Turin Brakes - the Door

Hi again everyone and Happy New Year to you all.

Here's a song from the British duo Turin Brakes, who I believe won the Mercury Music aware a couple of years ago for their excellent debut album "the Optimist". Anyone that likes acoustic stuff - buy it!

I am planning on putting a couple of the easier songs on here for all to enjoy, starting with this week's offering, The Door.

This is a good song for beginners and more experienced players alike, as you can embellish a lot of the basic chords with nice flourishes, what i am going to do is give you the bog basic song first and then break it down and try and point out where you can play around. This is for solo guitar (Future Boy will be put on here, for two guitars, shortly).

Ok so without further ado, here's the basic song structure - a lot of tabs show the chords differently, but this is how I play it and its a pretty good take on things. You'll need the following chords -

Em - 022000
A - x02220
Asus2 x02200
Cadd9 x32033

As for a strumming pattern, the possibilities really are endless. Its not a fast paced song, so you have plenty of time to play around. However for the sake of newbies, I will suggest something like - Down Down Down up/down/up/down Down Down

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
D D D UDUD D D

Play around to your heart's content if you don't like this pattern!

Em A
So take the fast road, and get going now,
Em A
Before you leave no trace,
Em A
Time in this place was closer than my friends,
Em A
Remember my eyes not my face.
Em A
Innocence has no sense it invents,
Em A
Another Man unfolds
Em A
Well im standing next to myself the sink
Em A
Staring into the black hole.

Chorus
Cadd9 Asus2
I panic at the quiet times,
Cadd9 Asus2
Decisions at the door,
Cadd9 Asus2
I panic at the quiet times,
Cadd9 Asus2
Fate leads me to much more
Em (long upstroke)


ok so that's the song, pretty easy eh? So now for a bit of playing around. First of all the intro. This combines what's going on with the two guitars (one guy plays slide). This is really easy but sounds effective, give it a try! here's the tab -
Em A Em A
e:|-0---3--2--0-----|-0------------|--0---3--2--0--|--0-------0-2---|
B:|-0---------------|-2----2--0----|--0------------|--2-----2-------|
G:|-0---------------|-2--2------2--|--0------------|--2---2---------|
D:|-2---------------|-2------------|--2------------|--2-------------|
A:|-2---------------|-0------------|--2------------|--0-------------|
E:|-0---------------|--------------|--0------------|----------------|


Play this through twice and then go into your strumming pattern for the verse. This is where the embellishment comes in handy, on the A try strumming A, Asus2, A instead of straight A (in other words just do a finger lift off the B string). Even on the Em you can mess around, try adding your pinky to the B or G strings 2nd fret to give you a more varied sound.

OK so that's the intro and the verse sorted, all we have to tackle is the chorus. Although you can get away with strumming it, and indeed this sounds just fine, I found that if you can incorporate a nice picking pattern in here, it definitely breaks things up a bit (or is that Brakes things up a bit?) ....I came up with this , and if you listen carefully its there in the recorded version, maybe slightly different but hey! this is my arrangement! Don't worry you have plenty of time, just get a nice firm downstroke in, let it ring, and then do a little bit of single string work like this - note you have to hold the chord shape, no need to move any fingers at all!!!
Cadd9 Asus2
e:|-3-------3-----|-0-------0-----|
B:|-3---3----3----|-0----2---0----|
G:|-0-0---0---0---|-2--2--2---2---|
D:|-2----------2--|-2----------2--|
A:|-3-------------|-0-------------|
E:|---------------|---------------|


Obviously you have to repeat this four times for the chorus.

And that's pretty much it. As far as the order to play all this in, try this -

Play intro through twice
Verse One (strummed)
Chorus (picked)
Play intro through once as a bridge section
Verse two (strummed)
Chorus (picked)
Play intro once
End on long Em upstroke catching all the strings.

And that's all folks - I hope you enjoy it. You get the feeling of the song even with one guitar.

Happy strumming

Matt

Please post any questions you might have on this thread and i'll try and answer them!