Wild Wood, by Paul Weller, another one for beginners!

This is just one FANTASTIC song for acoustic guitar. If you know this song well, you'll probably already agree. If you don't know it, go get it. Its on a veriety of albums, quite often featuring on acoustic compilations of various artists, but my favorite (and VERY close to this version) is on the brilliant acoustic only album "Days of Speed". This is Weller stripped of his band, just him, a guitar and a mike, and beleive me its fantastic.

Anyway here we go. A few playing tips as usual.

First off, many tabs show this played with barre chords, with no capo. Trust me, this version is right, play along to the recording if you don't beleive me. Stick a capo on and you only have 4 chords to worry about, and they are all easy. They are as follows (and don't be put off by fancy names!)...

Am x02210
Am9x02000 How easy it THAT?
Dm7xx0211 Do a mini bar with first finger at fret one, on high e, b and g string, and use middle finger to fret g string at 2nd.
Dm7b5xx0111 same as above, but remove middle finger to leave mini bar.

Its important you only strum the e, b, g and d strings for the last 2 chords (Dm7 and Dm7b5) and do not hit the A or low E.

So we've got our chord shapes sorted, now what? Strumming pattern...if you look at this tab, this shows you the start of the song, including the little hammer on intro bit (this is easy, its in the Am shape so you don't even have to move your fingers) - notice how I have given you U or D strum signs, but haven't tabbed out all the strings, only the opening chord. Here it is -
Intro: Am
D D D D D D U/D/U
e---------------0-------------
B---------------1-----------
G-------0H2-----2-----------
D--0H2----------2----------------
A------------0-------------------
E--------------------------------

e----0-----------------1-----------1-
B----0-----------------1-----------1-
G----0-----------------2-----------1-
D--2-------------------0-----------0-
A--0---------------------------------
E------------------------------------
Am Etc.....
e---0
B---1
G---2
D---2
A—0--
E------


NOW the reason i haven't tabbed the strings, is he plays partial chords for most of this strumming. Generally he plays down (full chord) then down (a couple of strings) then down (full chord) and so on. So don't be too worried about not nailing it, the strings will be ringing from the previous strum anyway! The important thing is to keep the strumming hand moving. Its not a fast song, just get it to flow as best you can. Notice that you just put a little down/up/down/up in at the end of the Am bit, and at the end of the Am9 bit too - so the strumming there is pretty damn similar! Also note that you stay on the Am and the Am9 for exactly twice as long as the other 2 chords...try it with you metronome set at about 60bpm, and count "one and two and three and four and" . Stay on Am for all of the 4 beats, and Am9, and then split the other chords into 2 beats each. Hopefully once you start playing it all will become clear!

So my advice from the off, is to play this through including the little hammer on intro, nice and steady, but feel the rhythm...Weller is fantastic at this, getting the most out of a handful of chords by imaginiative strumming. And do try the partial chords, its MUCH easier to do than describe.

I think this chord progression is really pretty, if you get a bit bored with it, a nice take on the last bit (Dm7b5) is to play a downstroke, and then pick the individual strings from the high e back up to the d string. You can hear this done a couple of times during the recording.

Any time you return to the Am do try and catch the open A string as your bass before starting the strum , this adds a certain something.

Lastly, at the end of each verse stay on the Am for a whole bar before going on. OK here's the whole song, I hope you Weller heads will like it, and anyone that plays solo acoustic and wants a nice sounding song to stick in their collection

And Chris, give this one a go and let me know how you get on!!!!
Play intro as tabbed…then…