Horse With No Name

Got a question of the second Horse With no name lesson:

In this area do I just pluck both string at the same time, or do I stum thru the strings with the ones in between? Hope I said this right.

And

Here what does a fret with a circle around it mean?

Thanks 8)

I play this with my fingers - thumb on the lower notes and a finger on the high E string. Some folks might strum straight through.

On the second question, the circled frets in the TAB is just the way this particular software wrote the notes. They are half-notes, just as in the notation. It's just this software's way of writing out the timing on TAB.

Hope this helps.

Peace

Thanks for the quick reply...

That defintely helped as I was doing it right then. Great lesson by the way.

I may be a little thick on this, but does someone have a tab of all of horse with the fills Dave demonstates in the lesson? I would appriciate the help.

Got a question of the second Horse With no name lesson:

In this area do I just pluck both string at the same time, or do I stum thru the strings with the ones in between? Hope I said this right.Assuming you were referring to the diagram of the Dadd6add9, I left out the notation stuff, but got the Em in the same image. To expand on David's answer a little, I'd add that, if there were X's instead of O's (or 0 [zeroes]) over one or more of the other four strings, you might have to find a way to just play the fretted ones. But O's indicate that those "Open" strings (or "zero" for "no fret," if you prefer) can be strummed right along with the fretted strings without ending up with a different chord than what the name indicates. Any with an X would have to be muted or skipped, but O's are easy. 8)

Hope I answered this right. :wink:

Just joined this site and was just looking around at some of the song posts and seen this one for A Horse With No Name!

These are the chords that I use and it seems to sound ok.

Pokie

If i cant play this song semi smooth after 3 days, should I just concede that the guitar isnt for me and give up? I picked up the guitar about 4 days ago, found the song, and and have been going at it. I keep screwing up the 1 chord change, and everything just sounds erratic. For being the easiest guitar song ever, it sure is giving me lots of trouble.

If i cant play this song semi smooth after 3 days, should I just concede that the guitar isnt for me and give up? I picked up the guitar about 4 days ago, found the song, and and have been going at it. I keep screwing up the 1 chord change, and everything just sounds erratic. For being the easiest guitar song ever, it sure is giving me lots of trouble.

No, you should not assume that guitar is not for you after such a short time.
work on playing the chords cleanly one at a time , then switching between chords, then put them together in order and out of order. when you can do this then come back and work on the song.

If i cant play this song semi smooth after 3 days, should I just concede that the guitar isnt for me and give up? I picked up the guitar about 4 days ago, found the song, and and have been going at it. I keep screwing up the 1 chord change, and everything just sounds erratic. For being the easiest guitar song ever, it sure is giving me lots of trouble.

hey mate don't take it to bad. First of all it needs a few weeks just to learn to play a few chords, even more to learning to strum, secondarily "horse" is not by any means the easiest song around except for its vey easy chord changes.

If you wanna play it faithful to the original, the song rhythm, involving both shuffle and syncopation, is not easy to grasp for a beginner, believe me!

If at the beginning you forget about muting and learning the chorus bass-line, it is easier for a beginner to play "Eleanor rigby" which has a solid eight note rhythm that you can also play with a simple Du/Du/du/du strum...(at the beginning it is quite difficult to play eight notes with downstrum only)

Cheers

Matteo

If i cant play this song semi smooth after 3 days, should I just concede that the guitar isnt for me and give up? I picked up the guitar about 4 days ago, found the song, and and have been going at it. I keep screwing up the 1 chord change, and everything just sounds erratic. For being the easiest guitar song ever, it sure is giving me lots of trouble.

Hey hugh, I went through the exact same thing a month ago. I went and bought a guitar and couldn't even do one chord in the music store!

I tried Horse With No Name also and couldn't get what looks like one of the easist chord changes done. So, I put the song away, but signed up for some lessons.

What you might want to do is just practice the chord changes in a straight downstroke and don't worry about upstrokes yet.

If you want to keep having a go at the song, just practice the 2 chords in straight downstroke 4-beats-per-measure. So, 4 downstrokes, then change chord, then another 4 downstrokes. Start really slow, then as you get more comfortable, speed it up a bit a time. Get to where you can do those 2 chord changes almost with your eyes closed.

After that, start to practice strumming up and down with the song. I recommend you start with a fairly soft pick initially.

Don't give up though, I know exactly how you feel.

Cheers,
Steve

Hi:

I found this great site and wanted to try this song as an easy chord begginer song.

It seems the MP3 links do not work anymore. Can they be replaced or new links created?

Thanks

Hi:

I found this great site and wanted to try this song as an easy chord begginer song.

It seems the MP3 links do not work anymore. Can they be replaced or new links created?

Thanks

Chances are We've run out of bandwidth for the month. The links should work by the beginning of next month. I'd suggest you download a copy on your hard drive for reference, I keep mine in a file labled GN Riffs so I don't screw somebodies chance to listen.

Thanks for the info.

But I'm not sure if it is bandwitch use.

It seems the MP3s I am looking for are on: http://www.cuttingedge.net . I see other sample MP3s are on: http://www.guitarnoise.us .

Could this have something to do with it too?

Thanks again.

I'll try next week though to see if it is bandwidth.

It seems that some of the MP3 links are working for the Horse With No Name lesson, but the first two links seem to be broken.

Appreciate any help.

We're still working on that. As has been mentioned in other posts, as well as in many of the past newsletters and more personal emails than I can keep count of anymore, we were hacked earlier in the year, which has lead to many, many problems. One of the obvious ones being the hijacking of a number of the MP3 links. We've got most of them back on track but others are still being worked on.

Sometimes, usually toward the end of any given month, we do run into bandwidth allotment issues, but with these MP3 files, that is not the case.

As always, your patience is appreciated. And keep letting us know if any of you happen to find more problems with any of the links.

Be seeing you on the boards.

Peace