I love this band. They are never afraid to do the obvious or recycle cliches but they make it sound so good !! If you are writing songs never be afraid of G Em C D, just because it has been done a million times before. The reason it has been done a million times before is simple - it sounds so complete and it never fails to satisfy.
Mountainview Rocks !!
This is nice, and easy to play. The magic of this song is that E/G# chord. Slash chords like this( E ’slash’ G# ) are often what is called a chord inversion. In the normal state of things the lowest note you hear when someone plays a chord is the root note of the chord. So for an E chord that is normally the 6th string, the low E. A chord inversion is where one of the other notes out of the chord gets used as a bass note and in this case the note used is the major 3rd of E which is G#. Slash chords dont have to be chord inversions - the main thing for us to remember is that the note after the / sign is an instruction for the bass player. So for E/G# we play the regular E chord and the bass player takes the G#. And the D is really Dsus2 which is just your regular D but with the first string open. I posted a video on how to play this just below the song sheet.
Remember these sheets are hard to read on this site - to read em most easily, print ‘em if ya want or save ‘em to yr ‘puter
Ya gotta click in the video twice to watch it - once to activate and once to play. If your connection is slow pause the playback while it downloads.
Breathe is right that is what you have to do if you want to sing this song. That first verse you don’t get a breath until after “I don’t love him”
Tricky strum - more on that to follow. Most of the time signatures (the beat ) that we play in are what is called duple in other words the beats divide by two and by four etc. Some time signatures are triple and this is where the beats are divided by three. An obvious example is a waltz (”1 2 3 1 2 3″)
Triple strums require you to think in 3’s instaed of 4’s and it is an adjustment. If you have to play a song in 3/4 time you have to force yourself to count in 3’s for awhile. I mean it, ya gotta say to ya’self “123123123123 accenting the 0ne to get y’self in the feel. Strumming I usually go for 1_2&3_1_2&3_ with the 123’s as down strums
Pink! Catchy song, great chorus. It is actually played in the key of A and the chords used on the CD are A, Bm, F#m, E, D. Mmmmm 2 bar chords… I put it in G and then played it with a capo at the 2nd fret so there are no barchords and that little lick that starts and ends the song and is all through it uses open strings and one fretted note.
If you play it in A ( without a capo ) then the guitar lick is at the 2nd fret barring the 2nd and 3rd strings with your first finger and stretching up to the 5th fret of the 2nd string with your pinky.
Play the lick with all down strokes but once you break into chords ‘down down up up down’ will do ya.
The best thing to do with these song sheets is save’m to your desktop ‘n then open’m probably with windows photo and fax viewer if you double-click them.
I saw James Blunt playing this song on telly here in NZ and he capoed his guitar up on the 8th fret and instead of playing in the key of C he started with a G. This version capoed at the 3rd fret sounds fine and doesn’t require a lot of fiddling with the tuning which you seem to need further up the neck.
If I have a choice I always prefer to use the capo on even numbered frets because that keeps the fret marker dots on the dotted frets same as no capo Capo on the 3rd fret puts you’re in the same key as the song and means you can play along with the CD which is one of the best ways to practice.
Notice how the 3rd fret of the first string (the note G) rings through all of the chord changes. Get your little finger on that note and leave it there through all of the verse. In the chorus we have been changing back to standard shapes. It is a tough song to sing that guy can get so high.
When I draw a chord symbol in a circle it is supposed to mean strum for one bar. When the circles are connected by a line it is our way of showing that the chords are in the same bar and means they get two beats each.
That is the lead part at the top of the music sheet - listen to the song for the timing.
Some ‘a these thumbnails don’ open so good in Internet Explorer. If you single click the thumbnail you could select ’save’ and save it to your desktop and then you could open it from there with windows pictures and fax viewer - that seems to work better with these gif images.
Yes folks it’s true. They all said it. All of them. They said I was washed up, passed it, a has-been. My drummer joined another band, the bass player went into some sort of intensive therapy, our harmonica player was last seen doing a double act with a mastiff dog that howled along with his playing (they were quite good, at least the dog wasn’t bad ) But looky looky here what’s this !! Look who comes crawling round now!! practically begging JD to dust off his axe and bail them out of trouble one more time. The trouble is, by some devious, underhand, machiavellian manouvering (possibly involving some form of blackmail) they have managed to score a gig opening for country music legends The Warratahs at the Theatre Royal here in town.
I know what you’re saying “country music!” and I must admit I did always see myself as a bluesman, kinda like the next Stevie Ray Vaughan if you like, but Hey, I could be the next Waylon Jennings instead! (if the money was good ) And it’s not like I haven’t played in Country bands before, I played in a couple of bands and did a tour in a country band back in the day ( well yes we were broke at the time and the money was good ) In fact country music is not a bad gig if you play lead guitar because you basically get to jam on lead licks straight through every song - none of that boring strumming on chords or grinding out the rhythm guitar while the harmonica player takes yet another extended solo. Country music and Blues come from the same place. in fact a lot of the chord structures are identical. A song like ‘Sweet Home Chicago’ by Robert Johnson could be played over the chord sequence EEEEAAEEBBEE and a country song like ‘Move it on Over’ by Hank Williams is played over the identical chord sequence. Blues has a lot of shuffle or swing feel to it, that 12/8 feel, and a deadpan kind of vocal style where you repeat the first vocal line to set it up for the punchline where country has that 2 step feel with a more emotional, personal take on the lyrics.
Country music lead guitar playing requires you to have an ear out for the chord changes all the time because the licks you play are driven by the underlying chords. Blues band lead guitar playing is more a case of getting onto the minor pentatonic scale of the key that the song is in and wringing every bend and lick out of it. So for example for ‘Sweet Home Chicago’ you would be jammin’ out the Em pentatonic scale for the whole song. For ‘Move it on Over’ you have to play an Emajor lick while the band plays E, an Amajor lick when the chords shift to A and a B or B7 lick for the 2 bars of B. Blues gets a lot of the guitar feeling from forcing a minor scale over a major scale chord sequence where country is a real major scale sound. Blues is more emotional where country is more intellectual ( for the lead guitarist I’m talkin about.)
That reminds me, one of the conditions I agreed to lead this crazy mission was that we wouldn’t go out under our old name from the 80’s, the cheesiest band name ever created - ‘Hot Licks’ And what do we now hear on the local radio every hour? “…and supported by ‘Hot Licks’, reforming after 25 years.” Betrayal takes many forms children but there is no betrayal as deep and bitter as music betrayal. No wonder successful bands split up and never speak again. In my mind there is no task so difficult or path so torturous set for human kind as that involved in keeping a band together.
Here is a tentative set list
12 songs should do it, we gotta fill up 40 minutes. What ya gotta watch out for is when ya play live ( and under pressure ) you can rip through the set list in half the time it took at practice so maybe a couple’a spares might be the go.
Hey I will keep you posted. In the meantime though (the gig is on Oct14 ) I guess there won’t be much else happenin’ around here.
Update Sunday 24 Sept. Since I gave up playing live a few years back I have been plagued by this reoccuring nightmare and, wouldn’t you know it, this reoccuring nightmare involves the Theatre Royal. Yes that’s right the same one!! In my dream I am supposed to be on stage but I can’t find my guitar, then I find it and it’s out of tune then there is no lead, no set list, everyone is waiting and none of my gear will work. Then I get on stage and it gets worse!! A theatre stage slopes towards the audience to make it easier for the audience to see the action ( at least the one here does ) Anyway in my dream I finally manage to start playing and as I’m playing my amp rolls forward ( because of the slope ) and hits me in the back. I try to push it back but the stage is leaning on a greater and greater angle, next thing I’m trying to play balancing on the edge of a huge drop into the orchestra pit ( now about 100 feet deep ) That’s when I wake up !!
What about the Warratahs web site ? Must be out of date eh no mention of or gig there or anything about ‘The Hot Licks’ Three practices down and ’The Hot Licks’ is starting to sound not too bad. One of my theories about bands is that every band should have it’s own sound, different to all other bands because every band is unique. Rather than struggling to learn a whole pile of songs a band should just try and play together to find their favourite grooves. Playing with a bunch of other muso’s is so difficult, so fraught with layer upon layer of stress but if you can pull it off and click into a groove it is right up there man !! Hey and going back to my bad dream, I have a choice of two amps for this gig - my favourite amp which has started cutting out for no reason and my second favourite amp which goes well except for one time a few months back when it suddenly made this huge grunchy noise for no reason. Deep breaths deep breaths, I have played at this same theatre heaps of times before and I have used both amps at one time or another. Now excuse me please I have to go. I must go to my happy place. Till next time J.D.
Update 14 October
I am now a collossus. I bestride the world of music with one foot in the blues and the other foot planted in country music. Yes you could say the gig went ok. How is this for a typical support band gig though. Turn up at 2PM as requested for sound check but no the other band hasn’t done their’s yet. Come back at 5PM and sit there while the main act practices a song over and over again. Then sit there again while the drummer and the sound guy play with the kick drum sound for 1/2 an hour. Ok guys set your gear up, so we set up our amps and tune up our axes and run over our first song (always a great idea in a pressure gig - make the first song an easy one and practice it heaps) then the sound man wanders past and I say ” when are ya gonna mike up the guitar amps” “Don’t need to” he says “sounds great!! ” Yeah right. So no miking of the guitar amps, that is a new one for me but yeah pretty much what ya gotta expect for this sort of gig. Next thing they have the curtain up at the start of our set so we just sorta drift onto the stage and start plugging in and switching on and the sound guy kills the music as soon as we appear so there is this long silence ( and somebody coughs ) while we get organized. But then we kicked it. No idea what it sounded like out front as far as guitars but it sounded good on stage and that is always good. We went for a clean guitar sound which is pretty unusual for me. My favourite country guitar sound is treble ( bridge ) pickup, clean and heaps of compression. My number one guitar is an Ibanez S series, what they used to call the sabre or something. ( what can I say it was the 90’s and Joe Satriani was playin Ibanez ) The only thing wrong with Ibanez guitars is that it is really hard to tell the cheap ones from the expensive ones at first look. Great guitars, I would love a Jem, that one with the hand grip in the body. My Ibanez would be perfect if it had a sunburst finish. And it needs a switch to select a single coil bridge pickup instaed of the humbucker. Good project before next gig ( hey I haven’t got a next gig so that could take a while ) Actually my next gig is gonna be a concert/jam for my students. Keep ya posted. Keep on pickin JD
Final Word
Heard from a few people who said theyy couldn’t hear the guitars so the final score was - hard working guitarists nil, lazy soundman 1. On the bright side we got $100 each, unexpected and very nice. Went to the local music shop and bought a guitar stand $25, A tuner $42, and a capo $30. All things I needed but never woulda shelled out for otherwise. A good result. Thanks Warratahs !!
Here are a couple of good sites I found; GuitarGeek, which is a great site for guitar, amplifier and effects pedal gearheads and Guitarshredshow which is a site that kind of defies description really. Guitar geek is pretty straightforward, a site for everyone who thinks distortion pedals are a necessity of life, up there with guitars and an internet connection, and it has some great guitar rigs from all types of guitarists, not just the real well known ones.
Guitarshredshow is worth a couple of visits, it seems to have some real lessons there ( I wish you could slow them down and make it easier to try and learn them ) and if you get sick of trying to learn them make sure you head for the jam. You don’t have to play anything just hold down any key on your pc keyboard and jam like crazy - it sounds good !
We are halfway through term 3 already and it has turned into the girl song term. First it was Who Knew by Pink, then Other Side of the World by KT Tunstall and now High School Musical fever has struck. Breaking Free is the first track we have been playing. The easiest way to play it is to capo your guitar at the 3rd fret then the chords are Am, F, D, C, G. Towards the end there is a key change and it moves up a whole step but still not too difficult. Another girl song - Breathe by Anna Nalick. Seems easy until you try and strum it. 6/8 time or any kind of triple time is always going to be tricky to strum.
Dani California is still a song that a lot of guitarists are interested in and Tell Me Baby, the follow up to Dani California from the Chili’s has been a lot of fun to learn also. I can’t help feeling that Tell Me Baby is riding in on the coat tails of Dani a bit. The Chili’s have always had that funky side I guess it’s just not quite as much fun to play along to as their slower more melodic stuff. Nice intro but and that intro is a good little fingerstyle workout.
If you are struggling to get started with reading tab for guitar check out my How to Read Tab lesson and leave a message let me know what you think if it is helpful.(or not)
Guitarists are great. I think I can pick a guitarist pretty quickly now although I have learned never to make a judgement about anyone’s guitar or musical ability. I remember when I started out heaps of people including my family and other musicians told me I didn’t have ‘it’ whatever that was but did I let that put me off? no way man I was addicted, intrigued, hung up and there was nothing else for it, I just had to play. Guitarists are special people no doubt about it, we are fascinated by music but also by tight steel strings, closely grained wood, shiny chrome, guitar pickups (single coil and humbucker), whammy bars, amplifiers, speakers, effects pedals and most of all by other guitarists. We are a special lot never doubt it. Since the dawn of time (the 50’s) we have ruled the world of music and baby, there is no end in sight. They try and try but there ain’t no computer program that can play like we can play. They need us, and we are available (at the usual rate of course - no cheques please, cash only )
Hey I got a real good tip about a guitar tuner which can be downloaded from the internet and installed on your computer. It is a guitar tuner which you can use to tune electric or acoustic guitars ( you just have to figure out how to get the sound from your guitar into your PC ) . It is called AP Tuner and you can get it from here.
It works pretty good, better than a lot of other guitar tuners which I have found on the internet and tried on my PC before.
It is what I think they call nagware which means its free but everytime you use it you will be nagged about buying it. Just click ‘evaluate’ if you want to try it before you decide to buy it.
When it is installed you have to go into the screen ‘recording’ then ‘windows recording control’ and select how you are going to get your guitar sound into your computer. If you have a microphone (sometimes the mic is built into the monitor) select the mic as the input. I have got a mixer going into the ‘line in’ on our PC soundcard so I selected ‘line in’ and it worked easy. (Except for the obvious fact that anything to with a pc is never going to be that easy.) Another tip; go into the screen called ‘Note’ and then ‘Note Preset’and make sure that ‘Guitar - Standard E’ is checked.
It seems like I haven’t been doing a lot of posting on my guitar page lately but I am always editing and adding to the posts and songs that are already here. Plus I am reluctant to push ‘Dani California’ off the front page because it gets so much traffic.
I am working on 3 new songs for the studio this week. ‘Who Knew’ by Pink, ‘Your Song’ by Elton John and ‘Tell Me Baby’ by the Chilli’s. The Chilli Peppers are a teaching staple - hard enough to be challenging but not so hard as to be impossible - and it doesn’t hurt that their songs are really catchy and very cool. Green Day are another band that fits into that catagory (simple catchy and cool, if only it was that easy ! we could all be doing it ). Nirvana were the greatest power chord lesson band. Pink has a great song that only has one chord in it ! It is called “Get This Party Started’ and it’s Bm all the way (”Iiiiiii’m comin up so you better get this party started” - Hey that’s my theme song when I’m clubbin’ it). I have been saying that this was the first Elton John song we had ever done but not so ! we did that ‘Candle In The Wind’ remake that he played for Princess Diana’s funeral.
I have been thinking that I will shift all of the songs off this site and on to another site so that they can all be reached by links from here kinda like what I have already done with ‘You’re Beautiful’
P.S. Check out the ‘Happy Birthday’ lesson - you know you will need it one day.
P.P.S. I have added a new page to my guitar site (what you are reading now is a post, the pages are listed down the side) the new page is called : All The Songs On This Site
This is a fingerstyle song. In other words you won’t be needing a pick. Most of the song is played on the 2nd and 3rd strings together with either the 5th or 6th. Your right hand is - thumb picking either the 5th or 6th strings, 1st finger picking the 3rd string and 2nd finger picking the 2nd string. Get this right from the start and it will be easier to play. If you can play the intro you should find the rest of the song easy - let me know when you want the rest. Remember you should strum from the elbow, pick from the wrist, but fingerstyle is all in the fingers. Watch your wrist - if it is moving up and down as you pluck you aint doin it right.
When I was learning classical guitar my teacher showed me to hold your forearm out straight ahead (horizontal) and let your wrist go limp so that your hand and fingers point down loosely. Now swing your forearm down without altering the angle of the wrist until your fingertips are touching the strings. This is the correct playing position. Point your thumb up towards the neck and your fingers back towards the bridge. I bet I have an illustration of that somewhere I’ll try and dig it out and post it. It is possible to play with your plucking wrist straight but it seems to force your fingers into more of a clawing action. I don’t play classical anymore you would have to be some kind of hermit monk to get any good at classical but the techniques transfer well into folky style picking.
Here is a step-by-step guide to the intro, the first 8 bars of the song as tabbed above.
Here is the verse and chorus
And here is the bridge (watch these in order)
If this gets too hard here are the chords
And here is the bridge - a bit rough I am afraid but I will try and get back and tidy this up later.
A Studio standard. I have probably played this more often than Fred Durst (or Pete Townshend for that matter )
This is great practice for what we call our slow strum. The version below is played at 61 beats per minute which is about one beat per second so if you count ‘1,2,3,4′ at a rate of one number per second you are counting at 60bpm. This is too slow for our standard strum so count ‘1,2,3,4′ then,’1&2&3&4&’, now strum down on 1, down on 2 and down on the & after2 then down on 3, down on 4 and down on the & following 4. So strum-
’down (rest)down down down(rest) down down’. or-
1_2&3_4&1_2&3_4&
Check this out http://jdguitar.wordpress.com/strumming-acoustic/
In the following song sheet I have written it so that each chord written in a circle is 2 beats. That is each chord gets a ‘down (rest)down down’ strum. I am not very consistent in this I know, sometimes it is 4 beats sometimes 2 (sometimes both in the same song) but this is 2 beats per chord
Back to JD’s Guitar School Home Page
What a classic song. Catchy and in an easy key, D,A,G,Bm, right up to the bridge where it gets a bit harder and along comes F and worst of all Bb - Bb (Bflat) is otherwise known as a barchord at the first fret with your 2nd 3rd and 4th fingers holding down the ‘A’ shape and is one of the hardest barchords for beginners but hey! thats not us, right !! Check out my strumming page.
If we are learning this song on acoustic guitar, as opposed to a full on electric approach, then we would start the song on the D chord strumming down 8 downstrums to the bar similar to the way the electric gat kicks the song off. Sort of a powerchord feel. Keep that up through the D A D A (4 bars) until after “it was the summer of 69″ then swap to a regular ‘down down up up down’ strum until you get to the first chord fill thingy, that great signature riff.OK I admit this is tricky. Lets do the D chord lick first. On the first string it goes 0 2 3 2 0 2 (fret numbers) This is Dsus2 D Dsus4 D Dsus2 D (Dsus2 is where you play D and then lift up your 2nd finger to let the open 1st string sound, Dsus4 is where you play D then add your little finger on the 3rd fret of the 1st string ) The timing is the thing.
It’s a 2 bar riff and very syncopated (offbeat) I have written the 2 bars here with the notes in bold.
1&2&3&4&1&2&3&4&
If I was playing this by myself I would strum it so it would go -
down down up up down down down up up down down (I edited that strum pattern in a couple of days ago and looking at it tonight it doesn’t make sense!! - It should be
1_2&_&4_1&_&3_4
down down up up down down up up down down )
Dsus2 Dsus2 D D Dsus4 Dsus4 D D Dsus2 D
You should be able to print this if you click it once to open it on another page and then hover over and select the print icon. If you are out of paper save it to your desktop or other place.
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