of strings for arpeggios, then by all means do so. If you just want to slug out a bass-and-chord arrangement, that’s your call as well.

Back to the score: You’ll also note that I do something very interesting in the third measure. I catch the full Em chord on the upstroke (on the last half of the first beat), let it ring for a beat and a half, and then ascend from E to G before making the final move from G to C. This gives a little rhythmic variation that I can use to keep people from falling asleep while listening to me!

Once we reach the C chord, we’ve another four measures to fill. Using our earlier logic, I’m going to play our C chord like this:

Again, you can do this with “bass and chords” (6A), arpeggios (6B) or a combination of the two (6C). Man, this is a lot of work for just two lines, isn’t it? I hate to tell you, but we’re not done yet! However, just to make you feel you’ve accomplished some more, I’ll take this time to note that this G to C sequence of eight measures, played twice, serves as the introduction to the song.

We’re going to come back to these four measures of C in a moment. Right now, though, I want to finish off the last two lines of this section. Here is the entire first verse with the intro. The notation is pretty much in bass and chord fashion in order to simply give you a guideline (and to spare me from having to write it all out), but you will hear me doing arpeggios as well:

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

Whoa! Yes, there were some things in there that we haven’t covered yet! For starters, there’s a riff/fill right before the switch from Em to Bm. And then there’s the whole thing at the end with those four measures of C. I did warn you! Let’s look at them both:

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

You can see that this starts simply enough. We’re playing an Em chord and using an alternating bass line. The first measure we play the open low E string, the next we use the B note on the second fret of the A and finally we use the E on the second fret of the D. Well, all that has gotten me a little bored; I’m itching to do something different. So for the final measure of Em, I throw in a little fill. Nothing at all fancy, it’s just playing around, moving my fingers on and off the A and D strings.

Where did this riff come from? Well, depending on your philosophy of things, we can answer that in several ways. We can say it is derived from the G major scale. But perhaps a more important way to look at it is that this fill is made possible by the E minor chord.

Pencils out, readers, because this is a major thing to remember from this song lesson: More times than not, a chord will give you ready-made fills if you’re willing to hunt for them. How does one look for them? By being fidgety. And by having an awareness of the scales involved and where the notes of those scales are in relation to your chord.

I want you to really look at the notes that we’re playing in the fourth measure of 8A and listen to what a nice little phrase we’ve got. Now pay attention to how little work it actually involves. Open A string, add finger, open D string, add finger. Nothing to it. Take your time to get the timing down. This is a place where I would definitely use alternate picking.

After playing around with some more “bass and chords” we get another interesting little run in the last measure of Bm7. Again, this is taken from the G major scale as well as simply being notes close to the chords in question. Since my index finger is on the B note to start with, I usually just hammer my middle finger on the C at the third fret and then pull off to get the B again and then pull off the index finger to get the open A. With my fingers in that position, I just move them up to the low E string and they are all set to get the final three notes.

In example 8B, you can hear that even doing something as simple as pulling off your index finger on a C chord, in essence changing it from C to Cmaj7, can be very elegant. This is what we do in the first two measures. This will work with both straight strumming and arpeggios, as you will hear in the upcoming examples.

For the second half of the riff, all you’re doing is moving your middle finger around on the second fret of the D and G strings. As we’ve done in all our lessons, take the time to get this clean. Play it as slowly as you have to. The speed will come, trust me. And for most fills, speed is not anywhere near as important as flow. You want your fills to be seamless parts of your accompaniment to a song.

By the way, I use Bm7 as a substitute for Bm, which is something I do a lot. For me, this comes from learning on a twelve string long before I learned barre chords. As always, you should feel free to use your favorite voicing. Remember to take into account that your bass note, depending on that voicing, might be different than mine. Also, you might not be able to do that Bm7 to E bass run if you’re using a different chord voicing, so feel free to come up with one of your own.

Notice that throughout the end of this verse I am letting the chord decide my bass notes. It doesn’t always have to be the root, even though it often is. Going from A to G, I decide to use the B note in order to continue up to the following D chord. On that D chord, just to keep you on your toes, I use a similar offbeat pattern to the one I described to you earlier.

The final G chord starts us back out on our initial pattern, which will take the song into the second verse. That was a bit of a ride, no? Are we still all here? Great! Let’s go on, then.

Verse 2

As in Henry VIII, “second verse, same as the first…” Well, it starts out the same, anyway.

All right, then. Let’s play the entire second verse, not forgetting to throw in our new C riff:

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

Notice the dramatic change to strumming during the last two lines (“…it took me four days…”). This, along with the very end of verse four, is one of the emotional centers of the song, so I tend to punch it up with straight strumming, pounding on the chords for all I’m worth. I also use different voicings of the D chord to both support the melody line and add to the dynamics.

Likewise, the final cadence of Gmaj7 to G may seem like (terrible pun warning!) a minor thing, but as it follows the melody line, it adds quite a bit to your playing, particularly with the switch from the F# (the seventh of the Gmaj7) to G being so prominent on the first string.

Bridge

Speaking of dramatic changes, here at the bridge we go from G to Fmaj7. There are many ways to look at this in terms of theory. I would normally think of it as a momentary modulation into the key of C. But since the tonality is still firmly rooted in G, it’s good to think that, again simply for the duration of these two lines, you’ve briefly shifted from G major to the mode of G Mixolydian. Remember that G Mixolydian is essentially a C major scale (no sharps and no flats) that starts and ends on G.

Or you could just as easily not think of it at all and simply play a little riff off the Fmaj7 chord, like in the first four measures of this transcription of the bridge:

You can again see that our riff is made by having the chord in place and playing around with the notes within our reach. It’s hardly that technical at all but it adds a lot. This particular idea is, once again, suggested by the song’s melody.

Going from the G back to the Fmaj7, let’s use the full G scale, obviously substituting F for F#. Then we’ll settle back into the intro pattern for a little bit and mix it up with playing around between the C and Cmaj7.

When we hit the final G (on “camera”), I want to tone the song down a little, so I play arpeggios again with our ever-descending bass line. When I get to the E, I decide to continue to the D, which means shifting the bass to the open D string. At this point, the song takes a little detour of two measures. Instead of going from D to C in the bass, we go to C#. For the longest time, I fiddled around with different chords and voicings before I settled on this one. I call it A9/C# but you can think of it as C#dim with the added seventh if you’d like. Lingering on this chord for two measures before landing back on C definitely helps you to hear a downshift in tone.

Here is our last MP3, which contains the entire bridge, plus the last two verses and the outro:

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

The outro involves repeating the last line of the final verse (the final line in “verse 2″) two additional times before ending with a couple of passes of the intro phrase. I like to close with the little fill on the C chord, slightly slowing in speed, and a final stroke of the G.

So, let’s see if we can’t put all this into a nice linear package!

America
- Simon

INTRO (G and C)

Play “verse 1″

Play “verse 2″

Play “Bridge”

Play “verse 1″

Play “verse 2″ (with outro)

Well, that was some trip, eh? I hope you had fun with this lesson and playing (and playing with) this song. America has been interpreted in many different ways, and I think that you should add your own arrangement to that list. Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll be sitting at some coffeehouse or small venue and hear you play it!

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
­

As we’ll be learning in an upcoming series on arranging music for the guitar, the bass line is an integral part of solo guitar playing. Just in case you’re new to these lessons, you should know that when I say “solo” I mean “single,” not playing a solo. We’ll be exploring the use of bass lines in arrangements throughout the upcoming Guitar Noise song lessons. You can catch a good one in the Easy Songs for Beginners lesson, Fire. I’d like to use this lesson as a starting point to explain the importance of knowing some theory, giving you a better grasp on what good bass lines are all about.

Consequently, this might be another one of those “easy” intermediate lessons, and I’d like to apologize to you for that. But, no, I don’t think I will. Instead, I’ll try to make it even more interesting to you by also throwing in a lesson in chord progressions for those would-be songwriters, and also one on chord construction in open tuning for those of you still needing a challenge. While we’re at it, let’s throw in a little bit about string muting and maybe even touch upon strumming. Did you get all that?

Well, how about this 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.

Today’s lesson is Simple Twist of Fate, the second track on Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks. You may wonder if I planned it this way, being right on the heels of Tangled Up in Blue and all, but I think that things just happened to play out wonderfully.

There’s a great article in an old issue of Guitar World Acoustic magazine on this epic album. It centers on the fact that it was written at a time when Bob Dylan was completely enchanted with open E tuning. Almost all of the songs for Blood on the Tracks were originally written in open E, and many made it to the final recording that way. To this day, Dylan will play these and other songs in this particular tuning. So let’s take advantage of the opportunity and use this tuning as a great way to learn a lot of different things.

First off, we need to discuss two important things: how to get to open E tuning and how to tune to open D. No, I’m not going nuts…just bear with me, okay? While I personally play this in open E, I do not tune my guitar to open E. Here’s why:

Now while you might think that tuning to open E would be easier since it involves changing three strings instead of four, I prefer open D because all the changes in tuning are lower than standard. In open E, your tuning three of your heavier strings up – the G up a half step to G# and the D and A each up a whole step to E and B respectively. This is just a personal choice for me. If you tune to open D and place a capo on the second fret, guess what? You got it: you’re in open E. Amazing, no?

The other amazing thing is that the chords you play are going to be the same! This is one example of the importance of being able to use your head. Suppose that you’re in a band where everyone is tuned down a half step, a whole step, a step and a half, whatever. Finally, suppose that you still want to play with your other friends who, for God knows what reason, see no reason to tune to anything other than standard – what do you do?

Well, as long as you are tuned in standard intervals, then you can throw on a capo to play with your standard friends and then take it off to jam with your band-mates. I’m not sure why people have a hard time grasping the logic of this, but hey, what can I say? If you don’t believe me, go to the above chart and add a new column, “Open D with capo on second fret.” Since you know that placing a capo on the second fret raises your note one whole step, and since E is one whole step up from D, place “E” in the “first string” box. Now go down the column and finish the rest of them. Did anyone not get a column identical to the “open E” column? I didn’t think so.

Ah, but we came to discuss bass lines and chords…

Time-Honored Progressions

…which brings us to scales and voicings. Music, as we’ve discussed in many columns, is movement. Harmony (and much of theory) is all about the voicing of chords and, more times than not, those voicings are derived from movement. Chord progressions are movements that we hear. In notation, you can see them as well. I’d like you to look at something:

Chord #1 is a C major chord, which I’ve arranged in four voices, low to high, C, E, G and C. Strum it a few times to get its sound embedded in your brain. For the purpose of this exercise, this is “home.” Our task in making a chord progression is to start at “home” and then get back there. We can only hope the trip is interesting.

Let’s start our trip by moving the high C down a half step. This gives us C, E G and B, which is the Cmaj7 chord. Can you hear the huge difference made by changing that one note? The chord now has a very different tonal quality – slightly dissonant yet very pleasant. For lack of a better phrase, the major seventh sounds transitory. It gives us the feeling that it wants to go somewhere, unlike the C major, which is (no pun intended) currently rooted in our ears as “home.” Being able to hear these differences will help you out immensely as you work on your ear training.

Lower the B an additional half step and you have C7 (C, E, and Bb). This chord really sounds transitory; it wants to become another chord! You can literally feel the tension, can’t you? And it’s all from simply leading the high voice down a whole step from the original C major.

Tension requires release, or “resolution” as we call it in terms of chords. In this case we’re going to resolve the C7 with two steps: first, we will bring the Bb down yet another half step to A. We now have, low to high, C, E, G and A. Since we’ve all read Building Additions (and Suspensions) we know this is the chord C6. Or, if you’d like, we can also look at it as an inversion of Am7. So, bearing this in mind, humor me and grab your guitar and play, in succession, C7 (x32310) and Am7 (002010). That’s kind of a disappointment, isn’t it? Our resolution is a tad on the wimpy side…

This calls for our second step: while we lower the Bb to A, we’re also going to raise the E a half step to F and we’re going to make the G simply disappear! Now we have C, F and A, which is the F major chord. Technically speaking it is also an inversion, since the root (F) is not the lowest note.

If you want to be really persnickety, don’t think of the G as “disappearing.” Instead, think of four voices singing these notes. We have four distinct voices for the C, Cmaj7 and the C7. But in order to continue with the movement we started in this progression, the G voice merges with another voice. Since G is one step away from either F or A, it doesn’t really matter which way it goes. If you wanted to be daring, you could leave it be, giving you Fadd9 (F, A, C and G). But for the sake of getting through this particular lesson, we’re giving it up for the time being.

Listen to this whole progression up to this point. We’ve gone from C to Cmaj7 to C7 and landed on F. While F sounds like a stable resting point, it doesn’t sound like home, does it? Since we’ve gone this far, let’s see what happens when we continue to lower the top voice a half step. Changing it from A to Ab leaves us with the Fm chord (F, Ab and C). Again we’ve hit upon a chord that truly begs for resolution. So why not use our previous method and see if we can’t find two notes to affect a release of the tension we’ve created.

First, we’ll lower our top voice one final half-step, moving from Ab to G. Let’s also lower the F a half step so that it’s back on E. What have we done? Mercy if we haven’t gotten back where we started from! We’re back to C major, aren’t we?

Now play our whole progression: