Fingerpicking – ‘Brain Damage’

This is a great track but even without vocals just picking it solo it sounds pretty cool and way harder than it really is (and we all like that)

I always imagine songs on a graph with the difficulty on the vertical axis and the coolness of sound on the horizontal axis. Ok so what we are looking for is cool sounding but easy to play, we strive for cool sounding but difficult to play and we sometimes have to accept not-that-cool-sounding if they are easy to play. What we have to avoid is difficult and not good sounding songs in our repertoire.

Anyway this song by Pink Floyd is a great song with a nice guitar part – learn this and play it (casually like) in front of your mum and dad (ok ok maybe your granma and grandad would be more like it.) and I can almost guarantee it will send them off  reminiscing and rummaging through a big old pile of albums looking for the original track.

Finger style playing – ‘Travis Picking’

This is a nice approach to picking the guitar using the fingers of your right hand to sound the strings (instaed of a pick, or your teeth) The general rule (more of a general practise than a rule), is to use your thumb to pick the 6, 5 & 4 strings then each of the treble strings has a finger each. Pick the 3rd string with your 1st finger (the finger nearest to your thumb) the 2nd string gets plucked by your 2nd finger and the 1st string (the string nearest to the floor) gets worked over by your 3rd finger. In classical guitar parlance your thumb is ‘p’, your 1st finger (index finger) is ‘i’ your 2nd finger (middle finger) is ‘m’ and your 3rd finger (ring finger) is ‘a’.
If you are familiar with the first few bars of the intro to ‘Nothing Else Matters’ then in ‘pima’ terms this would be … p i m a m i p i m a m i

When September Ends – Green Day

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.

I use this song a lot for NCEA here in New Zealand. To me it is the ideal Level 1 song – it has picking, strumming, power chords and a guitar lead part.

Chasing Cars – Snow Patrol

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 – Anna Nalick

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

‘Who Knew’ – Pink

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.

Pink Link

  

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.

You’re Beautiful – James Blunt

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.

James Blunt Link

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.

Guitar Crazy !

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 )

A guitar tuner, new songs and how to play ‘Happy Birthday’.

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

Tears In Heaven

 

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.

Behind Blue Eyes – words and chords

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  https://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