Dylan and the Dominant

One surprising aspect of Bob Dylan’s music making is his way of handling dominant connections. Or rather: his way of not handling them – by consistently avoiding them.

In the following I will suggest how he avoids the dominant, how he uses it when he does not avoid it, and why he treats it the way he does.

How to avoid

The most common cliché about Dylan – apart from the self-evident truth that he can’t sing – is probably that he only uses three chords, i.e. , the chords on the scale steps I, IV, and V, the classical Tonic, Subdominant, and Dominant (in the following abbreviated T, S, and D). This is not entirely correct, but not entirely untrue either: Dylan is not a sophisticated harmonicist – he mostly sticks to the main chord functions.

This is partly to do with his general predilection for genres based on blues and ballad, where the main functions have a central position.

This makes it even more remarkable that Dylan, out of this already meagre selection of chords, tends to avoid one of the three. And when he does use dominant chords it is almost always in the plain, triadic version, rarely using the opportunity to heighten harmonic tension that an added seventh would provide. Dominant seventh chords are rare in Dylan’s production.

I consider these two avoidances – of the dominant and of seventh chords – as two sides of the same coin, and when I talk about Dylan’s avoiding the dominant, it is more generally about avoiding the dominant function, whether in the broader sense of a major chord on the fifth scale step with a certain position in an habituated chord pattern, or more specifically: as the build-up to the tonic towards the end of a phrase.

Simple Twist of Fate

Simple Twist of Fate is a good example to start with. A number of different live versions can illustrate the role of the dominant.

On the live album Budokan (1978) the end of the verse sounds like this:

    C                     F
and wished that he'd gone straight
    C                 F      G        C
And watched out for a simple twist of fate.

In other words: a very classical tonal cadence of the most unremarkable form: T-S-D-T (C-F-G-C).

But in the original version from 1974, the ending goes like this:

    E           B/d#      A        
and wished that he'd gone straight
    E                 B11             E
And watched out for a simple twist of fate.

What used to be the S-D part of the cadential figure (at “simple twist”) is reduced to an eleventh chord, a chord that is essentially a subdominant chord with only the bass tone left from the dominant.

This is a severe weakening of the dominant character of the chord: no leading notes left (i.e. the halfstep relation, which draws two chords together like a magnet), no T-S-D-T cadence progression, no sharp contrast between two different tonal areas, but instead a step in the progression which already contains the note of resolution, the tonic: instead of the leading note resolution D#–E, we have a penultimate chord that already contains E.

Between these two version lies the 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour, where the same passage sounds like this:

    G           D         C
and wished that he'd gone straight
    G                 Am              G
And watched out for a simple twist of fate.

The dominant is gone altogether! It is replaced not even by a subdominant, but by the subdominant relative minor. One can hardly get farther away from a tonal cadence (whereas it has certain modal traits).

In sum: The main part of the verse moves in the I-IV area and the melodic and emotional climax of the melody lies on the IV step, on “gone straight”. The dominant step on the other hand – to the extent that it is used at all, and regardless of how it is avoided – is merely an afterthought, a sidestep after the climax, after the tonic has been reached, far from the traditional dominant function.

Ballad of a Thin Man

To this trio of versions of a song can be added other songs where other strategies are employed. Ballad of a Thin Man (off Highway 61 Revisited, 1965) is our first example. On two points in the song there is an obvious opportunity to heighten the tension and drive towards the tonic through a stronger exploitation of the dominant function, but this opportunity is not taken advantage of.

The verses are mostly built over a chromatic descent in the bass:

Am
You walk into the room
/g#
With your pencil in your hand
/g
You see somebody naked
       /f#
And you say, "Who is that man?"
F
You try so hard
        Dm
But you don't understand

At the end of the descent comes the first marked return to the tonic:

C                  Em               Am
Just what you will say When you get home

It would not be inconceiveable with a major dominant chord here, but that never happens, not in a single live version through the years. On the contrary: in most live arrangements the entire phrase from “Just what …” is sung to a static riff on the tonic, without the slightest hint at the possibility of a dominant turn:

   Am                Dm/f Am
what you're gonna say
                  Am Dm/f Am (=intro figure)
When you get home

The other point worth mentioning in this song is the transition from the bridge to the verse. The bridge ends with a strongly emphasised and outstretched G major chord (dP), the relative major of the dominant, before the return to the Am of the following verse.

Dm                           G          ( --> Am )
tax-deductible charity organizations

This is the climax of the song, in terms of pitch and volume. Again, it would not be inconceivable with a chromatic bass ascent g-g#-a to tie the two parts together through the hint of a first inversion dominant chord (G – E/g# – Am). This variant actually does occur, during the 1984 tour:

   Dm                           G  .  .  .  E/g# ( --> Am)
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But in the absolute majority of the cases, this opportunity to create harmonic tension is left untouched.

Open Tunings and the Gospel Idiom

The previously mentioned album veresion of Simple Twist of Fate represents a specific strategy to avoid the dominant function, which appears from two different angles during the seventies.

The first stems from the album Blood on the Tracks, recorded in 1974, where the song first appeared.

In its first version, the entire album was recorded i open E tuning. In open E, the guitar is tuned to an E major chord, and while it is of course possible to play a straight dominant chord (most simply by playing a full one-finger barre chord at the seventh fret), it is not common, since one of the points of open tunings in the first place is to take advantage of the open strings as drone-like tones. Thus, if the top E string is left ringing with the B chord, it will in practice produce a B11, i.e. a subdominant with the bass note of the dominant, as we saw it in the music example above.

Thus, the eleventh chord, which fits his general reluctance towards the dominant function like a glove, was introduced in Dylan’s music thanks to the guitar technical experimenting with open tunings that he was engaged with at the time. But when it stayed in his idiom, it was thanks to the gospel tradition that Dylan dived into when he turned born-again christian in 1978. Here, it is one of the most characteristic chords, and after 1978 the eleventh is a fairly frequent variant for the dominant in Dylan’s songs – that is: a dominant that isn’t quite one.

Dominating the Blues

A large part of Dylan’s songs are based on the blues, in some form or another. In this area, the avoidance of the dominant is not so much a matter of avoiding a specific chord – most of Dylan’s blues based songs do after all contain the chord on the fifth scale step – but about Dylan’s way of relating to fixed chord progressions where specific chords have specific roles and functions.

So while it is certainly interesting that Dylan’s catalogue contains blues songs with no dominant chord whatsoever – e.g. Tombstone Blues – this is less significant than the myriad of variants of the “Twelve Bar Blues” that he uses throughout his career, and the general tendencies that can be gleaned from this material.

Here is the twelve bar blues as we know it and love (to hate) it from all the pub bands and stadium rock classics of the world:

I    IV   I    I7  
IV   .    I    .
V    IV   I    V7 (turnaround)

Dylan quite consistently changes this pattern in various ways:

1. He lets the first part of the pattern, where the accompaniment lies on I, last for the entire first four-bar segment:

I    .    .    . 
IV   .    I    .
V    IV   I    V7 (turnaround)

2. He also tends to avoid the otherwise so characteristic V-IV-I-turn towards the end, and instead replace it with a single V over the whole first part of the third line (The similar I-IV-I turn in the first line has already disappeared in the first reduction):

I    .    .    . 
IV   .    I    .
V    .    I    V7 (turnaround)

3. He is not a big fan of turnarounds. They do exist, but not very frequently:

I    .    .    . 
IV   .    I    .
V    .    I    .

This, then, is the blues pattern most frequently found in Dylan’s production, in this exact form or in one of the many variants in terms of phrase length, irregular rhythmic patterns, etc.

In addition to these concrete observations, some further tendencies can be noted:

  • A predilection for the treatment of the T-S connection, whereas D seems to be used as a more dutiful step.
  • He seems to like long, static stages; for example, his preferred version of the sixteen-bar blues is to stretch the initial T step to twice its length, and his reductions 2 and 3 also work to prolong even the other steps into entire stages, at the cost of the dynamic drive that harmonic variation provides.
  • The range of variation between his different versions within the simple blues pattern is astonishing.

Standing in the Doorway

These tendencies or preferences are not limitied to his folk period in the sixties. The same characteristics can be noticed e.g. in Standing in the Doorway from 1997.

In a way it is a blues song: most of the verse is a statically repeated descending bass line, e-d#-c#-b, which functions as a stretched-out tonic.

It is followed by a passage around A, corresponding to the turn to the Subdominant in the blues pattern, after which we return to the tonic E again for yet another round of the static bass line.

In the place where the dominant would appear, corresponding to the beginning of the third line in the twelve-bar blues pattern, we then have the quick sequence A-E-B-F#-A-E, in other words: a chain of fifth-related chords, giving the impression of a dominantic circle progression since the chords become more and more “dominantic” in the sense that they get more and more sharps, but in this case the chain actually moves in the subdominant direction. Thus, it is not a constant discharge of an established level of tension, but a tentative “subdominantic persistency”, which ends on the secondary dominant, F#, which, however – possibly because of some minor variant somewhere in the mix, or because of associations (established thanks, in part, to the emphasis on the subdominant throughout the song) – is perceived more like the major variant of the minor relative of the subdominant, F#m.

In sum: after the long standstill on the tonic, we get a gesture that produces an illusion of a dominantic circle progression, but in the wrong direction and where the goal of the harmonic progression is not the Dominant in preparation of the return to the Tonic, but instead the Subdominant.

The Dominant, B, is a part of the progression, but its role is very modest: it is simple one element in the chain of chords that leads to F#:

A           E        B              F#
You left me standing in the doorway crying
A                           E
I got nothing to go back to now.

How Not to avoid the Dominant?

As an illustrative contrast, it may also be worth looking at the cases where Dylan actually uses shamelessly dominantic turns and/or seventh chords. I shall suggest three areas:

1. Even though Dylan is disinclined to emphasise the dominant in his own blues songs, he gladly uses them as a genre marker. The most obvious example is Rainy Day Women #12&35 off Blonde on Blonde (1965), an almost-parody of an unrestrained New Orleans brass blues; but also the jazz pastiche If Dogs Run Free (1970) and various genre exercises from the country oriented albums from the late sixties fall in this category. What they have in common is the mimicking tone – as if he doesn’t really mean it completely earnestly.

2. Covers. When Dylan plays other artists’ songs, he is usually faithful to the original, also on this point. This is not least apparent in the series of Sinatra inspired albums starting with Christmas in the Heart (2009). Song upon song are overflowing with dominant circle progressions, performed with conviction and gusto, and no sign of shame.

3. But the most revealing group of cases are those that stem from guitar tuning and preconditions based on key. These are revealing precisely because they indicate that not only does Dylan happen not to play dominant seventh chords: he actually actively avoids them.

Two alternate tunings that Dylan used consistently during the sixties are called “Drop D” and “Drop C”. Here, the sixth string is tuned down one and two whole steps, respectively. In Drop D we have the three following main chords:

The main connection in this tuning is between I and IV (D and G): they share open strings and fixed fingers (the ring finger stays in the same place, and the index finger moves a short distance) – they stand in a close relation both on the fretboard and in sound. The dominant, on the other hand, is slightly awkward, which can be heard, especially when Dylan plays it: it calls for bigger hand movements and tends to sound muffled – it is difficult to get the first string to sound properly. In this tuning, the Dominant does not fulfill its potential to stand out as the bright, contrasting contender.

In Drop C, the way Dylan plays it, these are the basic chords:

Here, too, there is a close and natural relationship between I and IV (C and F), in terms of fingering, but in this tuning even the V chord, G7, is an unhampered part of the group. Both the S and D chords relate to the tonic chord according to the principle “least possible movement”, of which Dylan is a masterful proponent.

What is most interesting, however, is that the songs Dylan plays in Drop C are among the very few songs in his entire production where the dominant seventh is consistently used. Here is the version of It’s All Over Now Baby Blue from Live 1966:

E                       F      G7
Look out the saints are comin' through
    Dm            F         C
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

The alternatives to the two dominant chord shapes in these two tunings are worth a comparison:

In Drop D it would be possible to replace the muffled and awkward A with the A7 shown here if one wanted to. Soundwise it would definitely be preferrable – it would be easier to play and to use all strings to their full potential. But Dylan evidently risks a slightly bad sound rather than including the unwanted seventh.

But in Drop C, the risk involved in playing the straight G is apparently too big. It is possible to play it the way that is shown here, but it involves some acrobatics in the movements of ring- and little fingers, which one cannot allow oneself in a practical live situation where one stands alone with the guitar as sole responsible for the accompaniment. In such an extreme situation, Dylan permits the Dominant seventh, but that is how far out we have to go. That’s how much he seems to distrust this chord.

The difference between the chord shapes in Drop D and Drop C, then, is a strong indication that Dylan prefers the straight dominant to the heightened harmonic tension of the seventh.

One last example in this area might be mentioned: Dylan remarkably rarely plays in E major, even though that is one of the most common keys to play in in the genres that Dylan enjoys. There may be many reasons for this, but it could be a contributing factor that it is more difficult in E major than in many other keys to find suitable chord shapes to avoid the dominant seventh.

Why?

So why this resistance to dominant chords?

Early Country Blues and English Ballads

One explanation that lies close at hand is that in the music that is Dylan’s bible, the dominant function is not important. This goes for the early blues as well as for the English ballad tradition.

In the early blues that Dylan soaked himself in early in his career, the dominants are generally few and far between, and it is not a coincidence that Dylan bases several of his songs in part or in full on the Pretty Polly pattern, where a pentatonic phrase is played around the first scale step, then repeated around the fifth, and rounded off with a return to the tonic again – often played without differentiation in the harmonic accompaniment:

Pretty Polly, in Doc Boggs’ inimitable banjo version.

The fifth scale step represents an alternate tone area, but does not have the function of harmonic tension that it has in a harmonic progression.

The simple version of the blues pattern that Dylan prefers, without V-IV turns and turnarounds, comes the closest to the Pretty Polly pattern: the chords are static layers, around which melodies and instrumental figures can move relatively freely.

The Anti-Harmonical Dylan

What the examples above seem to indicate in a more general sense, is that in Dylan’s music it is not harmony that rules the musical progression – it is the voice (partly, but not just, as carrier of the text) and the phrasing. The long stages on static levels are far more open to variations – spontaneous as well as planned, as in language – than the pre-defined steps of the established harmonic patterns of tonal harmony.

And this seems to be a very conscious choice.

I have elsewhere argued that what Dylan does – although he “can’t sing” and “only knows three chords” – is to make prose music: he treats the obviously stylized and strongly regulated world of sound that musical expression necessarily is, as if it were equivalent to the sound world that language is when it does not appear in poetic form – that is: in the form with a level of stylization that is equivalent to what music usually is.

He explores the common grounds between language and music, in other words. That is the art form that in which he excels: the exploration of the conection between the sonourous qualities of language and the quasi-conceptual qualities of music. He pretends that it is possible to talk in prose through and within music’s poetic world of rhythm patterns and established harmonic progressions.

And in this framework, there is no obvious place for the dominant, since it, by being a purely musical mode of expression cannot be “proseified” so to speak: pure harmony is the one element of music that lacks a direct equivalent i language (the idea of several voices at the same time, which is the foundation of harmony, in the area of language more than anything evokes images of quarreling or power games). And the dominant is a pure representative of this: there is no linguistic correspondence to or element in the seventh chord.

But if the dominant is instead reduced to a static stage without necessary consequences (such as: the tonic), it can still be drawn into the Dylanic art form.

A corollary of this argument is that Dylan is not a literary artist (and hence it was a mistake to give him the Nobel prize), nor is he solely a musician (and hence it was a mistake to put him through the ordeal that was the Polar prize) – he is a prose singer, and in prose, the dominant has no obvious place.

First presented as a paper at the annual conference of the Swedish Musicological Society in 2018

Guitar in Two Weeks, day 13: Open Tuning

Finally – it took more than a year, but here’s the next lesson: on open tunings.

I have had three life-changing epiphanies in my life as a guitar player. The first was the first time I tried a twelve-string guitar. I realized that the fullness of that sound was what I had been dreaming of all my life, I just hadn’t known it. Fifteen years later, I bought an old Ibanez twelve-string, and although it would be a lie to say that it’s the best guitar in the world, there is nothing wrong with that sound of twelve shiny strings.

The second was when I first tried a Martin guitar. I immediately realized that that was the sound I was after. Fifteen years later, my wife got me an HD-28, and I have bliss within reach whenever I need it (in more sense than one).

The third was when I first tuned to an open D chord.

On a side note, that was in a way the most life-changing experience of them all, because that’s when dylanchords started for real (and man, has that taken up a large part of my life in the fifteen years since then). I had alreadyput up on a little site a few tabs that I couldn’t find elsewhere, but it was when I made the tabs of the New York versions of Blood on the Tracks that the idea of a comprehensive site with exact chords to Dylan’s entire output was born for real.

Open and Alternate Tunings

Just so that the terms are clear: the “open” in “open tunings” means that all the strings are tuned to tones belonging to one particular chord, so that you’ll get a full chord if you play all the strings open.

“Alternate tunings” would then refer to all the other different ways one can tune the guitar. In principle, the dropped D, double dropped D, and Dropped C would count as alternate tunings, but because they are so relatively common, they have their own names.

General remarks

Before we go into the specific tunings, a few words about alternate and open tunings in general.

First, the reason to play in open tunings in the first place is not (or not only) to get simpler chords. One might think that playing with open tunings would be a huge advantage in general:  there is at least one chord where one doesn’t have to do anything with the left hand.

But  that one chord cannot outweigh all the potential disadvantages:

  • All the other chords become more troublesome. Of course, all the chords of the same kind as the chord you have tuned to (i.e. all the major chords if you play in open G or D) can be played with a simple barre chord at the appropriate fret. E.g. In open D, you will have the subdominant G major at the fifth fret and the dominant A at the seventh. But that’s just about all you can do with those chords: play them. No fancy bass runs, no hammer-ons and melodic finesse, no use of the open strings.
  • An open string is like a binary number: it’s either on or off, and beyond that, there is really nothing much you can do with it, whereas a skilled instrumentalist has far greater control of the tone quality once there is a finger on the string. You can bend it, you can apply some vibrato, you can slide up to it or down from it, you can mute it, you can release it — all those wonderful things that make the music breathe and sound natural; all those things that a binary number can’t.
  • Besides, the major chords may be easy to get at, but what about minor chords, seventh chords, other fancy chords? try to play a Cm6 chord — or a Dm7-5 chord for that matter — in open D tuning, and you’ll know what I mean. It’s not that it can’t be done, but it may just not be worth the effort.
    Standard tuning is a quite wonderful invention in that respect: with strings tuned a fourth apart (with a major third thrown in for good measure, between the second and third strings), just about any combination is within reach.
  • And last but not least, one should not underestimate the value of having somewhere to place one’s fingers. A nice side effect of fingering a chord is that one also holds the guitar still . . .

All in all: in practice, in open tunings you’re limited to play in one main key. If you tune to open D, D is what you’ll be playing.

And that is OK: open tunings are for songs or arrangements where one chord dominates. Modal pieces, bluesy tunes, folk ballads — that’s where the open tunings shine.

“Modal” in this context means more or less a style where the “classical” hierarchy of tonic, subdominant, and dominant does not apply, but where other chord relationships dominate. Examples are “Masters of War” and “It’s Alright Ma” from Dylan’s repertory, and songs like “What Shall We Do With the Drunken Sailor” or just about any minor key song from the Irish tradition.

Joni Mitchell’s Naming System

Joni Mitchell is the Queen of altered tunings — she uses hundreds of them. In order to tell them apart, she uses a naming convention. First, the note of the lowest string, then five numbers that indicate the number of frets to the next string, i.e. on which fret to finger one string in order to find the tone of next.

Thus, standard tuning would be named E55545 and dropped D tuning D75545. I will use this convention in the following.

The Most Important Open Tunings

Enough talk — time to get our hands dirty.

There are two or three open/alternate tunings that are widely used, and a host of others that show up here and there. I will concentrate on open D, but the principles are the same in all of them.

Open D

in open D, the whole guitar is tuned to a D major chord,

D - A - d - f# - a - d'

To get there from standard tuning, tune down the lowest and the two highest strings one whole tone and the third string a semitone. The Ds on the outer strings should sound the same as the D you already have on the fourth string in standard tuning. Likewise, the second string should sound like the fifth.

In Joni-naming, this means: D75435. Tune the deepest string to D — one whole tone down from standard tuning. It should sound equal to the fourth string. Then check that the fifth string is equal to the sixth string fretted at the seventh fret and the fourth string equal to the fifth fretted at the fifth fret (they should, if you start with standard tuning). Go on with the remaining strings according to the Joni pattern.

When you’re done, you should hear a wonderfully rich and full chord when you strike all the strings.

A word about pure and tempered tunings: As I mentioned in lesson 6, an instrument like the guitar is always slightly out of tune. This is true for standard tuning, but in open tuning one actually has the option to tune closer to the pure intervals: since you’ll mostly be playing in/around one key, you don’t have to be as cautious as in standard tuning about the problems with temperament, and you can tune the third string to a pure f#, without worrying too much about what might happen if you need that string in an A flat major chord. You won’t.

What’s With The “Open D/E” Thing?

You may come across a label like “open D/E”, or you may see a song you know as an open D song referred to as being in open E. What’s up with that?

The answer is that open D and open E are essentially the same tuning, only at different pitch levels. That means: the intervals between the strings are the same, so you will use the same chord shapes. This becomes quite clear in Joni notation:

open D = D75435
open E = E75435

If you tune to open D and put a capo at the second fret, you are actually playing in open E.

Which of the two you choose, is up to you —

  • You may prefer the darker sound of open D, or the brighter of open E.
  • For open D, there are four strings you have to retune; for open E only three.
  • Open E may be harder on you strings, since three of them are tuned up from their usual position.

Open D Chord Shapes

Here are some of the most important chord shapes in open D tuning:

oooooo    o  ooo    o   oo    o o  o    o o oo
======    ======    ======    ======    ======    ------
||||||    ||||||    ||||||    |||1||    |||1||    111111
------    ------    ------    ------    ------   5------
||||||    ||||||    ||||||    |2||3|    |2||||    ||||||
------    ------    ------    ------    ------    ------
||||||    ||||||    |||1||    ||||||    ||||||    ||||||
------    ------    ------    ------    ------    ------
||||||    ||2|||    ||2|||    ||||||    ||||||    ||||||
------    ------    ------    ------    ------    ------
||||||    |3||||    |3||||      G         G         G
------    ------    ------
  D         D         D

 o   o     o  oo     o  o      o  oo       ooo
======    ======    ======    ======    ======    ------
|||1||    |||1||    |||1||    |||1||    ||||||    111111
------    ------    ------    ------    ------   7------
||2|3|    2|3|||    ||2||3    ||2|||    ||1|||    ||||||
------    ------    ------    ------    ------    ------
||||||    ||||||    ||||||    ||||||    ||||||    ||||||
------    ------    ------    ------    ------    ------
||||||    ||||||    ||||||    ||||||    |3||||    ||||||
------    ------    ------    ------    ------    ------
  A          A         A        A         A         A   

  o oo     o oo     o oo o
======   ======     ======
|||1||   ||||||     ||||||
------   ------     ------
23||||   ||||||     |2||3|
------   ------     ------
||||||   |||1||     ||||||
------   ------     ------
||||||   23||||     ||||||
------   ------     ------
  Em      F#m         Bm

I’ve included several versions of some of the chords, but the table is by no means complete. It’s in the nature of the open tuning that you can play around with it — play any of the tones in the chord anywhere on the fretboard for different shades of the sonority, or for different licks. So, the first chords in the New York version of Tangled Up In Blue are D [000897] — C [000675].

It should also be noted that most of these names are “wrong”. The Em chord isn’t a plain Em, but an Em7add4, and F#m is really F#m-6. The “A” chords are even worse: only the last one is actually a plain A. This has to do with the open character of the tuning: typically, there will be open strings sounding, and the exact name of the chord or the exact notes in it are not that important. All the A chords above fill the “A” slot, and that’s what matters.

Some of the chords above go together in groups:

D [054000]     D
a [042000]     G [020120]
G [020100]     A [x02120]

etc.

A few words about some of the chords:

D

You may ask: why bother with lots of fingerings, when I can get a D chord literally without lifting a finger (well, actually, the opposite: without placing a finger)? As I’ve indicated, it’s a matter of chord sequences, chord nuances, and preference.

The [054000] variant, e.g. has a full octave between the two lowest strings. This doubled bass tone is a powerful reenforcement of the key (inicdentally, this is the same sound as the Double Dropped C that Dylan favoured for a while in the mid-60s). Furthermore, the tone of the third string (g#) is doubled on the fourth string. This tone is the “third”, the tone that decides whether a chord is minor or major. Taken together, these two features give a very strong sense of the main tonality.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, one might play a shape like D [000300] or [050300], where there is no third at all — hence, the key is neither major or minor. If one adds one finger, one gets [000330], and one is well on the way toward a delta blues feeling.

G

I’ve talked earlier about establishing the key by having the main key note of the chord in the bass, and that the key note is usually heard on many strings, for reenforcement. The G chord in open D defies all these principles: the key note is heard on one string only, the third.

Instead, the chord is dominated by the tone D, on strings 1, 4 and 6. In fact, the G chord in this tuning is most of all an embellishing variant of the main D sonority. This is precisely the same function as the c chord has in Dylan’s most cherished figure: G-c/g-G (320003-3×2013-320003). This “embellished d” character is emphasized by the alternative fingering 020100, where the open second string adds yet another tone from the D major chord. You may also recognize the “physical” similarity between the two figures:

G-C-G     D-G-D
------    ------
320003    000000
3x2013    002010
320003    000000

A

If the G chord is merely a variant of D, the A chord in open D is merely a variant of G. It is basically a G chord with an A in the bass, which technically is an A11 (played x02120. This variant of the dominant is a quite rare guest in Dylan’s songs prior to blood on the tracks, but quite common after that album. Part of the explanation is that 11-chords are central in the gospel tradition, which Dylan dived into shortly afterwards, but it is not either impossible that he discovered its sweetness through the use of this A chord.

One-Finger Barre Chords

If one wants “genuine” versions of the G and A chords, one can use the barre forms: G = [555555] and A = [777777].Since these are one-finger barres, it is fairly easy to extend them with interesting embellishments, e.g. a simple but effective boogie shuffle:

D: 000000  020100   030300   020100 
G: 555555  575655   585855   575655
A: 777777  797877   7a7a77   797877
(a=10th fret)

Open G

The other main open tuning is open G, which is a preferred tuning among slide guitar players. It is also Keith Richards’ favorite tuning. (Actually, Keef removes the lowest string.)

Of course, most of what has been said about Open D applies to Open G as well. As a matter of fact, all the chord shapes apply too, if you just shift everything one string down. I will therefore just outline what I find to be the most interesting differences.

Tuning

Open G has a G major chord on the open strings:

D - G - d - g - b - d'

Joni tuning: D57543. Compare this to open D: D75435, and you will see that the intervals are the same, they just fall between different strings.

Bass vs. The Rest

In Open D, the key note is on the lowest bass string, as well as on the brightest string, and it naturally dominates everything.

In Open G, on the other hand, the key note is on the open fifth string, which means that you can’t just strike all strings and get that full-bodied sound as in open D.

This may seem like a disadvantage, and is in fact the reason why Keef removes his lowest string, but the gain is considerable:

With an extra string below the key note, you have a whole range of extra bass runs, figures and configurations available. In open D, everything centres around D. In open G, you can emphasise the subdominant (which has the deepest bass string, as opposed to open D, where it has none); and reach the key note from below, not just above.

The advantages require slightly more control than, say, in open D, to be realized. If Open D is the strummer’s dream, Open G is the fingerpicker’s or slide player’s dream come true. (oooh, very poetic!)

Chord Shapes

The differences with regard to the bass strings also means that the chord shapes you will mostly use, are slightly different than in Open D. A very useful feature of Open G is that the four lowest strings are in pairs: d on 4th/6th, g on 3rd/5th. This means that it is very easy to use the same patterns on both pairs. Many of the chord shapes have the two strings of a pair fingered at the same fret (e.g. 202010, 020210, etc.), and this shape becomes almost second nature.

Here are just a couple of the chords that differ from their open D counterparts:

 ooooo    o   o    o oo
======   ======   ======
||||||   ||||||   ||||||
------   ------   ------
||||||   ||||||   2|3|||
------   ------   ------
||||||   ||||||   ||||||
------   ------   ------
||||||   |||1||   ||||||
------   ------   ------
||||||   2|3|||   ||||||
  G        G        Em

o o  o    o o o   x  o
======   ======   ======
||||1|   ||||1|   ||||||
------   ------   ------
|2|3||   2|3|||   ||1|||
------   ------   ------
||||||   ||||||   ||||||
------   ------   ------
||||||   ||||||   ||||||
------   ------   ------
||||||   ||||||   |4||||
  D7       C        C

The second G above (505400) immediately shows the “paired strings” pattern. The shape is a way of overcoming the “I can’t use the deepest string” problem, by doubling the bass tone.

The D7 and C pair for me constitute the most distinctive difference between open G and open D. The equivalent chord shapes to the “standard” versions in open D would be C = [x02010] or [x02012] and D = [xx0210] or [xx0212]. As I mentioned above, this C is almost just a variant of G, and the D a variant of C; we’re almost never out of the control zone of the main key.

That would be a very un-open-G way to play it. Using the shapes C = [202010] and D = [020210] instead, with the distinctive paired strings pattern, we’re in a completely different sound world. The D here is emphatically a seventh chord, i.e. a very independent character from the main key, emphasising the difference rather than blurring it. And the C chord, while still not boasting a strong C character of its own, at least stands out from G (thanks to the doubled bass strings 4 and 6, with the tone e, absolutely not part of a G chord).

The last C shape, x520xx, remedies the lack of a key-note in the other C shapes. Obviously, it is not a shape particularly suitable for strumming, since one only plays on three strings in the middle. But for fingerpicking it is quite useful. Then, one can also use some of the x-ed out strings for embellishment.

Examples

Needless to say, there’s Blood on the Tracks – all the songs were first recorded in open D (well, open E, actually), and they are alle transcribed in that tuning.

Joni Mitchell should be represented. Her song “Hejira” off the album of the same title, is played in C77325-tuning and can be found here. The tricky part is to get the main picking pattern going: the pattern covers two measures instead of the simple one-measure patterns we have encountered so far. Once that is in place, the song is actually fairly simple to play.

Tallest Man on Earth: Where Do My Bluebird Fly

Then there’s the most recent star on altered tuning heaven: The Tallest Man on Earth. His guitar technique is exquisite, his musicality astounding, and his stage presence is breathtaking. The first song, “Where Do My Bluebird Fly”, is in open G minor (D57533), and it is actually not too difficult, once you master the two-measure picking pattern.

The Tallest Man usually capos his guitar far up the neck. Both this and the following song have a capo at the eighth fret.

 

 

Intro:
    :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
||------------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
||*-----0-----0-----|-0-----0---------|-----0-----0-----|-0-----0---------|
||------3-----3-----|-3---------3-----|-----2-----2-----|-2---------0-----|
||------5-------5---|-----5-------5---|-----4-------4---|-----4-------0---|
||*-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|
||------------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|

                                     ____________________________________
                                    | 1.                                 |
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|------------------||
|-----0-----0-----|-0-----0---------|-----2-----2-----|-2-----2-----2---*||
|-----0-----0-----|-0-----0---0-----|-----5-----5-----|-5-----5-----5----||
|-----1-------1---|-----1-------0---|-----4-------4---|-----4-------4----||
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------*||
|-1-------1-------|-1-------1-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0--------||

 ____________________________________
| 2.
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----2-----2-----|-2-------0-------|
|-----5-----5-----|-5-------2-------|
|-----4-------4---|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------3-------|

|-----------------|-0---------------|-----------------|-1---------------|
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----0p2---------|-------------0---|-----2-----------|-------------0---|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----3-------3---|-----3-------0---|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|

|-----------------|-3---------------|-----------------|-0---------------|
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----0-----------|-------------0---|-----0p2---------|-------------0---|
|-----1-------1---|-----1-------1---|-----3-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-1-------1-------|-1-------1-------|-3-------3-------|-4-------4-------|

|-----------------|-0---------------|-----------------|-1---------------|
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----0p2---------|-------------0---|-----2-----------|-------------0---|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----3-------3---|-----3-------0---|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------| 

|-----------------|-3---------------|-----------------|-0---------------|
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----0-----------|-------------0---|-----0p2---------|-------------0---|
|-----1-------1---|-----1-------1---|-----3-------3---|-----3-------3---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-1-------1-------|-1-------1-------|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|
                                                            oh well, I 

|-----------------|-0---------------|-----------------|-1---------------|
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----0p2---------|-------------0---|-----2-----------|-------------0---|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----3-------3---|-----3-------0---|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
  know you shook the set-up baby,         of all the    leaves upon the
  know our song is all but healthy        as I see dry leaves fallin'

|-----------------|-3---------------|-----------------|-0---------------|
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----0-----------|-------------0---|-----0p2---------|-------------0---|
|-----1-------1---|-----1-------1---|-----3-------3---|-----3-------3---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-1-------1-------|-1-------1-------|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|
  ground                                                        And I
  down,                         oh

|-----------------|-3---------------|-----------------|-0---------------|
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----0-----------|-------------0---|-----2-----------|-------------0---|
|-----1-------1---|-----1-------1---|-----3-------3---|-----3-------3---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-1-------1-------|-1-------1-------|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|
      With all this fever in my       mind,                     I could 

|-----------------|-0---------------|-----------------|-3---------------|
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----3-----------|-------------0---|-----0-----------|-------------0---|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----1-------1---|-----1-------1---|
|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-1-------1-------|-1-------1-------|
  drown in your     kerosene          eyes        Oh,

|-----------------|-0---------------|-----------------|-0---------------|
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----0-----------|-------------0---|-----2-----------|-------------0---|
|-----1-------1---|-----1-------1---|-----3-------3---|-----3-------3---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-1-------1-------|-1-------1-------|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|
      you're just a riddle in the     sky         Oh,

|-----------------|-0---------------|
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----2-----------|-------------0---|
|-----3-------3---|-----2-------2---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-3-------3-------|-2-------2-------|
  where do   my     bluebird            fly?

And as the early sign of dawn of thunder
I see you stir the fog around
And when you find the voice and gears of sunset
we'll hear that high and lonesome sound, oh
And I will question every wind
if they gone through the glow of your eyes Oh,
you're just a riddle in the sky Oh,
where do my bluebird fly?

Oh, well I know you shook your feathers baby
upon the ghosts along my trail
And I know your lie was sold and buried
before I knew it was for sale, oh
With all this fever in my mind
I could aim for your kerosene eyes Oh,
you're just a target in the sky oh,
where do my bluebird fly?

Tallest Man on Earth: The Lion’s Heart

The second example, in Open G, is more tricky, especially at the breakneck speed of the album version. Check out the live video (and enjoy the mastery with which he kills the annoying clapping!), and give it a try:

 

  D6
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-0---------------|-----------------|-0---------------|
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----2-----------|-------------2---|-----2-----------|-------------0---|
|-----4-------4---|-----4-------4---|-----4-------4---|-----4-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|

  G                                   Gmaj7/f#
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-----0-----3p0-|-------0---------|-0-----0-----3p0-|-------0---------|
|-----4-----4-----|---4-------4-----|-----4-----4-----|---4-------4-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-4-------4-------|-4-------4-------|

  Em7                                                   D7sus4
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-0---------------|-------0---------|-----------------|
|-0---------0-----|-------0---------|---0---------0---|-1---------------|
|-------2-------0-|-----------0-----|--0--------0-----|-0---------0-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----2-------2---|-----2-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-2-------2-------|-2-------2-------|-2-------2-------|-0-------0-------|

  G                                   Gmaj7/f#
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-----0-----3p0-|-------0---------|-0-----0-----3p0-|-------0---------|
|-----4-----4-----|---4-------4-----|-----4-----4-----|---4-------4-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-4-------4-------|-4-------4-------|

  C/g                                 D7
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-0h2-0-----------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-1---------1-----|-------1---------|-----0h1---------|-0h1-------------|
|-0-----0-------0-|-----------0-----|-----2---------2-|-----------2-----|
|-----2-------2---|-----2-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|

  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----0h1---------|-0h1-------------|
|-----2---------2-|-----------2-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|
                            There's a

    G                                   Gmaj7/f#
    :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
||------------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
||*-0-----0-----3p0-|-------0---------|-0-----0-----3p0-|-------0---------|
||------4-----4-----|---4-------4-----|-----4-----4-----|---4-------4-----|
||------0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
||*-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-----------------|
||------------------|-----------------|-4-------4-------|-4-------4-------|
    pa -    lace a - fallin'  There's a smoke   in   the sky      There's a
    catching     the train to where he's    heard you have been   He's a 

  C/g                                 D7
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-0h2-0-----------|-----------0-----|-------0----------||
|-1---------1-----|-------1---------|-----0h1---------|-0h1-------------*||
|-0-----0-------0-|-----------0-----|-----2---------2-|-----------2------||
|-----2-------2---|-----2-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0----||
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-----------------*||
|-----------------|-----------------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0--------||
  boy     running   downhill to the   lowlands     to - night.  And he's
  fool    now a -  mong us,     a     dreamer      with-in,     dreaming of 

  G                                   Gmaj7/f#
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-----0-----3p0-|-------0---------|-0-----0-----3p0-|-------0---------|
|-----4-----4-----|---4-------4-----|-----4-----4-----|---4-------4-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-4-------4-------|-4-------4-------|
  you

  Em7                                                   D7sus4
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-0---------------|-------0---------|-----------------|
|-0---------0-----|-------0---------|---0---------0---|-1---------------|
|-------2-------0-|-----------0-----|--0--------0-----|-0---------0-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----2-------2---|-----2-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-2-------2-------|-2-------2-------|-2-------2-------|-0-------0-------|
                                                             And on that...

  G                                   Gmaj7/f#
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-----0-----3p0-|-------0---------|-0-----0-----3p0-|-------0---------|
|-----4-----4-----|---4-------4-----|-----4-----4-----|---4-------4-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-4-------4-------|-4-------4-------|
  day     there was snowfall in the   street, yellow    light.  And they

  C/g                                 D7
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-0h2-0-----------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-1---------1-----|-------1---------|-----0h1---------|-0h1-------------|
|-0-----0-------0-|-----------0-----|-----2---------2-|-----------2-----|
|-----2-------2---|-----2-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|
  cleared the bill and rails just by those dark shimmer eyes    In that 

  G                                   Gmaj7/f#
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-----0-----3p0-|-------0---------|-0-----0-----3p0-|-------0---------|
|-----4-----4-----|---4-------4-----|-----4-----4-----|---4-------4-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-4-------4-------|-4-------4-------|
land      there's a winter, In that      winter's a    day,     in  that 

  C/g                                 D
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-0h2-0-----------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-1---------1-----|-------1---------|-----------3-----|-----------3-----|
|-0-----0-------0-|-----------0-----|-----0-----------|-------0---------|
|-----2-------2---|-----2-------0---|-----4-------4---|-----4-------0---|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|
  day     there's a moment    when it all     goes your way,    and you

  Em                C                 D7
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----------0-----|-----------1-----|-----0h1---------|-0h1-------------|
|-----0-----------|-----0-----------|-----2---------2-|-----------0-----|
|-----2-------0---|-----2-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-2-------2-------|-----------------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|
  know it's a       lion's      heart                           That will

  Em                C                 D7
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------0-----|-------0---------|
|-----------0-----|-----------1-----|-----0h1---------|-0h1-------------|
|-----0-----------|-----0-----------|-----2---------2-|-----------2-----|
|-----2-------0---|-----2-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-2-------2-------|-----------------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|
  tumble      and   tear a  -   part

                                      C                 D7
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----0h1---------|-0h1-------------|-5---------------|-1---------------|
|-----2---------2-|-----------0-----|-0---------0-----|-2---------2-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----5-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-5-------5-------|-----------------|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-----------------|-0-------0-------|
                            when he's coming down the   hills      for      you.

But can you still now remember who's been hiding up there?
Through his howling at twilight all his songs of despair?
Do you remember the caller of a black and white crime?
Well he lives by that memory and falls from his mind

And you know it's a lion's heart
That will tumble and tear apart
When he's coming down the hills for you

Well he'll

    Bm6                                 C
    :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
||------------------|-0---------------|-----------------|-0---------------|
||*-----------3-----|-------3---------|-----------5-----|-------5---------|
||------0-----------|-----------0-----|-----0-----------|-----------0-----|
||------4-------4---|-----4-------4---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
||*-4-------4-------|-4-------4-------|-5-------5-------|-5-------5-------|
||------------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
  walk    in the    city        for - ever                  Oh,
  no      real goodbye         if you mean it               So I 

  G                                   D7
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-0---------------|-----------0-----|-------0----------||
|-----------0-----|-------0---------|-----0h1---------|-0h1-------------*||
|-----0-----------|-----------0-----|-----2---------2-|-----------2------||
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0----||
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------*||
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0--------||
  walk    in a      time    to be     gone                   Well there's
  guess   I'm for - ever        a  -  lone

:   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------0-----|-2-----0---------|
|-----0h1---------|-0h1-------------|
|-----2---------2-|-----------2-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|
                      Now he's a

Now he's a stranger among us, he will die in the park
Where he hides from the statues and the weather remarks
In that land there's a winter
In that winter's a day
In that day there's a moment when it all goes away

And you know it's a lion's heart
That will tumble and tear apart
When it's coming down the hills for you

All the Lessons

[catlist name=Lessons numberposts=150 order=asc orderby=date excludeposts=419]

Guitar in Two Weeks, day 12: Chords, chords, chords

This lesson is all theory, but it’s theory that you’re going to have use for more often than any other theory item so far. It answers two questions: “What the … does F#m9-5 and E+ mean?”, and “I made up this great chord, but now I want to write it down before I forget it. But what do I call it?”

You could of course call it Gerald, or write down the fingering, but if you want a piano player to know what you mean you might as well give it the correct name.

What’s (in) a chord?

So far, we’ve treated a chord mainly as a way to place the fingers on the fretboard, with some consideration given to the most important tone, the fundamental tone or keynote.

But we should define it more precisely:

A chord is a selection of tones which are perceived as a unity and not just as several notes sounding at the same time.

This sounds almost obvious to someone who is used to the guitar, where the default is to think not of single tones but of groups of tones: chords, that is. In that sense, we’re more fortunate than the pianists, not to mention the poor violinists and flutenists (ha ha), who hardly ever get to play more than one tone at a time. This may also be seen as yet another explanation of why tones — even the keynote sometimes — can be left out of a chord: as long as we perceive them as a unit, that takes precedence over which tones we actually hear.

On the other hand, a guitarist may easily forget that the chords he (and since one of the comments has revealed that there is actually a woman following these lessons, I’ll deviate from my not-pc principle and add “/she”) is playing actually consist of single tones.

Let’s revisit the scale, which we presented in an earlier lesson, and do a quick recap of some major points.

   -----------------------------------------
   -----------------------------------0--1--
   -----------------------0--1--2--3--------
   --------0--1--2--3--4--------------------
   --3--4-----------------------------------
   -----------------------------------------
        c#    eb       f#    ab    bb
     c     d     e  f     g     a     b  c'
   prime  2nd  3rd  4th  5th   6th   7th octave

I’ve marked the three most important tones in red and shaded the least prominent ones: the accidentals, as they are called (these are the black keys on the piano, but since pianists tend to think they rule the universe, I’ve done the opposite of what they do) (ha ha).

You may recognize the four highlighed tones as the keynote/prime, the third, the fifth, and the octave, which is nothing more than a displaced prime, so to speak (meaning: it’s the same tone, only sounding higher).

These three notes are the core of a chord. Actually, it’s more than that: it’s virtually the definition of a chord. If you see “G”, that doesn’t just mean “g and some extra tones”, it means “g b d”, i.e. the first, third, and fifth note of a G major scale.

The difference between the major and minor third is what decides the most fundamental character of a chord: whether it is major or minor. C-e-g is a C major chord, c-e flat-g is C minor. Don’t confuse these two ways of using “major” and “minor”, though. E.g. the C minor chord contains two thirds: one minor (c–eb) and one major third (eb–g).

A note about note names: western music is based on a scale of seven steps. The note names (c, d, e, etc.) refer to these steps. In C major, all the steps have simple names. In a key like E flat major, some of the basic names are modified to indicate that they are lowered: e flat (or Eb), f, g, Ab, Bb, C, D, Eb), but the alphabetic sequence is still the same. Thus, the fifth above D# is called A# (d-e-f-g-a), not Bb, and the major third above G# (should you ever need to play such a note) is B sharp (B#). If you object: “But that’s a C! Why use such a stupid name as B# when I already know a much simpler name?”, you’re not the first. I still recommend to do so: it preserves the integrity of the system.

Intervals: more than a peeing opportunity

The building blocks of chords are intervals. Whereas a chord is a group of tones perceived as a unity, an interval is simply the distance between two notes (or: two notes at a certain distance; the word can be used both about the distance in a more abstract sense and about the note pair).

A fundamental feature of our (i.e. the western) tonal system is that some intervals come in one flavour, others in two. There is only one fifth above any given tone:

C  ->  G
F# ->  C#
Eb ->  Bb etc.

But there are two thirds and two sixths, which are called “major” and “minor”:

Thirds: major and minor
=======================
C  ->   E         C  ->  Eb
F# ->   A#        F# ->  A, etc.

Sixths: major and minor
=======================
C  ->  A    and   C  ->  Ab
F# ->  D#   and   F# ->  D, etc.

The same goes for seconds and sevenths:  C–>D is a major second, C–>Db a minor second.

What, then, about an interval such as C-->G#? According to what I’ve said about note names, it must be a fifth, because “C” and “G” are scale steps a fifth apart?

Well, it is a fifth, but for fifths, fourths, octaves, and primes, any deviation from the pure form is considered such a violent intervention that it is not called a “major fifth”, but an “augmented fifth”: it is not a natural form — something has been done to it (cf. the kinds of augmentation that most spam folders are full of). Likewise, the interval C-->Gb is called a diminished fifth, not a minor fifth.

Another peculiarity about intervals is the notion of inversion. There is a special relationship between thirds and sixths, and between seconds and sevenths: the major version of one corresponds to the minor version of the other. E.g., C-->E is a major third, and E-->C is a minor sixth, etc.

This is a knowledge that may come in handy once it’s time to figure out exactly which tones to play if the chord chart says “F#m7-5”. We’ll return to this below.

The stack of thirds

The three notes of a simple chord, e.g. the C E G of C major, could then be seen as a stack of thirds. This stack can be built higher:

A   13th
G
F   11th
E
D   9th
C
Bb  7th
A
G   5th
F
E   3rd
D
C   prime

There is no point in going higher, since with the 15th, we are back at C again.

What’s in a (chord) name?

This full stack of thirds is the key to all the note names you will ever meet (at least those that follow the standard way of writing chords).

Rule #1 is that

a single number (e.g. 11) indicates the last member of the stack to be included, not just a single tone: C11 consists of the all the tones in the stack, up to the eleventh.

This might easily lead to some monstruous chords that one can perhaps play on a piano but which are more difficult on a guitar with only six strings. We therefore need Rule #2:

Feel free to leave out the fifth (it’s there anyway, as an overtone, remember?), and you may also leave out the third, since in a chord like C11, it’s not the major/minor character of the original chord that is the important thing, but the colouring that all the added notes give.

Rule #3 has to do with the seventh. In the table above, I’ve written Bb, although that note doesn’t belong in the C major scale — B does. So why is it Bb and not B? That’s just the way it is:

the seventh is always the minor seventh unless otherwise noted. For all other intervals, one uses the “proper” note as it appears in the scale (i.e. D, not D#, A, not Ab).

But what if you need, say, a d# or some other tone that doesn’t belong to the scale? Enter Rule #4:

If the chord includes tones that are not part of the basic scale, this is indicated with “+” or “-” (or “#” and “b”) before the step in question.

E.g. Dm7-5 does not mean Dm2 (7-5=2), or “Dm-with-everything-from-seven-to-five” but a Dm with the seventh added and the fifth diminished: d-f-ab-c (xx0111 on the guitar).

And finally rule #5:

If you don’t want the whole stack up to, say, the 11th, but just add an F to the chord, use “add” instead: Cadd11 = C E G F.

Since there are only seven different steps in the scale, the second is the same as the ninth, the fourth is the same as the eleventh etc. In chord names one will usually use the higher of these, except where the basic triad is altered;  e.g. C9 and not C2 (but Csus4 and Cm7-5).

This is because they will usually be considered as parts of the “stack”, which begins at 7. If you write or see something like Cadd2, this will be an indication that you specifically want that extra tone to be close to the bass, and not “just” to be a colourful element high up in the sound spectrum. Compare the two chords Cadd2 = x30010 and Cadd9 = x32030 to hear what I mean.

Symbol Name Example Meaning
7 (minor) seventh x32310 the minor seventh is added to the root chord. Note that “minor” here refers to the tone on the seventh step (which can be both major and minor: Bb and B), not to the chord itself – cf. the “m7” chord below. Note also that “7” always refers to the minor seventh. If the major seventh is used, it has to be indicated with “maj7”.
maj7 major seventh x32000 The major seventh is added to the root chord. Whereas the seventh chord usually has a dominant function, i.e. is used to lead back to the chord five steps lower (C7->F), the major seventh is rather a colouring of the chord, without this “driving” effect.
m7 x35343 The (minor) seventh is added to the minor chord. Cf. the “7” chord above.
m7-5 x34340 The fifth of the m7 chord is lowered by a semitone.
9 ninth x32330 The ninth and the seventh are added to the root chord.
11 11th x33333 The seventh, ninth and eleventh are added to the root chord. Since these three tones make up the chord on the tone one step below the root (for C: Bb), this chord usually functions as a conflation of these two chords. Another way of writing this, then, is as a Bb chord with a C in the bass: Bb/c.
13 13th x35355 If the rules are followed, this chord contains all the notes in the scale, but that’s rarely the case. In fact, the 9th and 11th are usually omitted, so that what remains is a 7th chord with an added 13th. Since the 13th is the same tone as the 6th, one will sometimes see this chord written C7/6.
7-9 x3232x A more jazzy chord
7+9 x3234x The blues chord par exellence. Since it contains both the major and the minor third, the chord corresponds to the ambiguity of the third step in the blues scale. Since the extra tone really functions as a low third (=tenth) and not a raised second, I would have preferred the name 7-10. The raised ninth and the lowered tenth are of course the same tone on the guitar, but functionally they are different. Subtleties, subtleties!.
add Any added tone that does not fall within the stack of thirds, upon which the rest of the system is based. Ex. Cadd9 = c e g d.
x / +x Lowers/raises a scale step by a semitone (one fret). E.g. Cm7-5 and C7+9. Note: “+” does not mean that the 9th is added, but that it is raised.

These are the main cases where the chord name relates directly to the stack of thirds. In addition, there are a number of special cases:

Symbol Name Example Meaning
+ (aug) augmented x32110 The fifth is raised by a semitone (half step=one fret)
o (dim) diminished x34242 A stack of minor thirds. Since all the intervals in the chord are equal, any of the tones can function as root. Thus: Co=Ebo=F#o=Ao. Hence, there only exists three different dim chords.
6 sixth x35555 The sixth is added to the root chord.
sus4 suspended fourth x33010 The third is temporarily “suspended”: raised to the fourth, and left there hanging in wait for a resolution back to the root chord. Thus, in a true sus4 chord, the third is not included. If that is the case, the chord would be called add11 or add4.
sus2 x30010 Same as the previous, only that the third “hangs” below, on the second.
5 “Power chord” x355xx A chord containing only the prime (the root) and the fifth. In other words: a chord without the third. Since the third is the tone that defines whether a chord is major or minor, the “power chord” is neutral in this respect.
(iii) x35553 A chord in the third position, i.e. fingered so that it begins in the third fret: C(iii)=x35553. Thus, the contents of the chord is not changed, only its sonority.
There is no uniform way to notate this.

So how do I play it, then?

One thing is knowing which tones are in a chord, another is to make that into a chord shape on the guitar.

Any chord can be fingered in many different ways. “C” does not “mean” x32010 – that is just the simplest and usually most convenient way to finger it. To get from chord name to a chord, you have to know where the tones are positioned on the fretboard.

We’ll start with a table of how to find the intervals on the guitar. I’ve indicated the most common chord symbols in which you will encouther the intervals. Remember that 9=2, 11=4, and 13=6.

                        | symbol | Up  |  Down
----------------------------------------------
minor second/aug. prime |   -9   |  1  |  11
major second            | 9 or 2 |  2  |  10
minor third             |   +9   |  3  |   9
major third             |        |  4  |   8
fourth                  |  4/11  |  5  |   7
aug. fourth/dim. fifth  | +11/-5 |  6  |   6
fifth                   |        |  7  |   5
aug. fifth/minor sixth  | +5/-6  |  8  |   4
major sixth             |  6/13  |  9  |   3
minor seventh           |    7   | 10  |   2
major seventh           |  maj7  | 11  |   1
octave                  |        | 12  |

E.g. if you see a chord like F#9-5, you will need to go a ninth up from f#, which means two frets (i.e. find a tone which sounds like the tone two frets up but in a higher octave), and a diminished fifth, which means six frets up from f#.

A few comments on the table:

  • +9 is given as the symbol for a minor third. As I wrote above, I’d have preferred this to be “-10” instead, but convention is against me here.
  • Also, there is nothing indicated for the major third and the fifth, since these are the standard tones in a chord.
Going nine frets up doesn’t mean that you have to stay on the same string all the time: since the tones on the fifth fret are (mostly; except for the third string) the same as the next string open, getting from f# to the sixth above — nine frets — would mean:

e'||-f'-|-f#'|-g'-|-g#'|-a'|-
b ||-c'-|-c#'|-d'-|-d#'|-e'|-
g ||-g#-|-a--|-bb-|-b--|-c'|-  etc.
8 ||-9--|-e--|-f--|-f#-|-g-|-
3 ||-4--|-5--|-6--|-7--|-8-|-
E ||-F--|-F#-|-1--|-2--|-3-|-

I’ve added a column for frets down as well. This goes back to what I said above about inversion: a major sixth up is equivalent to a minor third down: from C, you will get to A in both cases. Theoretically speaking this is a little cheating, but it may come in handy in practice.

Let’s say you want to find out how to play F#m7-5. There are two ways to go about this (well, there are three, actually: you can also look it up online or in a book, but that’s not as much fun as figuring it out yourself, right? Right!)

One is to start with the basic chord and make all the adjustments from there. F#m is played 244222. First we need to add the minor seventh (Rule #3). From the interval table above, we know that a minor seventh up from f# is the same as two frets or a whole tone down: an e. In practice, we have two “e”s within reach from a F#m chord: on the second string and on the fourth (Basic chord in red, seventh in blue):

e'||-f'-|-f#'|-g'-|-g#'|-a'|-
b ||-c'-|-c#'|-d'-|-d#'|-e'|-
g ||-g#-|-a--|-bb-|-b--|-c'|-  etc.
d ||-d#-|-e--|-f--|-f#-|-g-|-
A ||-Bb-|-B--|-c--|-c#-|-d-|-
E ||-F--|-F#-|-G--|-G#-|-A-|-

In other words: the two options for F#m7 are 242222 and 244252 (or 242252, but that would give a little too much attention to that seventh: it’s only there to colour, not to take center stage).

Now the next note: the “-5”. Either you go to the table above, find the diminished fifth and see that it’s six frets above the key note.

Actually, as you can see, it’s six frets below too. The diminished fifth is special that way. One might imagine that this symmetry would make it particularly pleasant or something, but on the contrary: this interval (or to be more precise: the augmented fourth, which in modern tonality is exactly the same…) is the so called tritone, the “devil in music” (diabolus in musica).

You should find that the tone we’re after is a c, and this time there is really only one option: on the fifth string:

e'||-f'-|-f#'|-g'-|-g#'|-a'|-
b ||-c'-|-c#'|-d'-|-d#'|-e'|-
g ||-g#-|-a--|-bb-|-b--|-c'|-  etc.
d ||-d#-|-e--|-f--|-f#-|-g-|-
A ||-Bb-|-B--|-c--|-c#-|-d-|-
E ||-F--|-F#-|-G--|-G#-|-A-|-

It seems like we could use the first of the F#m7 variants 242222, and go for a very simple chord: 232222. But if you play that and agree with me that it sounds like shit, look at the second string: with the barre chord, we get a c# there, against the plain c of the 5th string. That actually gives us no other option than to use the e’ on the second string (5th fret) to avoid that clash. The chord we end up with, then, is 234252.

It looks more intimidating than it actually is: it’s a barre chord where the other fingers fall quite easily and naturally in place. But is there an easier alternative?

We might instead try to mark out all the tones we may use, and then pick the ones that makes for the best chord shape.

As we now know, the tones we want are f#, a, c, and e. Here they are, including the open strings:

e'||-f'-|-f#'|-g'-|-g#'|-a'|-
b ||-c'-|-c#'|-d'-|-d#'|-e'|-
g ||-g#-|-a--|-bb-|-b--|-c'|-  etc.
d ||-d#-|-e--|-f--|-f#-|-g-|-
A ||-Bb-|-B--|-c--|-c#-|-d-|-
E ||-F--|-F#-|-G--|-G#-|-A-|-

From this, it seems that we can actually get away with a much easier chord: we can use the open e’ on the first string, the open A on the fifth string, and the c, a, and e on the second to fourth strings. So far, that leaves us without the F# that defines the chord, but that’s ok, because very conveniently, there is one available on the sixth string, right where a bass string should be.

We then end up with 202210. If you use your thumb, this is considerably easier to play than the barre-with-lots-of-fingers version we found earlier.

You may recognize this as an Am chord with an added F# in the bass. Or you may look at it like a D7 with an added e, which is in fact a D9 chord. In other words: the same chord can be written F#m7-5, Am/f# (or to be absolutely correct: Am6/f#), or D9/e.
Why not just pick one and stick with that? Because the function the chord has, decides if it is a D-type, A-type or F#-type chord.

A third useful alternative is xx4555, which can easily be played with a half-barre.

Using one of these two methods, you should be able to figure out any chord
that is thrown at you.

Open strings

One last tip: There is always the chance that a complicated name is just a way of indicating the use of open strings. Take the chord Dadd4add9. It’s a D chord with an added 4th (g) and 9th (e). You may scratch your head for a while, until you realize that those two notes are the open first and third strings, and that if you play a regular C major chord (x32010) and move that shape two frets up (x54030) you have exactly what you’re looking for.

You may remember this chord from “Boots of Spanish Leather” in lesson 10. There we called it Em9, which is a much simpler name. So why the long name? Again, it’s the function that decides. The simple test is: could you substitute it with the plain chord?
“Boots…” is an interesting case, since Dylan has played it in two different ways: with the chord shapes x54030D7G, as in the album version, or x54030CG, in various live versions. In the first case, where the second chord is D7, it would be strange to replace “our” chord with a D, but in the second case, where it’s followed by a C, it makes perfect sense to regard it as a kind of D, since G, C, and D are the three main chords in G major. Ah — subtleties…

For losers, cheaters, six-string abusers

There may be times when you either can’t figure out exactly how to play Abm6-9, or — if you do figure it out — can’t play the result, or, if you’re at some singalong and you just got the chord book and the guitar placed in your hands because everybody knows that you’re such a good guitar player, you may simply not have the time to be bothered with chords like that — what do you do?

You cheat.

Here are three general hints to that end.

(1) All chords, basically, go back to the three fundamental chords in a key (in C: C, G and F). Most frequent are the variations of the dominant step (G in this example), where the various “strange” chord alterations function merely as different ways of creating and sustaining tension before the return to the key note. This means that you can usually simply chop off from the end until you get to something that is easier to play: Gb+, E7+9, Dm7-5, Cadd9 then become Gb, E (or E7), Dm(7), C).

This does not happen without loss: the extra stuff is there for a reason (e.g. E7+9, the quintessential blues chord, brings all those associations with it, which the plain chord doesn’t), but functionally the plain chord will usually do the job adequately.

(2) Chords can be replaced with their relatives. When I was nine, before I had the finger strength to play barre chords, I discovered that I could replace most F chords with Dm or Am – one of those would usually work. Now I know that the reason why it works is that they both share two out of three chord tones with F, which often is enough. I don’t recommend this method, however (unless you’re nine). It is cheating, and the only person you’re fooling, in the long run, is yourself.

(3) Some songs are consistently noted with chords like Ab, Eb, Bb etc. That is because they are played with those chords, as barre chords, and in those cases I’ve seen no reason to introduce a capo. The easiest way to avoid those barre chords, is to drop all the bs, and play E, B, A instead. This only works if all chords have a b attached to them, though. Other chords you’ll have to transpose based on the thorough knowledge of the outline of the fretboard that you’ll gain as you keep playing.

*

I intended to write something more about the circle of fifths and which chords belong together in families, but I think I’ll have to make space for that in a later post. Stay tuned.

Also, thanks to all of you who have commented, either here or in private. Much appreciated! If something is not clear, don’t hesitate to ask. I would also like to hear if someone has actually been able to follow the lessons from day one and through to today, with no former knowledge in the fine art of guitar playing. It doesn’t have to having been done one lesson a day, but on the whole: I’d like to hear from someone who a while ago hadn’t played a single tone but who can now, say, Travis-pick some simple song. Somehow, I doubt that it is possible, but I’m all for being surprised!

All the Lessons

[catlist name=Lessons numberposts=150 order=asc orderby=date excludeposts=419]

Guitar in Two Weeks, day 11: Fingerpicking II

Today’s lesson will pick up from where the previous ended and take it further in two directions. And be warned: this lesson is probably the most advanced lesson in the whole series. As one commenter wrote, these songs are not easy to play.  They demonstrate some more advanced things you can do with fingerpicking once you have a grasp of the basic technique.

The techniques we have been using so far are mostly just a more elaborate way to play the chords in a tune, but in principle, they might as well be strummed. Where fingerpicking shines, however, is in the ability to pick out melodies and little riffs.

To this end, there are three techniques that come in handy, and one fundamental fact that is the precondition of it all. The precondition is the stable thumb bass that by now should have been etched so thoroughly into the physical memory of your right hand that you could play it in your sleep, without thinking. (This is not to say that the current lesson will be a waste of time for you if you haven’t het mastered it to perfection, only that that’s the foundation that the rest of the fingerpicking techniques rest upon.)

The other side of this coin is the freedom of the other fingers to do just about anything they wish to, but mostly on the off-beats, between the steady pulse of the thumb. This gives the Travis picking style its particular syncopated feel, as we said last time, but it also has a certain melodic potential, which we will discuss today.

The three techniques that build on this foundation are (1) the use of open strings and the fixed notes of the bass for melodic purposes, (2) the use of hammer-ons and pull-offs, and (3) the use of bass lines.

Open strings

Here is one of the most common patterns in the book (any book):

  E                      E
  :   .   .   .          :   .   .   .
|-0---------------|    |-----------------|
|-----------3-----|    |-----------3-----|
|-------0---------| or |-------0-------0-|
|-----2-------2---|    |-----2-------2---|
|-----------------|    |-----------------|
|-0-------0-------|    |-0-------0-------|

I have marked out the bass on the one hand in blue and the core of the treble fill-in in red: as long as those tones are there, the rest is more random. Frequently, the ring finger chimes in on the first beat together with the thumb to emphasise the first beat, as in the first example, and/or the index finger returns on the last beat, as in the second example, giving the characteristic “boom chaka chaka chaka” rhythm.

When played with a chord like E major, where the tones are fairly evenly distributed across the strings and the two bass strings reenforce each other — in this case by having the same tone an octave apart, in the case of G major, achieving almost the same effect with a fifth — the chordal character is emphasised, as well as the separation between bass and treble.

But what if we apply the exact same pattern to the beginning of “Boots of Spanish leather” from last time? This is how it has frequently been played in Dylan’s live shows during the 2000s:

  Em9
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-0---------------|
|-----------3-----|-----------3-----|
|-------0---------|-------0---------|
|-----4-------4---|-----4-------4---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|

  D7/f#             G       C/g
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :
|-----------------|-----------3-----|-----
|-1---------1-----|-0---------------|-----
0-------2---------|-------0---------|-----
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----
|-----------------|-----------------|-----
|-2-------2-------|-3-------3-------|-3---

The difference is huge. Here, the second bass string all of a sudden becomes a member of the treble group for a short while, and sets in motion a melody line which I have marked in red.

The interesting thing is that this happens almost automatically — it simply grows out of the picking pattern itself. I am convinced that a lot of tunes have been “composed” this way: the guitar player is just fooling around with some chords and some variations of the basic pattern, and out of the doodling comes a melody.

The true master of this style is Mississippi John Hurt. The following example is a little mean of me, because it take quite a lot of practice to get right, but it is a little gem, which by the way also illustrates a number of other features that are almost stylistic commonplaces in fingerpicking.

Spike Driver Blues

Hurt can be watched playing “Spike Driver Blues” in all its glory on this video:

While you’re at it, please do youself the favour of watching this clip with Elizabeth Cotten playing her trademark song “Freight Train”:

Not only does she play left-handed, with the guitar stringed normally, with the result that the bass strings are at the bottom, she also plays the whole damn thing with only two fingers. It twists my head watching it…

Anyway, back to John Hurt. Here is what he is playing. The details may differ, since this is tabbed from a different version, but the essentials are the same. Again, I’ve highlighted the melody in red. The asterisks are repetition signs; the whole song consists of those measures repeated over and over again.

  :     .     .     .       :     .     .     .
|-------------------------|-----------------1-------|
|-------------------------|-------------3-----------|
|-------------------------|-----------------------0-|
|-------0-----------0-----|-------0-----------0-----|
|-------------2-----------|-------------------------|
|-3-----------------------|-3-----------3-----------|

    :     .     .     .       :     .     .     .
||--3-----------1-----------|-3---------3-------------|
||*-------------------------|-------------------0-----|
||--------------------------|-----------------3-------|
||--------0-----------0-----|-------0-----------0-----|
||*-------------------------|-------------------------|
||--3-----------3-----------|-3-----------3-----------|

  :     .     .     .       :     .     .     .
|-------------------------|-------------------------|
|-------------------------|-----------0-------0-----|
|-0-----------------------|-----------------3-------|
|-------2-----------2-----|-------2-----------0-----|
|-------------------------|-------------------------|
|-3-----------3-----------|-3-----------3-----------|

  :     .     .     .       :     .     .     .
|-------------------------|-----1-------1-----0---1-|
|-------------------------|-----------0-----3-------|
|-0---------------0-----0-|-------------------------|
|-------0-----------0-----|-------0-----------0-----|
|-------------2-----------|-------------------------|
|-3-----------------------|-3-----------3-----------|

  :     .     .     .       :     .     .     .
|-------------------------|-----3-------3-----0---3-|
|-------------------------|-----------0-----3-------|
|-----0-----0-----0-----0-|-------------------------|
|-------0-----------0-----|-------0-----------0-----|
|-------------2-----------|-------------------------|
|-3-----------------------|-3-----------3-----------|

  :     .     .     .       :     .     .     .
|-------------------------|-----------3-------0-------||
|-------------------------|-----------------3--------*||
|-----------0-----0-----0-|---------------------------||
|-------0-----------0-----|-------0-----------0-------||
|-------------2-----------|--------------------------*||
|-3-----------------------|-3-----------3-------------||

There are several things worth mentioning about this song.

  • The whole song is basically a G chord (fingered with the long, ring, and little fingers), with small variations.
  • The melody of the song is basically what is highlighted in red, although he sings it in the floating, talk-like blues style which is almost impossible to imitate unless you thoroughly know the idiom. Besides, it is even more difficult to sing freely and at the same time keep the fixed instrumental.
  • The three licks at the end of lines three to five are the main contents of the song, both as it is sung and as it is played. They all consist of the same kind of playing around (with) open strings that I’ve been alluding to.
  • Notice the bass pattern: where nothing much happens (the first measure of each line), all three bass strings are involved, but in the measures where the melody is played out, the bass pattern is simplified to just two strings. This may be because it is easier to play it that way, but also because enough is going on, musically, anyway, so that extra variation is not really necessary.
  • In some of the “filler” measures, the index finger fills in the off-beats. This is not necessary, it’s just filler, to keep the motion going.
  • Finally, the part that really stand out in all this are the two measures in line three, where the bass tone on the second and fourth beat changes from d to e.

When I say that it is mean of me to present this song, it is because the melody does not just come out of the picking pattern: there is a whole lot to do, especially in the third measure from the end, where the little finger has to jump quite quickly from the first to the second string. The typical thing to do in this style would be to mask that move by shifting one of the notes a half-beat to either side, and let some other finger play something else in the meantime, thereby giving the melody a chance to blend more fully in with the picking pattern. Here, the little finger has to leave a note which might in principle still be sounding for a while longer, in order to get to its new position. Shame on you, Mississippi John, for making something so seemingly simple so difficult to play! (but damn, is it nice when it works!)

Julia

A version of the technique of using open strings is to simply use the notes that are in the chord. John Lennon’s “Julia” is a great example of this. Again, it is slightly mean to use this song as an example, because it is not quite easy to play it. Or rather: there is one chord in it that ruins it all, and sadly that chord is used a lot. But the rest is very simple, and it is a good illustration.

You can find a full tab of it here.

The difficult chord is F9 (131213), which moves on to Fm7 (131114). I find it almost impossible to play that and get clear tones all the way; it is one of the hardest chords to play, and you need to apply quite a lot of force. Luckily, the capo is a saver here. Lennon plays it capoed at the second fret. The capo has one great side-effect that I haven’t mentioned yet: it lowers the string, which makes it easier to press down.

Most of the chord changes can be done very smoothly, by just moving one or two fingers at the time. C is played x32013, alternating with 3x2013: the ring finger moves between the fifth and the sixth strings. It may take a while to getting used to, but it is a very useful technique to master.

From C, move the ring finger from the fifth to the third string (2nd fret), and you have Am7 (002213).

Then, move the index finger from the second to the fifth string and let go of the ring finger, and you get Em (022003).

And finally: long finger from fourth to sixth string to get to G 320003 (Lennon plays it with the ring finger on the second string: 320033 — do whatever you like).

The rest is mostly a matter of barre technique and finger stamina: finger the chords, let the right hand pick the same pattern throughout, and you have one of the greatest Lennon songs in your repertory! If you want more of the same, “Dear Prudence” is a possible choice.

Hammer-ons and pull-offs

Once you have the basic distribution of thumb strokes on the beats, other fingers off-beat worked into your fingers, the next step is to break down that distribution again, but this time using the left hand. The right hand picking pattern should be a fixed grid, but the left hand can play melodies too, and it is not bound by the grid.

Let’s start softly. Play this, using the standard pattern:

  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------0-----|---0-------0-----|
|---------------0-|-------0-------0-|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|

Then, without changing anything in what the right hand plays, hammer on the long finger on the second stroke on the d string, and continue with another hammer-on to the third fret, like this:

  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------0-----|---0-------0-----|
|---------------0-|-------0-------0-|
|-----0-------0h2-|-----2h3-----3---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|

The important thing is to let the hammer-on’ed tone come in at exactly the same time as the index finger tone. I’m not talking mathematical precision here, but musical: they should belong to the same rhythmic event.

I know that I found it quite difficult to play that with some kind of fluency. I kept thinking or feeling, Hey, that spot is taken, by someone over there on the other hand”. Again, the secret is to be so automatized in the right hand that that takes care of itself. Be biblical: “Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.”

What you have just played is the “G–G6–G7 figure” that Dylan used all the time in his acoustic days, this time fingerpicking style. A song which uses that figure is “Percy’s Song”

Percy’s Song

For the record: it’s not because I think it’s a very successful song; in fact, it’s folksy topical song-writing at its worst. I don’t know where one would get 99 years behind bars for a traffic accident, and I resent the idea of a personal plea to the judge as a way to alter a sentence. But it’s a beautiful tune Dylan has nicked, and — what’s important here — it presents some nice guitar finesses, so let’s have a closer look at it.

If you have been a good student and practiced you pickin’ patterns, the song really shouldn’t present any problems at all. The basic pattern is played straightforwardly in the intro:

  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|---------------0-|---------------0-|
|-----1-----------|-----1-----------|
|-----------0-----|-----------0-----|
|-----2-------2---|-----2-------2---|
|-3---------------|-3---------------|
|---------3-------|---------3-------|

  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----1---------1-|-----------------|
|-----------0-----|-----------------|
|-----2-------2---|-----2-------2---|
|-3---------------|-3---------------|
|---------3-------|---------3-------|
                             Bad . . .

We recognize the alternating thumb pattern for the C chord, where the ring finger switches between the fifth and sixth strings; we recognize the right-hand pattern, which is the same as in Boots of Spanish Leather; and we may note the room for variation: in the third measure, the last note is played on the second string instead of the first. In other words: as long as the thumb is rock solid, do as you please. (Well, in this case, the basic rhythm — ba pa ba-da ba-da in layman’s terms — is essential too, but which notes are played at “ba” or “da” is of less importance.)

The chord changes to F in the first line, but the right-hand pattern remains the same:

  C
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|---------------0-|-----------------|
|-----1-----------|-----1-----------|
|-----------0-----|-----------0-----|
|-----2-------2---|-----2-------2---|
|-3---------------|-3---------------|
|---------3-------|---------3-------|
  news,       bad   news    come to
   F                 C
   :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----1-----------|-----1-----------|
|-----------2---0-|-----------0-----|
|-----3-------3---|-----2-------2---|
|-----------------|-3---------------|
|-1-------1-------|---------3-------|
  me      where I   sleep

Notice how the chord changes are treated differently: In the transition from C to F, I’ve left out the last half-beat, so that there is time to change chords. Going from F back to C again, on the other hand, I’ve indicated that the C comes in one half-beat too early, so as to fit in with the picking pattern.

This is one of the places where the thumb-F shines, as opposed to the barre-F: it is easier to lift one finger off the board — in this case the long finger — than to move the whole hand, as would have been the case with the barre shape. Thumb-F also makes all the fingers available for hammer-ons, which is a great thing to take advantage of.

I could have left out that last note in the F measure as well, but if I highlight some notes again, it will become clear what it’s doing there:

  C
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|---------------0-|-----------------|
|-----1-----------|-----1-----------|
|-----------0-----|-----------0-----|
|-----2-------2---|-----2-------2---|
|-3---------------|-3---------------|
|---------3-------|---------3-------|
  news,       bad   news    come to
   F                 C
   :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----1-----------|-----1-----------|
|-----------2---0-|-----------0-----|
|-----3-------3---|-----2-------2---|
|-----------------|-3---------------|
|-1-------1-------|---------3-------|
  me      where I   sleep

The highlighted notes are in fact a rudimentary outline of the melody of the song.

Then follows the G-G6-G7 turn, twice:

  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------0-----|---0-------0-----|
|---------------0-|-------0-------0-|
|-----0-------0h2-|-----2h3-----3---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|
  Turn,             turn,   turn a-

  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------0-----|---0-------0-----|
|---------------0-|-------0-------0-|
|-----0-------0h2-|-----2h3-----3---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|
gain                              sayin’

The next line is vanilla C–F again; the below is just a suggestion — play any pattern you like:

  C
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|---------------0-|-----------------|
|-----1-----------|-----1-----------|
|-----------0-----|-----------0-----|
|-----2-------2---|-----2-------2---|
|-3---------------|-3---------------|
|---------3-------|---------3-------|
  one of      your  friends is in 

   F                 F
   :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----1----------1|-----1-----------|
|-----------2-----|-----------2-----|
|-----3-------3---|-----3-------3---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-1-------1-------|-1-------1-------|
  trou  -    ble    deep

For the end of the verses, Dylan does something nasty, which is part of the reason — apart from the hammer-ons — that I’ve included this example here.

The next chord is a Dm. As you may have noticed, I don’t care much for the D chords in standard tuning.

Dylan starts off “correctly”, with the fourth string as the bass note. That also means that you will have to shift all the fingers one string down: temporarily, the index finger plays on the second string, the long finger on the first, and the ring finger is unemployed.

But where to go next? Dylan does the illegal thing: he plays the next note on the sixth string. This is an E, a note which definitely doesn’t have any business in a D minor chord. And not only does he play it — he stays on it for the full next measure as well, for as long as the Dm lasts:

  Dm      /e        /e      /e
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----1---------1-|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----3---------1-|
|-----2-----2-----|-----2-----2-----|
|-0-----------0---|-------------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|---------0-------|-0-------0-------|
          Turn, turn,       to the   

  F                 G
  :   .   .   .     :   .
|-----------------|-----3---
|-----1-----------|---------
|-----------2---0-|---------
|-----3-------3---|-----0---
|-----------------|---------
|-1-------1-------|-3-------
  rain    and the wind

Now, why does he do this? This is not the place for extended dylanology, but it seems clear to me that this is not just a way to grab more strings in a cramped chords, but a way to create lines. Look at what happens in the bass further on: the E in Dm is followed by an F, rightfully belonging in the F chord, and the G, which is the goal of this passage. In other words: with a simple transgression of a fundamental rule of harmony, Dylan binds the passage together. “To live outside the law, you must be honest,” indeed. Who said Dylan is a bad musician?

These last measures also contain the other reason why I wanted to include this example. Again, let me colorize the tab:

  Dm      /e        /e      /e
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----1---------1-|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----3---------1-|
|-----2-----2-----|-----2-----2-----|
|-0-----------0---|-------------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|---------0-------|-0-------0-------|
          Turn, turn,       to the   

  F                 G
  :   .   .   .     :   .
|-----------------|-----3---
|-----1-----------|---------
|-----------2---0-|---------
|-----3-------3---|-----0---
|-----------------|---------
|-1-------1-------|-3-------
  rain    and the wind

Again, what we are playing is an outline of the melody, picked out just by choosing the right strings from among the available ones. The right-hand picking pattern remains exactly the same.

Barbara Allen and Seven Curses

Just to mention a couple of song that belong in this category before we close down: “Barbara Allen”, a true gem which can be found on the so-called Gaslight Tape from the end of 1962. It is played in dropped D tuning, which is perfect for fingerpicking. It uses a straightforward picking pattern, but between the sung lines, there is this little, hypnotic figure:

  D                     Dsus4         D
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|---------------0-|h2-----3-------2-|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------2-----|---2-------2-----|-----------2-----| repeat
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---| ad lib
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|

Almost exactly the same figure is used on “Seven Curses”, another gem, from the Carnegie Hall Concert in Oct 1963 when Dylan was at the height, not only as a folksy solo artist, but also as a fingerpicker. It can be found on the Bootleg Series 1–3:

  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|---------------0-|h2-----3p2-----0-|h2------------(2)|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|---2-------2-----|----------(2)----|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|

  :   .   .   .
|-----------------|
|-----------------|
|-----------------|
|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|
|-0-------0-------|

Notice the bass: a steady alternation between strings 6 and 4, with no attempts to participate in whatever action the other strings have going, just steady as a bass drum, going boom-boom-boom-boom.

I refer you to the tabs at Dylanchords for the rest [Barbara Allen] [Seven Curses].

Suze

A Dylan-based lesson on fingerpicking wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Suze: the strange tune that is all that remains from what in the liner notes to Bootleg Series 1–3 is presented as Dylan’s desire to make an album of instrumentals.

You can find the song here.

The only thing I intend to say about it is that it uses the techniques that we have talked about earlier: most notably the chords coming in “too early”; the hammer-ons in the F major and D7 chords (which means you have to use the thumb F), and other than that: just one of the standard picking patterns throughout.

Bass runs: Blackbird

I admit it: I made up this headline just to find a place to put Blackbird. Not that I think that there has to be justice in the world so that when Lennon has been credited (rightfully!) with a Beatles song, I have to let Paul have one too, but it is a great specimen of fingerpicking as well as a great song, so what can I do…?

Luckily, there is an excellent tab of this song here, written by Todd Anagnostis.

You will recognize the thumb pattern — don’t let it fool you that the second and fourth beats are on the third and not the fourth string: you should by no means play those notes with the index finger. For this song, the thumb controls the four lowest strings, so you can probably let the ring finger rest. (Symbolical, perhaps, since Paul is an eminent bass player, although his style is too saccharine for my diabetic tastes, and his eyes tell me: “Don’t ever trust this person”.)

Now, all I have to do is to sit back and let you do the rest of the work. Ah, I need a drink now…

All the Lessons

[catlist name=Lessons numberposts=150 order=asc orderby=date excludeposts=419]

Learn to Play the Guitar in Two Weeks, day 10: Fingerpicking I

So far, we’ve been playing as if you only had one finger on the right hand (or two, like Bruce Langhorne). If plain strumming — whether with a plectrum or one of the fingers — is guitar playing’s equivalent to the pathetic one-button Mac mouse, fingerpicking is more like an advanced gaming mouse, or the vim editor, where the whole keyboard is available as “buttons”.

Sure enough — you may get along fine with one button most of the time, but if God had intended us to strum, he wouldn’t have given us five fingers, now, would he? Anyway: we have them — it’s stupid not to be able to use them.

A note on fingers and nails

Before we start for real, a few words on hands and nails. First: nails or not?

Guitarists have been quarreling about this since the early nineteenth century. I’m biased. I’ve been playing with nails since I was ten, and if I break one, it’s only marginally better than breaking the finger. In fact, that’s not just a very bad exaggeration: during my school days, when various activities which I have luckily put behind me since then, such as being outdoors, playing football, running around and falling, climbing in trees, etc. — all those things that make nails break — I developed a fairly good technique for playing without whichever finger had a broken nail at the moment.

That is to say: playing with nails has its disadvantages. Broken nails is one, but there are others: you’ll have to keep up a certain level of nail care, you may be blessed with stiff nails which break easier or soft nails which don’t do much good anyway, etc.

The advantage is sound: with a nail, you will get a both stronger and more distinct tone. That’s just about the only advantage there is, but it is substantial.

It’s up to you. Give it a try, and decide for yourself what you prefer. Should you go the nail way, here are some points to remember:

Nail care

No matter what you do with the right hand, you should keep the nails on the left hand short, otherwise they will interfere with your playing. Not too short, though: they are not just attack weapons but protect your fingertips too, and if you keep them too short, you’ll open yourself to all kinds of infections. Besides, a little nail is good for support also when you play.

As for the right hand, you will have to groom them. Even the smallest irregularity will develop into a broken nail before you know it, and what’s more, it will affect your sound.

The nail should be like an extension of the finger: you don’t play with the nail, you play with the fingertip; the nail just gives the tone that little extra crisp attack at the end.

To that end, you’ll need some tools: a nail file and some sandpaper.

The file is for shaping, and that only. You want a gentle curve on the thumb side of the nail. That’s where you will touch the string — not centrally, but diagonally (“caressing” is a more appropriate word than “striking” for what the finger should do to the string). Most importantly: no sharp edges, but a smooth round curve.

The sandpaper is for polishing. If you’re thinking that this is beginning to sound a little too girlish, think again. A smooth surface does wonders for your tone, and your nails will last longer without breaking. Highly recommended.

The sandpaper should be of the micro-grits type. In Europe, sizes P800–1200 are fine; in the US the corresponding grit sizes (a word I didn’t know existed until today) are called 400–600.

If this still doesn’t make sense, use your girl-/boyfriend as a test case: if you wouldn’t caress her with it, then it’s too coarse…

Hand position

I’ve mentioned before, concerning left-hand playing, that some of the techniques and practices that are taught in classical guitar playing don’t make much sense in the chord-based/strumming-based repertory that we’re dealing with here. But for the right hand, there is actually quite a lot that applies, i.e. that will give you a better technique if you take them into account.

One is the position of the hand.

  • The fingers should attack the strings diagonally,
  • the wrist should be the part that is farthest away from the guitar,
  • and when you look down at the hand, the thumb should form an “X” against the other fingers, i.e. the three other fingers, not the thumb, should play into the palm of the hand.

These are not unbreakable rules, but they will give your hand a greater mobility, and there are no disadvantages that I know of.

update: Coming to think of it, there is one case where this doesn’t apply: palm muting. In some styles, the palm of the right hand should mute the bass strings, and then, obviously, the wrist can’t be too far from the bridge …

First steps

Let’s get to work. The first step is to mimic what we have already been doing with thumb or plectrum: separating the bass strings from the treble strings. I’ve emphasised how important this is in a previous post, but I’ll repeat it: all strings are not created equal: emphasise the bass strings on the strong beats and fill in with the trebles in between.

It so happens that the hand is perfectly fitted to this distribution. As a rule of thumb — a metaphor which was never more fitting than here — the three bass strings are the domain of the thumb, whereas the index, long and ring fingers take care of one string each (the little finger is virtually never used).

The first pattern we might try out is the simplest possible. It may not very interesting in the long run, but it may be a good way to let the fingers get used to their new roles.

You can use any chord, of course. For these examples, I’ll use E.

  E
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-           ring finger  
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-           middle finger
|-----1-------1---|-----1-------1---|- etc       index finger 
|-----------------|-----------------|-        \               
|-----------------|-----------------|-        |- thumb        
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|-        /               

You should recognize the general pattern from lesson 8: thumb/bass on the strong beats, treble/other fingers in between. The only real difference is that now that the fingers have separate areas of dominion, you don’t have to move the hand around so much, and your aim will be more precise.

That is: with practice it will be more precise. It does require more practice to move four fingers to the right spots than to throw away a shot in that general direction with a plectrum. So start with the simple pattern above and rehearse it until you’re in charge of your fingers and not the other way around.

A note about redundancy

If you think: “hey, that’s not an E — there is only one left-hand finger in use there, and I seem to remember that E uses three fingers: 022100”, that’s only part right. It is an E major chord, we just happen not to use two of the strings at the moment.

If you then think: “Great! Then I can save some energy, as you’ve been telling me to all the time — there’s nothing like being lazy and a good student at the same time,” again you’re only part right. Yes, you should be lazy, but in this case, lazy means fingering the whole E major chord.

That is so for two reasons. One is mental: even though there are cases — lots of cases, in fact — where you will not use the full chord, it will be much easier to just stick to the main chord shape instead of constantly having to think “Now, which strings am I playing? Which fingers can I leave out?” At a more advanced stage, you can start thinking like that (you may have to start thinking like that), but for now, let an E be an E and play it 022100.

The other reason is even more important: true enough, in the example above, you are only using the index finger, but it shouldn’t remain that way. You will need those other strings eventually, for variation and — not to mention — for security: if you accidentally strike a wrong string, you might as well get a correct note out of it (i.e. a note which belongs in the chord).

This may seem like a trivial matter to make a fuss about, but I still find it worth pointing out, especially since this is a text-only course where you will be playing from tabs. In some of the more advanced tabs (e.g. Suze (The Cough Song), there are certain details that look difficult if you don’t move the fingers in place until they are explicitly written out in the tab, whereas if you change the chords all at once, it will fall in place naturally.

Some more basic patterns

Even with the simple patterns, there is ample opportunity for variation. First,
you should vary the bass string.

  E
  :   .   .   .            :   .   .   .     
|-----0-------0---|      |-----0-------0---|-
|-----0-------0---|      |-----0-------0---|-
|-----1-------1---| and/ |-----1-------1---|- etc
|---------2-------|  or  |-----------------|-
|-----------------|      |---------2-------|-
|-0---------------|      |-0---------------|-

In patterns like this — actually, in all fingerpicking patterns — it is a good idea to keep in mind where the proper keynote is. Make a habit of thinking “E major: 6th string”; “C major: 5th string”, “A major: 5th string”, etc., and play that string on all the strong beats, as in these two examples, until you can do it without thinking. When you know what you’re doing, you are free to deviate from the norm, but until then: it’s a good habit to emphasise the correct string.

The next step is to vary the other fingers as well.

  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .    
|---------0-------|---------0-------|
|---------0-------|---------0-------|
|-----1-------1---|-----1-------1---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-2---------------|
|-0---------------|-----------------|


  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .    
|-------------0---|-------------0---|
|---------0-------|---------0-------|
|-----1-----------|-----1-----------|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-2---------------|
|-0---------------|-----------------|

And a couple in triple time:

  :   .   .   .   .   .     :   .   .   .   .   .    
|---------0-------0-------|---------0-------0-------|
|---------0-------0-------|---------0-------0-------|
|-----1-------1-------1---|-----1-------1-------1---|
|-------------------------|-------------------------|
|-------------------------|-------------------------|
|-0-----------------------|-0-----------------------|


  :       .       .         :       .       .        
|-------------0-----------|-------------0-----------|
|---------0-------0-------|---------0-------0-------|
|-----1---------------1---|-----1---------------1---|
|-------------------------|-------------------------|
|-------------------------|-2-----------------------|
|-0-----------------------|-------------------------|
The style in this last example is called arpeggio, meaning “harped”. It brings to my mind another snippet of classical guitar lore that I picked up, I think from Francisco Tárrega’s legendary guitar school: when playing arpeggio upwards, all the fingers should be positioned before the arpeggio starts, whereas going down, they should not.

The Holy Grail of Fingerpicking: Travis style

But hey — let’s not make any mistake about it: you’re here — we’re all here — in order to be able to play “Don’t Think Twice” or John Lennon’s “Julia”, right?

(“Julia”, by the way, is one of two songs, ever, that have had the “girlfriend” effect in my case. At that time, I was too young and shy to take advantage of it, even though I fully understood the potential. The other case was “Tomorrow Night” off Dylan’s Good As I Been To You, but alas: I was soon to be divorced, but she wasn’t… In other words: in the end, your ability to impress girls depends more on you than on your guitar skills. My apologies for leading you on with the title of this series.)

Right.

The style that is used on the two mentioned songs and millions of others, frequently goes by the name of “Travis picking”, named after Merle Travis. For this true art of fingerpicking, there is one alfa and omega: a rock steady thumb. Everything else is just embellishment.

We’ll stick with our E major chord. Now play:

  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .    
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------| 
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----2-------2---|-----2-------2---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|

etc, all with the thumb. Don’t you dare using the index finger for the fourth-string notes: the only thing that is important in fingerpicking is that you are able to keep that movement with your thumb, no matter what happens: if the roof falls down, if your future girlfriend suddenly leans over and kisses you, if the index finger plays some other tones — don’t break the thumb rhythm.

The next step is to vary the thumb strokes:

  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .    
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------| 
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----2-------2---|-----2-------2---|
|---------2-------|---------2-------|
|-0---------------|-0---------------|

When you say that’s easy enough, let’s add the other fingers:

  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .    
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------0-----|-----------0-----| 
|-------1-------1-|-------1-------1-|
|-----2-------2---|-----2-------2---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|

You can add them one at the time if you wish, or in any order you wish, and in principle on any beat, but the main rule is that the beats are the thumb’s domain — the other fingers play between the beats, as in the example above.

Remember to keep the fingers at the right strings (for now; later on you should free yourself from that too, and be able to play the patterns on any strings): all the “1”s above are played with the index finger, the second-string notes with the long finger, etc., but all the time, the thumb does its 9–5 job on the bass strings.

Some further variations:

  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .    
|-0---------------|-0---------------|
|-----------0-----|-----------0-----| 
|-------1-------1-|-------1-------1-|
|-----2-------2---|-----2-------2---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|

  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .    
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----0-----------|-----0-----------| 
|-----------1-----|-----------1---1-|
|-----2-------2---|-----2-------2---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|

And with some variation in the bass as well:

  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .    
|-0---------------|-0---------------|
|-----------0-----|-----------0-----| 
|-------1-------1-|-------1-------1-|
|-----2-------2---|-----2-------2---|
|---------2-------|---------2-------|
|-0---------------|-0---------------|

  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .    
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----0-----------|-----0-----------| 
|-----------1-----|-----------1---1-|
|-----2-------2---|-----2-------2---|
|---------2-------|---------2-------|
|-0---------------|-0---------------|

There is a good video demonstrating this playing style at this page.

The patterns are too many to list, but the ones I have written out above are the most common: with these under your belt, you have almost all that’s required to play everything from “Don’t Think Twice” to “Dear Prudence”, from “Suzanne” to Pink Floyd’s “Hey You”.

All it takes is some practice.

Boots of Spanish Leather

To prove that I’m not lying, here’s a look at “Boots of Spanish Leather”.

The chord shapes that are used in this song are:

G 320003 use the long-, ring-, and little fingers
C/g 3×2013 merely a variation on the previous chord
Em9 054030 This is one of the trademark Dylan chords, and it’s much simpler than it looks and sounds: just a C major chord that is moved two frets up.
D7/f# 200212 Another chord that looks more tricky than it is. Use the thumb and keep the index finger in place on the second string.
  G           C/g               G                 
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .   
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----0---------1-|-----1---------0-|-----0---------0-|
|-----------0-----|-----------0-----|-----------0-----|
|-----0-------2---|-----2-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|

                                      Em9             
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .   
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----0-----------|-----0-----------|-----3-----------|
|-----------0-----|-----------0-----|-----------0-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----4-------4---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|-0-------0-------|
                            Oh, I'm   sailing   away

                    D7/f#       G                 C/g     
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .   
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----3-----------|-----1-----------|-----0---------1-|
|-----------0-----|-----------0-----|-----------0-----|
|-----4-------4---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------2---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-------0-------|-2-------2-------|-3-------3-------|
              my    own     true      love                                   

              G                 Em9              
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .    
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----1---------0-|-----0-----------|-----3-----------|
|-----------0-----|-----------0-----|-----------0-----|
|-----2-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----4-------4---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|-0-------0-------|
                                I'm a-sailing     a-   

  D7/f#       G                 C/g               G        
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .    
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----1-----------|-----0---------1-|-----1---------0-|
|-----------0-----|-----------0-----|-----------0-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----2-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0-------2-------|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|
 way      in  the   morning                            
 
                    Em                        
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .   
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----0-----------|-----0---------0-|-----0-----------|
|-----------0-----|-----------0-----|-----------0-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----2-------2---|-----2-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-3-------3-------|-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|
           Is there something I   can send you from a-

  C/g         G                 C/g               G       
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .   
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----1---------0-|-----0---------1-|-----1---------0-|
|-----------0-----|-----------0-----|-----------0-----|
|-----2-------0---|-----0-------2---|-----2-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|
 cross   the   sea                                    

                    Em9               D7/f#       C/g           
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .    
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----0-----------|-----3-----------|-----1---------0-|
|-----------0-----|-----------0-----|-----------0-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----4-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-3-------3-------|-0-------0-------|-2-------2-------|
          From the place that         I'll      be     

              G                             D7/f#   G
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .   
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----1---------0-|-----0---------0-|-------1-------0-|
|-----------0-----|-----------0-----|---0-------0-----|
|-----2-------0---|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|-3-------2-------|
  landing

                 
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----0-----------|-----0-----------|
|-----------0-----|-----------0-----|
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|
                               No, there's...

In principle, the whole song uses the same pattern:

  
:   .   .   .    
|----------------|    ring finger
|----0---------0-|    middle finger
|----------0-----|    index finger
|----0-------0---| \
|----------------| |- thumb  
|3-------3-------| /

Once you have the pattern in the fingers, the only thing that may present some difficulty here is some of the chord changes. Not that they are difficult, but they don’t happen where/when you’d expect them if you’re used to square four-by-four music.

One of most prominent characteristics of the Travis picking style is the syncopation that almost automatically comes out of it: the thumb marks the rhythm, but it’s the other fingers that are heard, and they fall off the beat, most of the time.

That syncopation is the origin of the style-specific trait of starting the measures a little too early. Look at the very first measures in the tab of “Boots”.

  G       C/g               G                 
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .   
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----0---------1-|-----1---------0-|-----0---------0-|
|-----------0-----|-----------0-----|-----------0-----|
|-----0-------2---|-----2-------0---|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|

The way I have written it here, it looks as if the C chord enters in the middle of the first measure. But that’s not really the way it is perceived. A simpler, strummed version of the same would rather look like this:

  G                 C/g               G                 
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   
|-----3-----3-3-3-|-----3-----3-3-3-|-----3---
|-----0-----0-0-0-|-----1-----1-1-1-|-----0---
|-----0-----0-0-0-|-----0-----0-0-0-|-----0---
|-----0-------0---|-----2-------2---|-----0---
|-----------------|-----------------|---------
|-3-------3-------|-3-------3-------|-3-------

But the Travis-picked version almost requires the more syncopated feel. One might say that the only place this is difficult, is on the paper: where to write down the chord changes. In the tab above, I’ve tried to write them in where they actually take place, not where they musically belong.

All the Lessons

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Lessons: update

Just a quick note to say that I haven’t abandoned the lessons series, I’ve just been having a Christmas and a headache.

What remains are: Two days of fingerpicking glory, one more chord lesson covering the thousands of chords remaining; a brief look into open tunings (with an obvious focus on Blood on the Tracks); a batch of licks and tricks; and a final lesson summing up some things that might be worth a word or two in addition to what has already been said — tuning, chord family characters, etc.

Learn to Play the Guitar in Two Weeks, Day 9: D major redeemed (dropped tunings)

“Died and were reborn,
and then mysteriously saved”

Bob Dylan: “Oh Sister”

I can’t begin to tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to this post: the post where the ugly duckling, despised by everyone, turns out to be a swan.

All it takes is to tune the sixth string one tone down, and something wonderful happens to the D major chord.

Let’s take it from the beginning and summarize the charges against D:

  • It uses only four out of six strings, giving it an unnecesarily crippled, thin sound
  • it has the third at the top, which is not necessarily bad, but requires some extra care.
  • Below that is a rigid octave/fifth skeleton, which — again — is not wrong per se, but which together with the third, alone at the top on the first string, gives a very bipolar, fixed sound.
  • It uses a lot of fingers, with very little room for maneuvering.

Then tune the sixth string down to a D, one tone lower than its standard tuning. It should sound like the fourth string, only one octave lower. This tuning is usually referred to as the Dropped D tuning.

The new D is played 000232, i.e. it uses all the strings in all their bassy glory. Now, magically, most of the complaints vanish:

We not only gain one but two strings: the A on the fifth string, which in the standard major chord is best avoided because it is not the keynote, is now a perfect support for the new fundamental tone: the low D on the sixth string.

The new D chord doesn’t change the position of the third — it is still up there at the top, in perfect isolation on the first string, and everything below it is just a sequence of octaves and fifths: D - A - d - a - d’. However, now that the fundamental tone is on the sixth string, we not only get two extra tones sounding in the basic chord 000232: we also get two extra intermediary strings — the fourth and fifth — which can be used for melody and bass lines, almost like with the G major chord. We can for example play the quintessential early Dylan folk/blues fill:

         :   .   .   .     :
------||-----------------|-----
-(3)--||-----------------|-----
-(2)--||-----------------|-----
-(0)--||-3---0-----------|-----
-(0)--||---------3p0-----|-----
-(0)--||-------------3---|-0---

All that is done with the long finger, which temporarily leaves its place on the first string. “3p0” means “pull-off”: strike the fifth string with the finger at the third fret, and pull off to produce the tone of the open string.

here’s an incomplete list of songs where Dylan uses the Dropped D
tuning:

So, you may ask, why isn’t Dropped D the standard tuning if it has all these advantages?

The reason is of course that the advantages are limited to D major; all the other chords become troublesome, to a higher or lesser degree. The low G, for example, is now all the way up on the fifth fret of the sixth string, and that makes the G major chord more tricky. There is a solution: since the tone D is also part of the G major chord, we can play it like this:

o oo
======
||||||
------
|1||||
------
||||34
------
||||||

 G/d

But note that this chord lacks the keynote in the bass. Hence, it is not suitable for songs in G major. For songs in D major, on the other hand, where G major is the subdominant, which is more like a variant of the keynote, this is more ok. Also, the third finger is in the same place in D major and in this variant G major chord, which is a good thing.

Another alternative, which gives us a G bass on the lowest string, is this:

  ooox      ooox
======    ======
||||||    ||||||
------    ------
||||||    ||||||
------ or ------
||||||    ||||1|
------    ------
||||||    ||||||
------    ------
34||||    34||||
------    ------
||||||    ||||||

 G/d

It is playable, but it requires you to shift the hand position up to the third position (“position” is a technical term, at least in classical guitar terminology, denoting the fret in which the index finger is placed).

The dominant of D major is A major. In standard tuning, this chord can use the open sixth string, since that is an E, which is a member of the A chord. In Dropped D tuning, the sixth string either has to be avoided, or it has to be fingered at the second fret. The most practical way to do this is with the thumb:

 o   x
======
||||||
------
T|111|
------
|||||| 

  A

But with this fingering, it is difficult to bend the index finger enough to let the first string sound. In most of the songs from the list above, you will hear that when Dylan plays an A chord, it is usually more muffled than the other chords — sometimes very muffled.

Finally, one last disadvantage: In the dropped D tuning, the D major scale runs as follows:

|----------------------------------------------
|-------------------------------------0--2--3--
|-------------------------------0--2-----------
|----------------------0--2--4-----------------
|-------------0--2--4--------------------------
|-0--2--4--5-----------------------------------

In other words: some of the important tones in the scale are on the 4th and 5th frets, which at times may be a problem, especially if one wants to play melody lines while strumming. In practice, one is then required to use the little finger quite a lot.

If one plays in a more blues-oriented style, however, all the notes at the fourth fret will be replaced by the third fret instead — as in the “quintessential riff” above. A lot of the songs in the list above are also in this style, such as “Hollis Brown”, “It’s alright Ma”, etc., for which it fits like a glove.

Here is a handful of songs which in different ways are typical of dropped D tuning.

Masters of War

On the album, Dylan plays this with a capo on the third fret. If you play it without a capo, it will sound very dark.

  Dm                    Cadd2 Dm                    Cadd2
  :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .
|-1-----1---1-|-1-----1-0---|-0h1---1---1-|-1-----1-0---|
|-3-----3---3-|-3-----3-3---|-3-----3---3-|-3-----3-3---|
|-2-----2---2-|-2-----2-0---|-0h2---2---2-|-0h2---2-0---|  etc.
|-0---0---0---|-0---0---0---|-0---0---0---|-0---0---0---|
|-0---0---0---|-0---0---3---|-0---0---0---|-0---0---3---|
|-0---0---0---|-0---0---0---|-0---0---0---|-0---0---0---|

Dm
Come you masters of war

You that build the big guns

You that build the death planes
         Cadd2         Dm
You that build all the bombs

You that hide behind walls
         Cadd2       Dm
You that hide behind desks
                   Cadd2
I just want you to know
      G/b              Dm
I can see through your masks

As usual, the tab means to indicate a general pattern more than exact
notes/strings to be played.

The three chords that are used in this song are:

ooo        o oo o    o oo o
======     ======    ======
|||||1     ||||||    ||||||
------     ------    ------
|||2||     ||||||    |1||||
------     ------    ------
||||3|     |2||3|    ||||3|
------     ------    ------
||||||     ||||||    ||||||        

  Dm       Cadd2      G/d

As you can see, the ringfinger is in the same spot all the time, and all the strings are used, although they are not always “correct”. This is one of the things you will see in the various altered tunings: since they usually emphasise one particular key, the tonal character is so strong that an occasional “off” or “odd” tone does nothing to obstruct that.

  • An essential part of this pattern — as Dylan plays it in the album version of the song anyway — is the constant, driving, hammering rhythm on every beat in the bass.
  • Also, there is a stronger emphasis on the first beat in every measure — indicated with full chord on all the strings, although it does not necessarily have to be played that way all the time.
  • The ground rhythm of the accompaniment is something like this:
      :    .    .    | :   .   .   |
    --------------------------------
      V    v    v      V     ^ v

    That is not to say that there is only one upstroke, but that that last upstroke in the pattern has a certain emphasis which brings out the dotted rhythm in that measure.

  • The hammer-ons should be fairly straightforward to figure out. They are embellishments and hence not absolutely obligatory, but it’s worth making the effort to learn them. Play the four measures above over and over again until your neighbours complain and your girlfriend leaves you — don’t worry, she’ll come back once you get it right.

Double Dropped D: The Ballad of Hollis Brown

The pattern in “Masters of war”, with a dominating Dm or D chord broken up by the sequence Cadd2 -> G/b at structural points in the song, is a trademark figure in Dylan’s acoustic repertory, in the early days of course, but also in his live work in the late 80s and early 90s. Another song where this features prominently is “The Ballad of Hollis Brown”.

This song is played in “Double Dropped D” tuning. This means that both the sixth and the first strings are tuned down one whole tone, so that they both sound like the fourth string.

As should be clear from this, Double Dropped D tuning is very centered around one chord, and all others are more to be seen as ornaments.

This gives the following main chords:

ooo  o     o oo o    o oo o
======     ======    ======
||||||     ||||||    ||||||
------     ------    ------
|||2||     ||||||    |1||||
------     ------    ------
||||3|     |2||3|    ||||3|
------     ------    ------
||||||     ||||||    ||||||        

  Dm       Cadd2      G/d

As you can see, the only difference from the chords in “Masters of War” is that the first string is left untouched in all the chords. In Double Dropped D tuning, that string already has a d', so there is no reason to mess with it.

The first chord is not really a D minor: there is no third in it, so from the chord chart alone, there is no way of telling if it is minor or major. However, throughout the whole song runs another trademark figure, where the minor third is prominent:

  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----0-0-0-0-----|-----0-0-0-0-----|
|-3---3-3-3-3-----|-----3-3-3-3-----|
|-2---2-2-2-2-----|-----2-2-2-2-----|
|-0---------------|-0-----------3---|
|-0-----------3---|-----------------|
|-0---------------|-----------------|

  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|
|---  etc. in the same manner  -----|
|-----------------|-----------------|   etc
|-0---------------|-0-----------3---|
|-------------3---|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|

This figure is played everywhere there is a continuous Dm.

Dm
Hollis Brown
                Cadd2      Dm
He lived on the outside of town

Hollis Brown
                Cadd2      Dm
He lived on the outside of town

With his wife and five children
        Cadd2 G/b    Dm
And his cabin broken down

“Mr Tambourine Man” and “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”

Mr Tambourine man uses Dropped D tuning in a way that comes closer to a traditionally harmonic three-chord song, using the chords D, G/d, and A:

D     000232
G/d   020033
A     202220 (with thumb)

“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna fall” uses the same three chords, but in a quite different way. The chord shapes from Mr T-Man are used here as well, but during the “I’ve been…” / “I seen…” lists in the middle of the verses, another set of shapes is used:

======     ------        ------
||||||     |||1-1  3rd   |||1-1  5th
------     ------        ------
|||1-1     |||2||        |||2||
------     ------        ------
||||2|     ||||||        ||||||           

  D         G/d           A/d

Here, the half-barre version of D major comes in handy: keep the finger on those three strings throughout and slide it up to the third fret for the G chord and to the fifth for A.

That gives the following:

    D                       G         D
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
    D                                     A
And where have you been, my darling young one?
     G/d                     A/d          D
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,
     G/d                        A/d         D
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways,
     G/d                      A/d       D
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
     G/d                    A/d        D
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
          G/d                       A/d        D
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
    *)     D                A            D                G
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard,
           D        A          D
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Dropped C tuning

The third main “Dropped” tuning is the Dropped C. Again, the sixth string is tuned down, but this time two whole steps, so that it sounds an octave lower than the c you get on the third fret of the fifth string, the fundamental note of the C major chord.

Dropped C is even more limited than dropped D when it comes to keys: it is hardly ever used other than for songs in C major.

It is great fun to play in: it gives a wonderfully strong bass. Most chord shapes in standard tuning have a fifth between the two lowest bass tones (exceptions are G and C major). This gives a certain fullness of sound. The C major chord in Dropped C tuning, however, has a full octave between the two lowest strings. Thus, the deepest C works more as a reenforcement of the fundamental tone. It is noteworthy that Dylan used this tuning to some extent during his solo acoustic parts of the 1965/66 shows, but abandoned it once he started playing with a band (where the bass guitar could take care of that deeper register).

Here’s a list of songs using dropped C. Go to any of them and try them out.

Bringing it all Back Home:
It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,
Love Minus Zero/No Limit
Highway 61 Revisited:
Desolation Row
Blonde on Blonde
:
4th Time Around,
Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,
Absolutely Sweet Marie
Live 1966:
Just Like a Woman
I Wanna Be Your Lover
Farewell Angelina
On A Rainy Afternoon/Does She Need Me?
What Kind Of Friend Is This?

All the Lessons

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Learn to Play the Guitar in Two Weeks, Day 8: Strumming My Gay Guitar

“Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth” (Matthew 6:3)

“There should be no schism in the body; but the members should have the same care one for another” (1 Cor. 12:25)

Jesus and St Paul may not be best known as guitar tutors, but their advice, if taken together, not only becomes a mystic almost-contradiction (of the kind which probably makes sense if you’re a true believer — Merry Christmas!), but is actually sound advice. The problem is precisely how to combine the two statements.

A good strumming technique depends on the two hands being able to work together at doing things separately, without regard for what the other hand does.

Strumming techniques

As always, Dylan is our guide. I set out to go through all of his early, acoustic albums to find his strumming patterns, but I soon found that it was unnecessary: all the basic principles are there from the beginning.

So, the following patterns, which are mostly just variations of a few basic principles, recur again and again:

She’s No Good, Talkin’ New York Blues, Man of constant
sorrow, and many others

(the tab snippets will fit better in their frames if you view the post as a single post, and not from the main page with the sidebar. I’ll have to fix that theme one of these days…)

  C
  V   v   V ^ v ^       V   v     ^ v ^        V   v ^ V   v ^
  :   .   .   .         :   .   .   .          :   .   .   .
|-----0-----0---0-|   |-----0-----0---0-|    |-----0-0-----0-0-|
|-----1-----1-1-1-|   |-----1-----1-1-1-|    |-----1-1-----1-1-|
|-----0-------0---|   |-----0-------0---|    |-----0-------0---|
|-------------2---|   |-------------2---|    |-----------------|
|-3-------3-------|   |-3---------------|    |-3---------------|
|-----------------|   |-----------------|    |---------3-------|

Pretty Peggy-O

  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----3-3-3-3-----|-----3-3-3-3-3-3-|
|-----0-0-0-0-----|-----0-0-0-0-0-0-|
|-----0-0-0-0-----|-----0-0-0-0-0-0-|
|-----0---0-------|-----0---0---0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-3-----------0---|-3---------------|

  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .    :   .   .
|-----3-3-----3-3-|-----3-3-----3-3-|----0-0-----
|-----0-0-----0-0-|-----0-0-----0-0-|----1-1-----
|-----0-0-----0-0-|-----0-0-----0-0-|----0-0-----
|-----0-------0---|-----0-------0---|----2-------
|---------2-------|---------2-------|-3----------
|-3---------------|-3---------------|--------3---

House of the Rising Sun

    :   .   .        :   .   .        :   .   .
||------0-0-0-0--||------0-0-0-0--||------2-2-2-2--||
||*-----1-1-1-1-*||*-----1-1-1-1-*||*-----3-3-3-3-*||
||------2-2-2-2--||------0-0-0-0--||------2-2-2-2--||
||--2---2---2----||------2---2----||------0--------||
||*-0-----------*||*-3-----------*||*-0-----------*||
||---------------||--3------------||--2------------||

(The asterisks “*” mean: repeat.)

I think that should be enough to make a point, but before I summarize the evidence:

Whatever you do with the tabs above, don’t take them too literally, except on one point: the overall image.

I’ve written out some quite specific string combinations for the various stokes, but that’s mainly because the notation system dictates it. For example, I’ve indicated a differing number of strings to strike in the non-bass part; that’s just a way to distinguish between upstrokes and downstrokes.

The only thing that is important in the tabs is the distinction between bass strings and treble strings, and the general distinction between up- and downstrokes — not how many strings are played at each of them.

That is to say:

  • There’s a consistent emphasis of the bass notes at the beginning of every measure and at some of the major intermediate downstrokes.
  • Some times — such as if you are playing a bass melody — it is important to play some particular string alone, but in general “any bass string in the general area of the fundamental tone of the key” will do…
    • (that is to say: try to play the fundamental tone of the key at all major structural points.)
  • The last example in the first line above represents the “alternating bass” pattern. If used schematically, it has a certain “oompa–oompa” character to it, but for longer stretches on the same chord, it is a great way to create variety.
  • The second “She’s no Good” and the first “Pretty Peggy-O” example both represent a whole class of effects which may be called “preparing for the strong beat” — the first by leaving out the bass tone on the last beat of the measure altogether, the second by releasing all the strings and just strumming what happens to be next (in this case: the open sixth string). That way, the real bass tone, when it finally arrives on the first beat of the following measure, receives extra strength.
  • The second line of the “Pretty Peggy-O” examples contains a hint of a bass line, similar to the ones we met in lesson 5
  • So much for the bass tones. In general, one might say that the bass tones are responsible for marking where we are, in a melody or in the harmony, whereas the treble strings set the energy level. Giving some prominence to the upstrokes, as in the first examples, gives a certain forward drive; playing on all the subdivisions, such as in the second measure of the “Pretty Peggy-O” example, gives another kind of drive, whereas leaving them out, as is the case, e.g. in “The Times They Are A-Changin’”, gives a sturdy feeling. Compare also with the constant ringing of “Chimes of Freedom”.
  • One might go so far as to present it as an advice to play as little as possible. That may be going too far, but keep in mind (and try it out) that it takes less than one usually thinks to get great effect.

Hammer-ons and pull-offs

A hammer-on is what you get when you hammer a finger onto a string with such force that you get a tone when it hits. Here are two classics that both use hammer-ons in the bass to great effect.

First, play the following until your lips bleed and you have blisters on your fingers.

  Am
  :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .
|-----0-0-0-0-|-----0-0-0-0-|-----0-0-0-0-|-----0-0-0-0-|
|-----1-1-1-1-|-----1-1-1-1-|-----1-1-1-1-|-----1-1-1-1-|
|-----2-2-2-2-|-----2-2-2-2-|-----2-2-2-2-|-----2-2-2-2-|
|-------------|-0h2---------|-------------|-0h2---------|
|-0-----------|-------------|-0-----------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|

Notice how the rhythm in the second and fourth measure is exactly even: there is something happening on every subdivision of the measure, and everything happens at exactly the same intervals.

If your right hand starts to act up on you in the second and fourth measure and wants to do something — that’s when you ask yourself: “What would Jesus do?” And the answer is: “Nothing!” The right hand shouldn’t know what the left hand does, remember? Just because there is rhythmical activity somewhere in the system, that doesn’t mean that the right hand should break its own established rhythm pattern.

Working Class Hero

When you’ve gotten that, in practice, or at least as a concept to strive towards, you are ready to use this pattern for something useful: John Lennon’s classic “Working Class Hero”, one of the greatest Dylan songs Dylan has never written.

    Am                          G
    :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .
||------0-0-0-0-|-----0-0-0-0-|-----3-3-3-3-|
||*-----1-1-1-1-|-----1-1-1-1-|-----0-0-0-0-|
||------2-2-2-2-|-----2-2-2-2-|-----0-0-0-0-|
||--------------|-0h2---------|-----0-0-0-0-|
||*-0-----------|-------------|-2-----------|
||--------------|-------------|-3-----------|
As  soon as you’re born they make you feel
by  giving you   no   time in - stead of it
    pain is so   big  you feel nothing at
    Working Class hero    is   something to 

  Am
  :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .
|-----0-0-0-0-|-----0-0-0-0-|-----0-0-0-0-|-----0-0-0-0--||
|-----1-1-1-1-|-----1-1-1-1-|-----1-1-1-1-|-----1-1-1-1-*||
|-----2-2-2-2-|-----2-2-2-2-|-----2-2-2-2-|-----2-2-2-2--||
|-------------|-0h2---------|-------------|-0h2----------||
|-0-----------|-------------|-0-----------|-------------*||
|-------------|-------------|-------------|--------------||
  small
  all                                              till the
  all                                               a
  be                                                a

  Am            G             D
  :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .
|-----0-0-0-0-|-----3-3-3-3-|-----2-2-2-2-|
|-----1-1-1-1-|-----0-0-0-0-|-----3-3-3-3-|
|-----2-2-2-2-|-----0-0-0-0-|-----2-2-2-2-|
|-------------|-----0-0-0-0-|-0-----------|
|-0-----------|-2-----------|-0-----------|
|-------------|-3-----------|-2-----------|
  Working-Class Hero    is    something to

  Am
  :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .
|-----0-0-0-0-|-----0-0-0-0-|-----0-0-0-0-|-----0-0-0-0-|
|-----1-1-1-1-|-----1-1-1-1-|-----1-1-1-1-|-----1-1-1-1-|
|-----2-2-2-2-|-----2-2-2-2-|-----2-2-2-2-|-----2-2-2-2-|
|-------------|-0h2---------|-------------|-0h2---------|
|-0-----------|-------------|-0-----------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
  be

The D major chord uses a very convenient variant with the thumb on the sixth string. If you’re still not comfortable with that, just leave that string out.

In this song, the hammer-ons are mainly used for rhythmic effect. In the next, it is responsible for the melody.

Wish you were here

Some points:

  • On the album, this is played on a 12-string guitar, hence the gorgeous sound.
  • Use the 320033 shape for G.
  • the rest is just those two fingers resting still on the first and second strings, and then the melody being played on the bass strings.
  • Make a clear distinction between the bass melody and the strumming. It doesn’t matter too much exactly which strings you strum at which beats.
  • When you get to the A7sus4 part, use the index finger in a half barre. I’ll explain the “sus4” part in a moment.
 G             Em7
 .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
-------------|---------3---3-3-|---3-3-----------|
-------------|---------3---3-3-|---3-3-----------|
-------------|---------0---0-0-|---0-0---0-------|
---------0---|-2---------------|-------------2---|
-----0h2-----|-----------------|-----------------|
-3-----------|-----------------|-----------------|

  G
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|---------3---3-3-|---3-------------|
|---------3---3-3-|---3-------------|
|---------0---0-0-|---0-------------|
|-0---------------|-------------0---|
|-----------------|---------0h2-----|
|-----------------|-----3-----------|

  Em7
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|---------continue with ------------|
|---------same strumming------------|
|------------ pattern ------0-------|
|-2---------------|-------------2---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|

  G
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0---------------|-------------0---|
|-----------------|---------0h2-----|
|-----------------|-----3-----------|

  Em7
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-2---------------|-----2---0-------|
|-----------------|-------------2---|
|-----------------|-----------------|

  A7sus4
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|---------3---3-3-|---3-3-----------|
|---------3---3-3-|---3-3-----------|
|---------2---2-2-|---2-2-----------|
|---------2---2-2-|---2-2-------0---|
|-0---------------|---------0h2-----|
|-----------------|-----------------|

  Em7
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|---------3---3-3-|---3-------------|
|---------3---3-3-|---3-------------|
|---------0---0-0-|---0-------------|
|-2---------------|-----2---0-------|
|-----------------|-------------2---|
|-----------------|-----------------|

  A7sus4
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|---------3---3-3-|---3-3-----------|
|---------3---3-3-|---3-3-----------|
|---------2---2-2-|---2-2-----------|
|---------2---2-2-|---2-2-----------|
|-0---------------|---------0h2-0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|

  G
  :   .
|-------
|-------
|-------
|-------  etc.
|-------
|-3-----

More songs to attempt

If this isn’t enough — and it probably isn’t — there are numerous other songs you might want to attempt using the same or similar techniques. One is Song to Woody, another is Pretty Boy Floyd.

sus-chords

We met the sus-chord in “Wish You Were Here”. The sus-chord is a single-purpose chord, one might say. Its effect comes from the special character of the third in a chord. The third: the vibrant, tension-laden, teenager son who determines the mood of the whole chord.

“Sus” is short for “suspended”. What it means is that the third in the chord is temporarily suspended — hung up — usually to the step above, the fourth, hence the name “sus4”.

This  implies that the sus4 chord is not an independent chord: it requires a resolution. One will usually see it followed by the standard chord, e.g.:

  Csus4   C
  :   .   .   .
|-----------------|
|-1-------1-------|
|-0-------0-------|
|-3-------2-------|
|-3-------3-------|
|-----------------|

Another variant is “sus2”. It does the same thing — suspends the third –.but this time to the tone below (so maybe it should be called “subpend”…).

  Csus2   C
  :   .   .   .
|-----------------|
|-1-------1-------|
|-0-------0-------|
|-0-------2-------|
|-3-------3-------|
|-----------------|

Sus-chords are ideal for picking out a melody in the bass strings, with hammer-ons and pull-offs, but before we go on to an example of that, here are a few points in clarification:

  • The whole point of the sus-chord is that the third is not present, so one should distinguish between sus-chords and the same chord with the third. E.g. x32030 is not a sus2 chord even though it contains the tone below the third (it’s the note on the second string: d). The proper name for this chord would be Cadd9, but I’ll leave the explanation for a later post.
  • Since the third is missing, it might be said that it makes no sense to distinguish between major and minor (since those are defined by the third). I would still argue that it makes sense: the sus-chord is a temporary replacement, and thus retains — in advance! — some of the character of the chord it replaces. Hence:
      Amsus4  Am        Asus4   A
      :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
    |-----------------|-----------------|
    |-3-------1-------|-3-------2-------|
    |-2-------2-------|-2-------2-------|
    |-2-------2-------|-2-------2-------|
    |-0-------0-------|-0-------0-------|
    |-----------------|-----------------|
  • Occasionally, a chord like Asus4 is used independently of A, as an independent chord. This is convenient, although theoretically dubious…
  • The sus4 chord is a distant relative of the seventh chord, since the function of both is to create tension, suspense, which require resolution. But it is also close to the subdominant: that extra tone is the keynote of the subdominant chord. E.g.
      Csus4   F/c
      :   .   .   .
    |-----------------|
    |-1-------1-------|
    |-0-------2-------|
    |-3-------3-------|
    |-3-------3-------|
    |-----------------|

World Gone Wrong

World Gone Wrong, and to some extent its precursor Good As I Been To You provides excellent examples of these techniques: picking out the melody, or just snippets of melody-like figures, just enough to give the impression of a line; complete with sus-chords and hammer-ons.

I’ve written something more general about the album before, but it may actually be useful to have the general image in place before we move on to the specifics, so here goes: World Gone Wrong is a Body In Sound.

The simpler examples, you should be able to figure out yourself, from the tabs/chords at dylanchords.

Here, one of the more interesting examples: “Two Soldiers”. Just so that those who are not Dylan geeks and have every single album can also take part, here is a sheet:

Two Soldiers

I’ve deliberately kept the chords simple, because that’s what it is in principle: three chords.

But then have a look at the tab file which shows more or less what Dylan plays:

        G/d              C/e  G/d   C
    1   :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .
    ||--3---3-3-3---|-3---3---3---|-------------|
    ||*-0---0-0-0---|-0---1p0-0---|-1---1-1-----|
    ||--0---0-0-0---|-0---0---0---|-0---0-0-----|
    ||--0-------0---|-0---2p0-0---|-2---2-2-----|
    ||*-------------|-------------|-0h3---------|
    ||--------------|-------------|---------3---|
He was just     a     blue -  eyed  Bo    - ston
       do       your  bid -   ding, com   - rade
       mo - ther you  know    must  hear    the

   F
 4 :   .   .      :   .   .     :   .   .
 |-1---1-1-1----|-----1-1-1---|-----1-1-1-1-|-----1-1-1-1-|
 |-1---1-1-1----|-----1-1-1---|-----1-1-1-1-|-----1-1-1-1-|
 |-2---2-2-2----|-----2-2-2---|-----2-2-2-2-|-----2-2-2-2-|
 |-3---3-3-3----|-----3-3-3---|-----3-3-3-3-|-----3-3-3-3-|
 |-3------------|-3-----------|-3-----------|-3-----------|
 |-1------------|-1-----------|-1-----------|-1-----------|
   boy                                                his
   mine                                               If
   news,                                              so

   F                   G   C
 8 :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .
 |---1-1-1-1-1-|-----1-0-0-0-|-0---0-0-0----|
 |---1-1-1-1-1-|-----1-0-0-1-|-1---1-1-1----|
 |---2-2-2-2-2-|-----2-0-0-0-|-0---0-0-0----|
 |---3-3-3-3-3-|(0h3)3-3-3(2)|-2------------|
 |-3-----------|-0h3------(3)|-3------------|
 |-------------|-------------|-3------------|
   voice   was   low     in    pain
   I       ride  back    a -   gain.
   write to her  ten -   der - ly.

11 :   .   .      :   .   .                 Fine
 |-----0-0-0-0-|-----0-0-0-0-|-----0-0-0---||
 |-----1-1-1-1-|-----1-1-1-1-|-----1-1-1--*||
 |-----0-0-0-0-|-----0-0-0-0-|-----0-0-0---||
 |-2-----------|-------------|-0h2---------||
 |-------------|-------------|------------*||
 |-------------|-3-----------|-------------||
                                       I’ll
                                       but if

 Csus4 C/e G/d   G/d /e  /f    C/g
14 :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .
 |---0---0---3-|---3---0---0-|-0---0-0-0---|-0---0-0-0-0-|
 |-1---1---0---|-0---0---0---|-0h1-1-1-1---|-1---1-1-1-1-|
 |-0---0---0---|-0---0---0---|-0-----------|-0-----------|
 |-3---2---0---|-0---2---3---|-------------|-------------|
 |-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
 |-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
   you __ ride   back    and   I       am    left,   you’ll

 Csus4 C/e G/d   G/d /e  C/g                     DC al fine
18 :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .
 |---0---0---3-|---3---3---3-|-----3-3-3-3-|-----3-3-3-3-||
 |-1---1---0---|-0---0---1---|-0---0-0-0-0-|-----0-0-0-0-||
 |-0---0---0---|-0---0---0---|-0-----------|-0-----------||
 |-3---2---0---|-0---2-------|-------------|-0-----------||
 |-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------||
 |-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------||
   do      as    much    for   me.

(DC al fine means: from the top until the word “Fine” (which means: “end”). I’ve also numbered the measures, for later reference.)

Please don’t let all the details in the tab scare you away. First, let us strip it down to the barest details, to see what it is that Dylan is playing, fundamentally:

        G                           C
        :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .
    ||--------------|-------------|-------------|
    ||*-------------|-------------|-------------|
    ||--------------|-------------|-------------|
    ||--0-------0---|-0---2---0---|-------------|
    ||*-------------|-------------|-3-----------|
    ||--------------|-------------|---------3---|
He was just     a     blue -  eyed  Bo    - ston
       do       your  bid -   ding, com   - rade
       mo - ther you  know    must  hear    the

  F
  :   .   .      :   .   .     :   .   .
|--------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|--------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|--------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|--------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|--------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-1------------|-1-----------|-1-----------|-1-----------|
  boy                                                his
  mine                                               If
  news,                                              so

  F                     G     C
  :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .
|-------------|-------------|--------------|
|---------1---|-1-------0---|-1------------|
|---2---------|-------------|--------------|
|-------------|-------------|--------------|
|-------------|-------------|--------------|
|-------------|-------------|--------------|
  voice   was   low     in    pain
  I       ride  back    a -   gain.
  write to her  ten -   der - ly.

 :   .   .      :   .   .                 Fine
|-------------|-------------|---------------||
|-------------|-------------|--------------*||
|-------------|-------------|---------------||
|-------------|-------------|---------------||
|-------------|-------------|--------------*||
|-------------|-------------|---------------||
                                      I’ll
                                      but if

C               G             C
  :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-0-------0---|-0-----------|
|-3---2---0---|-0---2---3---|-------------|---------3---|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
  you __ ride   back    and   I       am    left,   you’ll

C               G             C
  :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------||
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------||
|-------------|---------0---|-0-----------|-0-----------||
|-3---2---0---|-0---2-------|-------------|-0-----------||
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------||
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------||
  do      as    much    for   me.

If you strum the chords above the tablines and at the same time emphasise the tones that are written in the tab, you ought to be able to recognize the melody. At some places, it is more clearly audible that others; for example, at the line “his voice was low in pain”, the melody is hinted at more than played. It also jumps up one octave. But when you play that, anyone who knows the melody will hear it in the accompaniment, and be amazaed at how good you are.

If we now return to the full tab, you should see that it is basically the same, only with some ornaments and rhythmical subtleties added:

  • Measure 2: If you have been a good student and learned to play G major with the fingers that are not the index finger, you should have no problem with this one. Dylan gives it an extra touch by playing it with a pull-off, the opposite of a hammer-on: striking the strings with the fingers in place, and then pulling the fingers off the strings so that the open strings produce a tone.
  • M. 3: the first tone in the measure (the open 5th string) is a stylistic mannerism: using the open string for no reason other than — that it is there to be used. The same thing happens in mm. 9 and 16.
  • M. 9 is the most complex measure in the piece, and where the advice from Jesus and St Paul comes in handy. All that happens is that the chord changes are syncopated: they occur a half-beat earlier than expected. Really, that’s all: Think of it that way, and don’t let your right hand (which otherwise is responsible for marking the chord changes) be confused by the changed roles but play as if not knowing what the left does.
    If you play it from the tab, it may require a double dosis of training: first getting the notes “right”, then unlearning the “correct” notes approach and just playing it with the syncopated feel. Perhaps, if one disregards the tab at this point and just plays it by ear instead, one might be able to skip one of the steps (I for one can’t — I’m too much of a musicologist and sheet-music reader. At points like this, I always wish I would have listened more carefully to Jesus and Paul…)
  • The middle section is in fact a sus4 passage, although it may not appear as one. Again, the chords changes don’t fall exactly where one would expect them.

Flatpicking

What I’ve presented above is the best way I could think of to present Dylan’s flatpicking method/style: going from the simple, isolating the main points (separation of bass and treble; rhythm and accompaniment; picking out or indicating melodies or bass lines); via a simplified reduction of what he is actually doing; to end up with the full “score”.

But that means that I haven’t really said anything about flatpicking, only about strumming in general.

When it comes to flatpicking more specifically, I don’t really have much to say, other than: apply the general strumming principles.

Don’t hold the pick too stiffly — you will then get a very loud tone on the string you happen to hit and not much else — but don’t get too loose either (or you will lose the pick every once in a while). Ideally, it should feel like an extension of your body, not as something you hold on to.

*

For the record:

Should you think: “what a sad character. Doesn’t he have better things to do on a Christmas Eve?”, I can inform you that I’ve just had the best Christmas Eve ever, and I’m winding down with something I happen to like doing…

Not sad at all.

Merry Christmas. :)

 

Learn to Play the Guitar in Two Weeks, Day 7: Barre chords

My order has been messed up. I had intended to stick to a steady left hand — right hand — left hand etc. rhythm for the remaining posts. Today was going to be some more flatpicking/right hand techniques, but I realized that we need one more group of chords in place before we go further.

So: get ready to fail, sweat, and swear, with …

The first major hurdle: Barre chords

Dm7, one of the chords that were presented on Day 6, introduces the concept of the barre chord: a chord where the same finger is used for several strings at the same time. This two-string mini barre — xx0211 — is the simplest possible variant, but before the day is done, you’re going to have to at least have tried the full six-string barre.

Let’s start with Dm7 and extend it gradually. The two first strings should be played with the index finger. This can be done in three ways:

  • place the finger on the second string, then bend it down so that it also covers the first string;
  • place the fingertip on both strings at the same time. If you have very tiny fingers, this will probably not work.
  • lay the index finger flat over the three highest strings, then place the long finger in its position on the third string, second fret

In practical playing, you will probably end up using one of the first two methods — pick the one that suits you and your finger best. Righ now, however, we are going to work on the third method.

This may seem like a waste of energy: why put two fingers on the same string? That index finger isn’t doing anything useful on the third string, is it?

At the moment, no. At the moment, I’m suggesting this form mainly as a way to prepare for the full barre chord. That said, there are cases where it is actually quite useful, namely: If that finger is needed in the next chord you’re playing.

Say, for example, that you’re playing the progression Dm7 — Dm7-5 — C (don’t worry about the name of that middle chord; I will explain that in a later post):

  Dm7     Dm7-5     C
  :   .   .   .     :   .
|-1-------1-------|-0-------
|-1-------1-------|-1-------
|-2-------1-------|-0-------
|-0-------0-------|-2-------
|-----------------|-3-------
|-----------------|---------

If the index finger is already covering all three strings, all you have to do is to lift off the longfinger — no repositioning of the index finger is needed at all.

It’s not F yet, but it’s getting there

This Dm7 chord can be extended to xx3211, which is a simple way to play F major. Technically, it’s not even cheating: all the right tones are there. (If you want/need to cheat, you can play xx3210, which is not F, but it’s close enough.) What’s wrong with it is that you have two strings that you can’t use, just as with D major.

We must therefore proceed. The next step is to add the fifth string:

xx        x
======    ======
||||11    ||||11
------    ------
|||2|| -> |||2||
------    ------
||3|||    |34|||

Now, all that is left is to get the sixth string into the mix. The bass tone of F major is found on the first fret of the sixth string. That’s both good news and bad news.

The good news is that the index finger should be able to do that — it’s already well on the way there. All you need to do is to extend the mini-barre all the way from the first to the sixth string:

======
1---11
------
|||2||
------
|34|||     

  F

The “F” chord

The bad news is that … well, it takes some strength in the index finger to be able to press down hard enough. There’s a reason why it’s called the “f word”.

Barre chords are a hurdle, and should anyone actually have taken the “day n” thing seriously and done one lesson a day, this is probably where you will have some problems keeping the pace. Any chord chart, picking pattern, or odd chord combination can be learned in one day, but barre chords is not just about technique or rote learning, but also about physical stamina. It takes more than a day to build up that strength.

But don’t despair: it doesn’t take that much time, and there are things you can do to get there sooner.

Most important is to learn not just how hard you have to press down to get six sounding strings, but also how softly you can press. A good barre chord technique is not about training your index finger and thumb to be able to press as hard as you can, but to apply as much pressure as needed, but nothing more. A cramped, strained hand is something to avoid, at all cost.

This also means: apply the pressure where it is needed. In the F chord, you don’t need to burden your index finger with a lot of pressure in the middle of the chord — those strings are being taken care of by the other fingers. Think of it rather as if you are playing this:

======
1|||||
------
|||2||
------
|34|||

Don’t use any more energy on this than what you need to get a clear bass tone. Then lower the index finger to cover the highest strings as well.

This is not to say that you should not apply any pressure in the middle: it may be needed to provide the connection between the two outer parts of the chord. Besides, there are other chords where you will also play the intermediary strings with the index finger, such as F7:

======
1-1-11
------
|||2||
------
|3||||

Other barre-based chords

Half-barres are useful in many situations besides Dm7. One of the most common is the A major chord, where the three fingers at the second fret can be replaced by a half-barre:

 o   o
======
||||||
------
||1-1|
------
||||||
------
  A

The trick here is of course to bend the finger enough to let the first string ring. If that seems too difficult, it is possible to cheat by muting the string instead; just touch it with the index finger, and problem solved.

The same half-barre is used in a variant of A7:

 o
======
||||||
------
||1--1
------
|||||2     

  A7

D major is also a good candiate for a half-barre:

  o
======
||||||
------
|||1-1
------
||||2|     

  D

The living capo

Once you master this chord — and it will probably not happen the first day — you have what it takes to play literally thousands of chords. When your hand begins to ache and your index finger is about to go off, that may perhaps be a comforting thought.

If you’re saying to yourself: “Hey! This F thing — isn’t it just an E major chord played with the wrong fingers and with that annoying index finger across the whole thing?”, then you’re absolutely right. Barre chords could be thought of as if you’re using a living capo, one you can quickly and easily move wherever you want.

This also means that if you move the whole chord up to the third fret, you have yet another way of playing G major:

======        
||||||            1---11  3rd 
------   or       ------      
||||||  shorter:  |||2||      
------            ------      
1---11            |34|||      
------            ------      
|||2||        
------        
|34|||        
------        

355433

  G 

The second form of the chord chart is convenient if you move further up the neck — it saves a lot of |||||| lines…

The “E shape” is not the only barre chord type you can use. Another common and very useful type is the “Am shape”, which is the same as the E shape but on different strings. Bm is a common chord with this shape:

x
====== 
|||||| 
------ 
11---1 
------ 
||||2|        
------        
||34||        
------        
 
x24432

  Bm 

But just about any of the open chords can be used, although some of them are more tricky than others:


1----1      1----1            
------      ------            
||||||      ||||||            
------      ------            
|34|||      |3||||            
------      ------            
||||||      ||||||            
                        
 "Em"        "Em7"      


|1---1      |1---1      |1---1            
------      ------      ------            
||||||      ||||||      ||||2|            
------      ------      ------            
||234|      ||3|4|      ||3|||            
------      ------      ------            
||||||      ||||||      ||||||            
                        
 "A"         "A7"        "Am7"      

1----1
------
||||2|
------
||3|||
------
|4||||
      
  "C" 

The ones in the first row are based on the sixth string, and the ones in the second row on the fifth string. To find out which chord you are playing at a given fret, go to the chart of the neck, which I presented in lesson 4, but which I’ll gladly present again, extended a few frets upwards:

0        1         2        3       4       5      6    7    8
e'||----f'----|---f#'---|---g'---|--ab'--|--a'--|-bb'-|-b'-|-c''
b ||----c'----|---c#'---|---d'---|--eb'--|--e'--|-f'--|-f#'|-g'-
g ||----ab----|----a----|---bb---|--b----|--c'--|-c#'-|-d'-|-eb'
d ||----eb----|----e----|---f----|--f#---|--g---|-ab--|-a--|-bb-
A ||----Bb----|----B----|---c----|--c#---|--d---|-eb--|-e--|-f--
E ||----F-----|----F#---|---G----|--Ab---|--A---|-Bb--|-B--|-c--

How to use this? Say you need to play a B flat minor (Bbm) chord. From the chart, you can see that you have a Bb at the first fret of the fifth string and at the sixth fret of the sixth string. Thus, you can either play an Am shape with the “capo” — the index finger — at the first fret, or an Em shape at the sixth. Which one you choose is up to you.

A few comments on some of the other shapes:

  • I’ve indicated that you should use the ring- and little fingers for the Em/Em7/A7 shapes. With those chord types, you are in the fortunate situation that you can use the long finger to give extra support to the index finger. This is probably something that will happen automatically, and that is perfectly fine.
  • For the A/Am shapes, I have not said anything about the sixth string. In the long run, it will be best to let the index finger go all the way — you are going to need that last bass tone eventually, for fullness of sound and for alternating bass. For now, however, you are allowed to use only the five strings.
  • For the A shape, there is another alternative:
    |1---1     |1---1     
    ------     ------     
    ||||||     ||||||     
    ------ or  ------     
    ||444|     ||333|     
    ------     ------     
    ||||||     ||||||     
            
           "A"      
    

    A double barre! If it looks insane at first, don’t worry. Personally I use the little finger version most of the time. Again, it doesn’t really matter if the first string is muted (accidentally or on purpose), and should you happen to play

    |1---1     
    ------     
    ||||||     
    ------     
    ||4444     
    ------     
    ||||||     
          
     "A"  
    

    that’s not anything you’ll hang for either.

  • It is perhaps a bit mean to introduce the C shape at this stage. I know it took me a long time to get comfortable with it. Sadly, there are chords where that’s just about the only viable alternative. E/g# is one (476454 in shorthand); the only alternative is just as bad (422100, with some little finger acrobatics and plenty of chances to get it wrong).

Tom Thumb’s Blues

Using the index finger is not the only way to play these chords. You can also use the thumb.

I said earlier on that according to classical guitar teaching, the thumb should stay in the lower half of the neck, and actually using it to play something is reason for excommunication.

If your goal is to spend yor musical carreer sitting down with a guitar between your legs, then feel free to follow this. It has its merits: it allows your fingers maximum mobility.

But if you want to stand up once in a while, slide back in your couch, play in the back seat of a bus, etc., then get that thumb working!

The “thumb F” is much easier on the hand than the barre version. Start with the “extended Dm7 and bring your thumb up from behind the neck to play the sixth string on the first fret:

x              
======    ====== 
||||11    T|||11 
------    ------ 
|||2|| -> |||2|| 
------    ------ 
|34|||    |34||| 
                 

If you have a small thumb, you may complain and say that it can’t be done. That may be the case, but before you give up: You don’t need to twist the thumb all the way around and up on the fret board. It takes surprisingly little pressure — almost just a touch — to get the right tone.

This chord shape is a perfect candidate for cheating: if it seems like too much to play the mini-barre with the index finger and get the thumb around at the same time, then just let the index finger mute the first string:

     x    
====== 
T|||1| 
------ 
|||2|| 
------ 
|34||| 
                 

Some people also play the “Am shape” with the thumb:

     
====== 
TT|||1 
------ 
||||2| 
------ 
||34|| 
       

That’s way beyond me — my thumb is much too short and stiff — but if you can do it, do it!

Other movable chord shapes

The fewer open strings there are in a chord, the more freely you can move it around. The barre chords where all the strings are fingered, are the main exponents of this, but other chord shapes go in the same direction, and can be used higher up on the fretboard, with some care.

C7 is the best example. the four middle strings are covered, and that’s good enough as long as you stay away from the outer strings when you play. Thus, you can produce a D7 with a slightly different sound character by moving C7 two frets up and mute the first string:

x    x 
====== 
|||||| 
------ 
|||||| 
------ 
||||1| 
------ 
||2||| 
------ 
|3|4|| 
------ 
  D7   

Incidentally, if you do play the open first string as well, the chord you get is called D9. The chords-with-strange-names will be the topic of a later post.

And if you move it up yet another two frets, with the index finger in the fifth fret on the second string, you get E7. And lo and behold! Here, you can use all the strings, since the tone on the outer strings is e. This shape is a wonderful, full-bodied alternative to the first-position E7 (020100).

Incidentally, it goes very well together with A played with an E shape thumb chord at the fifth fret (577655): the ring finger is already in place on the fifth string, the index finger is where it should be on the second string, and the other two fingers fall easily in place.
This A, in turn, can be simplified to 007650, since A on the open fifth string is the keynote, and e is a legitimate member of the chord.

D7 and C are other possible candidates to be moved upwards, although they are not as versatile as C7 and the pure barre/thumb chords.

A final note about shapes

You may remember that I have recommended to play C with
the shape 332010

   o o
====== 
||||1| 
------ 
||2||| 
------ 
34|||| 
------ 
  C

This is not only because of the better sound, or because it can then be moved more easily, since four strings are covered, but for economical reasons: the shape of the three fingers is the same as in the E shape and the Am shape. You should see the advantage immediately once you start playing songs in C major, where you are bound to alternate between F and C quite a lot. With this C shape, all you need to do is to bend down your thumb a little to get it to the sixth string, and then shift the block of fingers one string down. You can do that whole operation almost without moving your hand at all. Compare that with the “simpler” C shape (x32010) and the full barre F, which takes a lot more energy and requires you to move the hand around a lot:

======     ======         
||||1|     1----1         
------     ------         
||2|||     |||2||         
------     ------         
|3||||     |34|||         
------     ------         
  C          F            

There are other shapes that reappear in several different chords. Here’s just a sample, without comments, just to have them in one place, and let you familiarize you with the idea…:

||1|||    ||||||    ||||||    ||||||                  
------    ------    ------    ------                  
||||2|    |1|2||    ||1|2|    ||1|2|                  
------    ------    ------    ------                  
|||3|4    ||3|4|    |||3|4    |3|4||                  
------    ------    ------    ------                  
||||||    ||||||    ||||||    ||||||                  


||||||    ||||||    ||||||    ||||||             
------    ------    ------    ------             
|||1||    ||||1|    |||||1    |||1||             
------    ------    ------    ------             
||2|3|    |||2||    ||||2|    ||2|||             
------    ------    ------    ------             
||||||    ||3|||    |||3||    |3||||             


||||||    ||||||    ||||||                  
------    ------    ------                  
||1|||    |||||1    |||||1                  
------    ------    ------                  
||||||    ||||||    ||||2|                  
------    ------    ------                  
|3||||    ||||3|    ||||||                  

A final note about rhythms

Why would one play, say the A–E7 combination at the fifth fret with barre/thumb chords, when they are so easy to play in the first position, with all the nice, open strings?

Other than variation, the main reason is: rhythm. The great thing about a barre chord is that you can easily mute it. In any kind of music with a snappy rhythm, such as swing jazz, rock’n’roll, etc., you would want to have short, crisp chords. That is much easier to accomplish with barre chords than with chords with open strings. Strike the strings with the right hand, then immediately loosen the grip on the strings in the left hand so that the strings are muted.

Once you get a hang of it, you have a wonderful rhythmical device at hand, which extends the capabilities of the guitar further over towards the drum kit.

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Learn to Play the Guitar in Two Weeks, Day 6: Chords and Overtones

If less is more, is “lesson” the opposite of “moron”, or is it even more stupid?

More Chords

Forget all about which hand is most artisty — today it’s all about chords.

So far, we’ve covered most of the “simple” chords. Here are the ones that are left:

o   oo     o o oo     o oooo
======     ======     ======
|||1||     |||1||     ||||||
------     ------     ------
|23|||     |2||||     |2||||
------     ------     ------
||||||     ||||||     ||||||
------     ------     ------
  E          E7         Em7    

  ooo      x   0      x    o
======     ======     ======
|||||1     ||1|||     ||||1|
------     ------     ------
|2||||     |2|3|4     ||2|||
------     ------     ------
3|||||     ||||||     |3|4||
------     ------     ------
  G7         B7         C7        

x o        x o        x o
======     ======     ======
|||||1     ||||11     ||||1|
------     ------     ------
|||2||     |||2||     |||2|3
------     ------     ------
||||3|     ||||||     ||||||
------     ------     ------
  Dm         Dm7        D7

With these chords under your belt, plus the ones we’ve already covered, you should be able to play a large amount of the songs you will find on dylanchords or any other chordsite. The exceptions are songs with barre chords and songs with chords with long and complicated names, which will the topics of later lessons.

For now, just a few remarks on the most common chords.

  • G7: Note the similarity between G7 and C: the pattern is the same, only with the chord “spread out” on all six strings. Take advantage of this wen you play these chords and keep the movement as simple as possible.
  • E is the quintessential blues chord. Most of John Lee Hooker’s songs and a good share of the blues songs you will hear in pub bands are in this key. Its companion chords are A and B7. With those three chords, you can pick more or less any blues song and play it, and that is the first assignment today: pick any blues song and play it.
  • B7 is one of those four-finger chords, which may seem difficult to get in place all at the same time. It should work as a block of fingers, as I’ve talked about before — not as four separate fingers. This could be trained in the usual way: play E – B7 – E – B7 for two minutes, and chances are that you will come out with a fairly automatized B7. Again: the long finger is in the same place in the two chords. Use that as a stabilizing element.
    It is possible to cheat with B7 and play it x21200 instead, which — if you come from E — is just a matter of switching strings for the index and ring fingers. The “wrong” tone you will be playing is the high e’, and since you will most likely play B7 only in songs in E major, that is either completely wrong — if the “point” of the song is maximum contrast between the two — or completely ok. You decide — it’s your ears.
    In the more advanced direction, it is also possible to get a finger at the second fret of the sixth string as well, somehow: 221202. This would either be a half-barre with the longfinger, covering both the fifth and the sixth strings, or a thumb coming up from behind to the sixth string. I will come back to both these solutions later. For now, you’re probably better off cheating (I do that, most of the time…).
  • Dm is one of those spread-out chords, which may give some problems until you get used to stretching out your hand.
  • C: The common C major chord can be played in four different ways:
               x  o o
               ======
               ||||1|
               ------
               ||2|||
               ------
               |3||||     
    
       o o     x  o        x o
    ======     ======     ======
    ||||1|     ||||1|     ||||1|
    ------     ------     ------
    ||2|||     ||2|||     ||2|||
    ------     ------     ------
    34||||     |3|||4     3||||4      
    
           variants of C

    The shape at the top is the one we have used so far. It is the easiest one, at least insofar as it only uses three fingers, but I recommend learning the other three as well.
    The first (332010) is my everyday C. It has two great advantages: (1) it makes the sixth string less obtrusive, so you can actually play the chord with the full six strings; and (2) it works perfectly together with the version of G major with long, ring and little fingers that I recommended back in lesson 3: the ring finger is already in place (“already in place” is a thing to look for, especially when it’s the ring finger, the least mobile of the fingers), the long finger is almost there, and it’s a relatively small matter to slip the little finger down to the first string.
    Apropos — in the version in the middle (x32013) the little finger is already in place on the first string, and all you need to do to get to G is slip the little and ring fingers up to the fifth and sixth strings and let go of the index finger. The little finger on the first string gives this chord shape a very distinct sound: one high tone is ringing way above the next one. This makes it a nice variant, but it can also be too much sometimes. Use it with care.
    The last variant is a special chord, to be used in one specific context:

      ooo       x o         ooo
    ======     ======     ======
    ||||||     ||||1|     ||||||
    ------     ------     ------
    |2|||| ->  ||2||| ->  |2||||
    ------     ------     ------
    3||||4     3||||4     3||||4  
    
      G          C/g        G

    Here, two fingers are “already in place”, and slipping the long finger one string down and adding the index finger is easy enough. This is one of the cases where you are supposed to touch a neighbouring string: the fifth string should not sound, and muting it is the job of the ring finger. It happens almost automatically.
    The “C character” of the C major chord suffers here, since the bass tone is G and the fifth string should not be sounding. It is, in other words, a variant chord to G almost as much as a proper C chord.

  • G: I’ve said it before, but for the sake of completeness: try to learn to play G with the “bad” fingers — you will not regret it.

Overtones and sound quality

A few more words about the E major chord:

E is the biggest, fattest chord in the book. Since E is the tone of the deepest string, it follows that E is the deepest sounding chord you can play in standard tuning. But that’s not the only reason; there are things about the way the chord is constructed which emphasise this grandness.

Try this: Play the open 6th string. Then place your finger over the twelfth fret (and when I say “over” I mean that literally: directly over the metal band and not “in the box” where you will usually place your fingers), and touch the string lightly but without pressing down on the string. Then strike the string again. You should hear the same tone as the open string, only an octave higher, and with a somewhat flute-like sound (at least that’s what those people thought it sounded like who called this kind of tones “flageolets”, which means “little flutes”).

Do the same thing again, this time touching the string over the seventh fret, then over the fifth fret. The fifth-fret tone should be the same tone again, another octave higher. This should be the same tone as the open first string. The seventh-fret tone, on the other hand, is not an e, but a b, which should sound the same as the open second string.

What you have just played, are the first three overtones or harmonics of the tone E. When you strike a string, you are setting the string in vibration. But it’s not just the whole string that is vibrating. The two halves of the string are also vibrating, independently of what’s happening with the full string. So are the three thirds of the string, etc.

The parts of a string that are vibrating at the same time

The divisions which produce the overtones (from wikipedia).

What you are doing when you touch the string at the twelfth fret, is partly to stop the full vibration of the string, partly to emphasise the vibrations of the two halves of the string. The twelfth fret is the exact middle of the string, corresponding to the point marked “1/2” in the image to the right.

Similarly, the seventh fret marks one third of the string (“1/3” in the figure), and the fifth fret one fourth, etc. There are similar points at the fourth fret, near the third fret, etc. In principle, the series does not end, but it is difficult to isolate the higher overtones in practice.

They are there, however, and they are heard. The combination of overtones — which ones are more and which less loud — is one of the most important factors that determine how an instrument sounds. A violin has a different distribution of overtones than a guitar, and that’s why we can hear the difference between them. (The other main elements are the attack — how the tone starts — and the sustain — how it ends. If one cuts off the attack, it can be surprisingly difficult to recognize an instrument sound.)

But even one and the same instrument can have different sounds. If you strike a string close to the bridge, it sounds much sharper than if you strike it closer to the sound hole: you are in fact emphasising the higher overtones, whereas closer to the sound hole, you’re giving more punch to the lower ones, which gives a darker, mellower sound.

We can now go back to the E major chord, and summarize what we know: when we strike the deepest string, we also hear — among the overtones of that tone — three tones that are also part of the full chord, on different strings: the fourth, second and first strings are identical to the first, second and third overtones, respectively. The tone on the fifth string (B) does not correspond directly to any of the overtones, but it is at least the same tone as the second string, an octave lower, and will feel very much at home in the chord.

In other words: most of the tones in the E major chord are there already in the deepest-sounding tone. The rest of the strings reinforce the basic sound. Hence the full, rich sound of the chord as a whole.

The third

That leaves one string: the third. The tone of the third string is g# (g sharp), which is the third of the E major chord — the tone which decides if the chord is major or minor. Its position right in the middle of the chord is ideal: it does not draw too much attention to itself (as may be the case with D major, where the third (f#) is played on the first string), nor does it blur the chord (as may be the case if the third is placed closer to the bass).

The third is the unruly pubescent teenager in the family of chords: it certainly has character, and the chord would be a whole less interesting without it, but somehow, it is always either too big or too small.

This is not just metaphorically speaking: it is too big or too small. Or put differently: a third on the guitar will always be out of tune. This has to do with properties of the tonal system, which it will take to long to give the details about, but to make it brief: the fourth overtone (the one on the fourth fret) is two octaves and a third above the tone of the open string. This tone or one equal to it will sound in tune with the fundamental tone. The problem is that this tone can not be produced in a system which is based on a division of the octave into twelve equal (or rather: proportionally equidistant) tones, which is how the guitar is constructed, with twelve equal frets on an octave. This is also how modern pianos are tuned. The benefit of this system — which Johann Sebastian Bach demonstrated with his Well-Tempered Klavier — is that one can play equally well in any possible key. The cost is that every interval except the octave is slightly out of tune. With some intervals, it is hardly noticeable, but with the third, the difference between the pure and the tempered version is considerable.

You can test this by playing the fourth fret flageolet on the sixth string and comparing it with the tone on the fourth fret of the first string (g sharp). If the two strings are perfectly in tune, you should be able to hear the difference between the two tones clearly: the pure third, on the sixth string, is consideably smaller than the one you play on the first string.

This is yet another reason why the third in a chord should be treated with caution — just like with a teenager. In the middle, surrounded by caring and loving octaves and fifths — as it is in E major — it blends in more easily, but if it is allowed to ring all by itself on the top (as in D major), it can be jarring at worst (and interesting at best…).

*

My plan was to say something more about the blues today, but on second thought, I think I will leave it to the lesson on licks and riffs — after all, that’s mainly what the blues is all about.

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Learn to Play the Guitar in Two Weeks, Day 5: All Strings Are Not Created Equal

It’s been said about guitar playing that the left hand is the craftsman, but the right hand is the artist. I first read that when I was a kid, struggling with some classical guitar etudes or whatever, and I thought it was a great quote — only whoever said it must have gotten the hands mixed up. Surely, the left hand must be the artist?

But no: even though most of the rehearsal time — at least as a classical guitarist — is spent on figuring out fingerings and practicing transitions between chords, that’s “just” craftsmanship. It’s the right hand that makes the music. Rhythm, as we discussed yesterday, is of course the main right-hand task. But also the sound quality in general — do you strike hard or soft, close to the bridge or to the sound hole, upwards or downwards, with thumb or fingernails, or with a plectrum? All these things that determine what kind of sound you make.

But also in the areas of melody and harmony, the right hand has a huge task. This is of course a shared area between the two hands, but the ability to pick out a melody or a certain harmonic progression is first and foremost a right-hand technique. This is going to be the main topic today.

All Strings are Not Created Equal

In the beginning — as far as I remember it — one is probably mostly concerned with placing the left-hand fingers in the right spot and trying to disregard the pain in the fingertips. The right hand does a rather crude job, mostly striking all the strings every time, or — perhaps — trying to avoid hitting the wrong strings.

The first step towards releasing the artistic potential of the right hand, is to realise that All Strings Are Not Created Equal. The guitar can do a pretty good job at filling in for the members of a full band: The three high strings — roughly speaking — provide harmony and play the part of the organ or the backup singers; the low ones are bass strings and do what the bass guitar does (and the right hand in general — with some help from the left hand — is the drum kit; the only instrument that is missing, is the solo guitar, which the guitar cannot mimick, unless you are very advanced, like Richard Thompson, e.g.).

In order to bring out these different roles — and this is something you should strive towards — you need to be able to treat the strings separately.This means: to be able to

  • strike only the bass strings or only the treble strings; and/or
  • strike a single string at the time.

Compare these two examples:

  v   v   v     v   v ^ v     v
  G                           C
  :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .
|-3---3---3---|-3---3-3-3---|-0---
|-0---0---0---|-0---0-0-0---|-1---
|-0---0---0---|-0---0-0-0---|-0---  etc.
|-0---0---0---|-0---0-0-0---|-2---
|-2---2---2---|-2---2-2-2---|-3---
|-3---3---3---|-3---3-3-3---|-----

and

  :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .
|-----3---3---|-----3-3-3---|-0---
|-----0---0---|-----0-0-0---|-1---
|-----0---0---|-----0-0-0---|-0---  etc.
|-0-----------|-0-----------|-2---
|-2-----------|-2-----------|-3---
|-3-----------|-------------|-----

The exact strings are not important, but the general idea is: what you’re doing here is both adding some air (so that the music can breathe), and providing lines. Already in this little example, you are playing a bass line and bringing out more clearly at least a fragment of two other melody lines.

The most obvious line is the bass line:

  :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .
|-------------|-------------|-----
|-------------|-------------|-----
|-------------|-------------|-----
|-------------|-------------|-----
|-------------|-2-----------|-3---
|-3-----------|-------------|-----

But also on the two upper strings there are melody lines that stand out more clearly, now that they are allowed to sound alone, without the mass of strings on their back.

This is the kind of lines that you should try your best to bring out in your playing. The good thing is that it will happen more or less automatically if you make a habit of varying your stroke. As a rule of thumb, the bass strings belong to the accented beats (the first beat in triple time, as in the example above; the first and third in 4/4), the treble strings to the unaccented.

(I realize I haven’t said anything about time signatures and such yet. I will add a section about that to the Day 4 lesson.)

Slash chords

Also, in a good chord file, the bass line will be written out for you. This is done with slash chords.

A slash chord indicates, in addition to the chord itself, the bass tone to be played. This is added to the chord symbol, separated with a slash. E.g. “G/b”, which means: G major, with b as the bass string.

In an ordinary chord symbol, such as “G”, it is implied that the bass note — the deepest sounding note — is also g. So although the G chord contains all three bass strings, the one that plays g is the most important one. This happens to be the sixth string —

(I realize I haven’t presented you with the whole scale and the positions of the tones on the fretboard yet. I’ve just added a section about that to the Day 4 lesson, which you may want to revisit.)

— so in the case of G, there isn’t much of a problem there: strike all the chords, and the lowest note will automatically be the bass note. Gee, it’s a great chord… But remember our hate chord, D? One of the reasons it’s such a despicable chord is that there are two strings — a third of your whole resource base — that you’re not supposed to use. In shorthand: xx0232.

Time to modify that statement a little. The sixth string is an E, which is definitely not part of a D chord, so that string is forever out of the picture — it will sound bad if you even touch it while playing a D chord. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

But the fifth string is different. It’s an A, and the tone A is actually part of the D major chord. It’s there already: the tone on the third string should be an a.

So why is it forbidden, “x”ed out in the shorthand? Because it is not the proper bass string. The fundament of a chord should be its proper bass tone, and so there is nothing else to do than to leave out two of the swetest strings you have. Shit happens.

But slash chords can change that. There are circumstances where you want the bass tone to be something other than the chord’s proper bass tone. You could for example play an alternating bass pattern:

  D       D/a       D       D/a
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----2-------2---|-----2-------2---|
|-----3-------3---|-----3-------3---|
|-----2-------2---|-----2-------2---|
|-0---------------|-0---------------|
|---------0-------|---------0-------|
|-----------------|-----------------|

or, as in the earlier examples, bring out a certain bass line. The example that we started with could be written:

G    G/b    C

This is sometimes abbreviated to

G    /b    C

I will usually use the latter form if the chord itself is not really that important — what counts is the bass tone, as part of a bass line.

Both these forms of notation are confusing to some, but as you can see, it’s simple enough: the slash part of the chord is extra information that you can use to bring out a certain effect. Since it’s “extra information”, you are free to leave it out.

Blowin’ in the Wind Revisited

If you have been with me from the start and have played “Blowin’ in the Wind” in the version from Day 2, you may have noticed that even though it sounds more or less as the album version (at least it should), it’s still not quite the same. And if you’ve checked some tab site’s version, you may have seen that it’s not written in D at all.

That’s because Dylan plays it with a capo, all the way up at the seventh fret, and because he uses a lot of slash chords. The capo position means that he plays with chords shapes from the G major family but the sounds that come out of it are in D major.

If you followed the day 1 instructions and bought a capo, this is the time to put it on. If not, either run down there and get one right now, or play it without a capo, in which case it will not sound exactly as on the record (but it probably never will — no offense — so it may not matter that much …):

G        C     /b     D/a      G
How many roads must a man walk down
G          C    /b    G
Before you call him a man?
         G        C    /b     D/a        G
Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail
G          C      /b     D
Before she sleeps in the sand?
         G        C     /b       D/a          G
Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly
  G            C  /b   G
Before they're forever banned?
    C   /b     D/a        G              C
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
    C   /b    D/a            G
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

You already have all the tools you need to play this, but since I’m a nice guy, I’ll summarize:

  • /b means “play the bass tone b (regardless of the chord you’re otherwise playing). In this case, this means the second fret of the fifth string: -2----.
  • D/a is a D chord with A (the open fifth string) replacing d as the bass string.

If you use the default bass string for the rest of the chords, and otherwise try to apply the variation between bass and treble strings, you may end up with something like this:

  G                 C       /b
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----3---3-3-3-3-|-----0-------0---|
|-----0---0-0-0-0-|-----1-------1---|
|-----0---0-0-0-0-|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-3-------2-------|
|-3---------------|-----------------|

  D/a               G
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----2-2-2---2---|-----3-3-3---3---|
|-----3-3-3---3---|-----0-0-0---0---|
|-----2-2-2---2---|-----0-0-0---0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-0---------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-3---------------|

  G                 C       /b
  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----3---3-3-3-3-|-----0-------0---|
|-----0---0-0-0-0-|-----1-------1---|
|-----0---0-0-0-0-|-----0-------0---|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-3-------2-------|
|-3---------------|-----------------|

  G
  :   .   .   .
|-----3-3-3---3---|
|-----0-0-0---0---|
|-----0-0-0---0---|
|-----------------|
|-----------------|
|-3---------------|

The exact strings you play in the treble section is not important — should you strike some bass chords, that’s just fine — and the rhythms I’ve written in are just the ones I happened to play this one time. The important thing is the bass notes and the variation. With this in mind (and in hand) you should be able to play the rest of the song, which is just variations on the same patterns as above.

The Times They Are A-Changin’

Ready for another old gem.

     G             Em
Come gather 'round people
    C        G
Wherever you roam
      G            Em
And admit that the waters
 C              D
Around you have grown
      G            Em
And accept it that soon
          C               G
You'll be drenched to the bone.
        G       Am           D
If your time to you Is worth savin'
         D            D/c
Then you better start swimmin'
          G/b         D/a
Or you'll sink like a stone
        G     C          D   G . .
For the times they are a-changin'.

Some initial comments:

Em is a new chord. It’s quite simple: 022000.

In this song, Dylan plays G with the shape 320033 instead of 320003. It’s a subtle difference, which you are free to disregard, but it’s like that for a reason (and this is in fact yet another example of Dylan’s mastery in achieving effects with a minimum of effort): The tone on the second string in the regular chord is b, which is the tone that defines the chord as a major chord. By replacing that with the d’ on the third fret, the chord is almost released from that whole field of tension, and takes on a solemn character, a little like a tolling bell — quite befitting the theme of the song. All that, with just one finger…

As I said: you are not required to use the 320033 shape. It does involve all four fingers, and that may be too much to keep track of at this point. Although … some people actually find it easier to play than the standard 320003, because the two pathetic little weaklings, the ring and little fingers, can support each other. Try it, and go with what suits you best.

The ending is the greatness of this song (which incidentally was the first Dylan song I heard, although not with Dylan himself. I’ve written an emotional account of this first meeting in the introduction to The Uneven Heart.). Again, it’s the use of slash chords and bass lines that makes the difference.

The “better start swimmin’” lines could go something like this:

  D             D/c           G/b           D/a
  :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .
|-----2---2---|-----0-0-0---|-----0---0---|-----2---2---|
|-----3---3---|-----3-3-3---|-----3---3---|-----3---3---|
|-----2---2---|-----2-2-2---|-----0---0---|-----2---2---|
|-0-----------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-3-----------|-2-----------|-0-----------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
  Better start swimming or y’ll sink like a stone

But here, you may have several objections:

  • “Hey! That thing in the second measure — that’s not a D chord!”
  • “Hey! That thing in the third measure — that’s not a G chord!”
  • “You said I could leave out the slash thing, but if I do, the second measure doesn’t sound right!”

And you’re right. But if you would just calm down a little, bridle your righteous anger over lying bastards who pose as guitar teachers etc., I’ll explain.

[ten seconds’ break to calm down]

There. Ok.

It all has to do with what is important and what is not. That section of the song could be seen as basically just a descending bass line over a sustained note: the single note that the melody has at this point, which incidentally is what you have on the third fret of the second string. So, stripped down to the essentials, the passage could be played:

  D             D/c           G/b           D/a
  :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-----3---3---|-----3---3---|-----3---3---|-----3---3---|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-0-----------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-3-----------|-2-----------|-0-----------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
  Better start swimming or y’ll sink like a stone

and nothing inalienable has been lost, really. Hence, we may consider the rest as ornament, filler. This is not to say that the filler is unneccessary, only that it can be dealt with somewhat freely, if other considerations are of greater weight.

Such as: ease of playing. If you were to play the D/c chord without cheating making it easy for yourself, you would have to use the little finger on the second string and the third finger for the c on the fifth string. That is playable, but here it is unneccessary. Much easier to move the stronger longfinger from the first to the fifth string:

xx0        x
======     ======
||||||     ||||||
------     ------
|||1|2     |||1||
------ ->  ------
||||3|     |2||3|
------     ------
||||||     ||||||

Note that I haven’t banned any of the open strings other than the sixth in the chord diagram; the fourth string has a d which can’t be all wrong, since it’s the keynote of the chord; and the first string — well, it’s filler. It’s a “wrong” tone, but in this case, hey, it doesn’t matter.

It can actually be defended not just out of laziness economizing, but as an element in an interesting melodic line. With the open e string in the second measure, what you’re playing is:

  D             D/c           G/b           D/a
  :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .     :   .   .
|-2-----------|-0-----------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-3-----------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
  Better start swimming or y’ll sink like a stone

Which works well as a a countermelody to the otherwise static melody line, and which is also parallel to the bass line.

Much of the same could be said about your second objection. Again: the important thing is the -2--3- skeleton — the rest is filler.

Note that you use the version with the third fret on the second string here, no matter what you do elsewhere in the song. This has to do both with flexibility (not being limited to one chord shape only) and economy (why use the other shape, when that finger is already in place?). It may not be something you need to hear right at the moment, if you think that just learning the basic chord shapes is more that enough, but the great thing about the guitar is that you can play the same chords in many different ways, depending on what is important at a particular spot.

So, in the third measure, we define x20030 as a legitimate replacement for 320003.

This gives the following transition between D/c and G/b:

  x          x
  ======     ======
  ||||||     ||||||
  ------     ------
  |||1||     |1||||
  ------ ->  ------
  |2||3|     ||||3|
  ------     ------
  ||||||     ||||||

The third objection is actually valid, and it exemplifies the problem of pinning down a set of chords/sounds to a common symbol — the chord sign. I’ll come back to this later when we take a look at “Boots of Spanish Leather”, but for now: why should I call the second chord D/c?

First of all: it’s a bit cheating. The c is the seventh tone in the D major scale, and hence the proper name for the chord is D7/c. When I don’t write it like that, it’s not just out of laziness, but because even though all the tones of a D7 chord are in there, it doesn’t feel or work like a seventh chord — it feels like a static D chord with a descending bass line under it.

For that matter, I could also have called the third chord D/b, and that wouldn’t have been all wrong either, although the tone d is the only tone in there that actually belongs to the D chord.

To test this statement, try to play that whole line with just a D chord all the way through (disregard the bass line for now), and say if that doesn’t actually sound quite right.

The lesson to be learned from this is that a chord name is not just a way to tell you which fingers to put where — it’s not just a name for a certain finger configuration: it’s also a way to classify according to function. This may go so far that a chord could be called a variant of, say, G, without even containing a g note.

This is also why, if you leave out the slash part of the chord names above, the second chord will sound wrong. We have defined the descending bass as one of the important elements in that line, and chosen the chord names accordingly. If we leave out the important part, we may have to find a way to put it back again.

One way could be to play the second chord as a C. That would give us the /c in the bass, and it would actually also account for the open first string, which we’ve allowed as “filler”, but which really doesn’t belong in the D chord. It does belong in the C chord.

A C there would also go well with the chord that follows: G. Even though C is not the dominant of G but the other way around, there is still enough of a bond between the two chords, that C G is a perfectly acceptable progression. (In popular music, that is. In fact, if we add the D to which we’re coming, we have the “Try with a little help from my friends” part of the Beatles song. In classical music, that progression is not permitted.)

When I name the chords as I do, it’s by choice: I choose to consider the passage as basically a drawn-out “D-with-variations”. The G/b is partly a concession to chord shapes — it is actually closer to a G chord than to a D chord — and partly as a way of acknowledging that there is a certain preparatory character to that third chord, which sets it apart from the other “D” chords in that line.

There. Calmer now?

Now, ’nuff talking. Back to rehearsal.

All the Lessons

[catlist name=Lessons numberposts=150 order=asc orderby=date excludeposts=419]

Learn to Play the Guitar in Two Weeks, Day 4: Tablature and Rhythm

My original idea was to write a post in this series each day for two weeks. Obviously, I won’t be able to keep up that speed, but I’m sure you can find things to practice on even on days without a new post.

One of the reasons why it takes longer than planned is of course that I can’t keep from blabbering on about theory and such. It’s an occupational injury I have, but I also happen to think it’s a good thing to know why things are the way they are.

You can take it or leave it. I try to separate the theory from the practical contents, so that if you just want the chord shapes and the hints on playing technique, it should be fairly easy to find it.

Feedback

I’d be interested to know if anyone actually follows this series, and if you do, what progress you’re making. Please also let me know if soemthing is unneccessarily unclear or just not explained well enough.
Use the comment area. Someone else may have the same question as you.

Dylancentric? Me?

Uhm… yes. But that’s beside the point.

I use Dylan’s music as a reference point and as material for the exercises, but that’s not only because this is a Dylan oriented blog, but because Dylan is probably the best guitar tutor you can get. His way of playing — when he plays unaccompanied, that is — is outstanding in many ways which are worthy goals:

  • Technically proficient. Don’t let anyone tell you that Dylan can’t play the guitar! Sure, there are wizards who can outplay him, but he has a solid technical foundation both in his right hand and in the left.
  • Musically interesting. It is obvious to me that Dylan knows what is going on in the music he is making (it is equally obvious that he has never read a theoretically oriented blog…).
  • Practically apt. Dylan is a performer — originally a solo performer — and his playing has to work on a stage and not just in a studio or in his livingroom. He uses a fairly narrow set of tools to maximum effect. It sounds much more advanced and complicated than it is. The good thing about that is that it is easy to borrow his tricks (which aren’t really tricks — there is no magic, just simple ways of doing things).

Reading Tablature

I am going to talk mainly about rhythm today, but first two words about tablature — “tab” for short.

Tablature is a representation of what happens on each of the strings of the guitar over time.

                          Time ----->
1st string (brightest) e' -------------------------------------
2nd string             b  -------------------------------------
3rd string             g  -------------------------------------
4th string             d  -------------------------------------
5th string             A  -------------------------------------
6th string (darkest)   E  -------------------------------------

The system is the same as for the shorthand chord notation: 0 means open string, 1 the first fret, etc. In fact, a stave of tablature is just a sequence of shorthand chords turned on the side. The sequence G – D – Am7 from “Knockin’ on Heaven’s door” would be written 320003 xx0232 x02210 in shorthand, and in tab notation:

  G        D        Am7
--3--------2--------0-------------
--0--------3--------1-------------
--0--------2--------0-------------
--0--------0--------2-------------
--2-----------------0-------------
--3-------------------------------

It takes a little more space (and a little more typing), but what is gained is (a) the time dimension, and (b) the ability to write melodies and other details which don’t involve all the strings, plus (c) the closer visual approximation to what’s going on in the music.

For example,

----------------------------------------
-----------0--0--0----------------------
--2--2--2-----------2-------------------
-----------------------4--2--0----------
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------

is a melody we all know well: the beginning of Blowin’ in the Wind.

It gets even more clear if we also add the rhythm:

  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .     :   .
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-------
|-----------------|-0-------0---0---|-----------------|-------
|-2-------2---2---|-----------------|-2---------------|-------
|-----------------|-----------------|---------4---2---|-0-----
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-------
|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|-------

Each dot above the lines indicate a beat, the colon marks the first beat in the measure, and for extra visual clarity, the measures are separated with barlines, just as in ordinary notation. Tap your foot with each dot, and you should get a fairly stiff but essentially correct version of the song.

It should be noted that most tabs you will find on the net don’t follow this practice, but will notate the melody as in the first example above, perhaps with a slight but unsystematic difference in distance according to longer and shorter note values. I find that fairly useless (unless you more or less know the song inside out already, in which case you hardly need a tab), and all the tabs you will find on dylanchords use the more precise notation with the rhythms indicated.

One last thing: “tab” is short for “tablature” which is the name for this particular kind of notation. It goes back to the renaissance, but has seen its own renaissance in the days of the internet. Most of the files you will find on “tab sites” aren’t really “tabs”, but plain chord files — lyrics with the chord changes written out.

Not that it matters, but in case anyone wondered.

For the sake of completeness, here is a snapshot of the guitar neck, with all the note names written in. If you wonder what’s up with the upper- and lowercase letters etc., it’s the standard system to indicate octaves: the “Great” octave is the deepest you will find on the guitar; the “little” octave goes from c to b, the “one-lined” from c’ to b’, etc.

0          1         2        3       4      5
e'||----f'----|---f#'---|---g'---|--ab'--|--a'--|---
b ||----c'----|---c#'---|---d'---|--eb'--|--e'--|---
g ||----ab----|----a----|---bb---|---b---|--c'--|---
d ||----eb----|----e----|---f----|---f#--|--g---|---
A ||----Bb----|----B----|---c----|---c#--|--d---|---
E ||----F-----|----F#---|---G----|---Ab--|--A---|---

The full c major scale goes like this:

|-------------------------------------------0--1--3--
|----------------------------------0--1--3-----------
|----------------------------0--2--------------------
|-------------------0--2--3--------------------------
|----------0--2--3-----------------------------------
|-0--1--3--------------------------------------------
  E  F  G  A  B  c  d  e  f  g  a  b  c' d' e' f' g'

Rhythm

What makes the guitar so special is that it is rhythm section and harmony section at the same time. So far, we’ve mostly talked about the harmony section, for which the left hand has the main responsibility. The right hand is the timekeeper.

There are two main right-hand techniques: strumming (in one form or another, with or without a pick, etc.), and fingerpicking. We’ll leave the fingerpicking to a later post.

Strumming is first and foremost a way to mark the time. Time — that’s the domain of clocks. A clock — a good old one — has a pendulum that swings from side to side. Your arm can also be a pendulum, and that idea is the foundation of a good right-hand technique.

Instead of thinking of strumming as striking the chords when you want a sound to come out, it could be seen as this: move your hand past the strings in a continuous and regular up-and-down movement, and once in a while you actually touch the strings and make a sound. The movement, the rhythm, is there all the time, and the sound grows out of that movement (as opposed to: the rhythm comes out of the sounds).

That is to say: rhythm is primary — the actual sounds secondary.

When I say: “once in a while you actually touch the strings”, it shouldn’t be as random and accidentally as that may sound. You would usually follow a pattern. The two simplest patterns are:

  :   .   .   .                 :   .   .   .
|-v---v---v---v---|    and    |-v-^-v-^-v-^-v-^-|

"v" denotes a downstroke, from the deepest
to the brightest strings, "^" an upstroke.
Play with any chord you like.

On this foundation, the sky is the limit for variations and combinations of different patterns, from the simple

  :   .   .   .                 :   .   .   .
|-v---v-^-v---v-^-|    or     |-v---v-^-v-^-v-^-|

to the more complex

  :   .   .   .                 :   .   .   .
|-v-----^---^-v-^-|    or     |-v---v-^---^-v---|

Just to give an idea.

Disclaimer: The constant up-and-down movement is not necessarily something you should emphasise — that might seem stressful, e.g. if you’re just playing regular downstrokes — but it’s a good idea to keep it in mind as a mental image.

Rhythm and tempo

A particularly nosy and irritating student might ask: “But didn’t you say earlier that one should be climate-friendly and don’t waste energy? If my hand is already down there after a downstroke, why should I then move it up again without playing anything? Couldn’t I play:

  :   .   .   .
|-v---^---v---^---|

instead?

The answer is threefold. (a) Most/all music has an underlying pattern of weak and strong beats. The downstroke is heavier than the upstroke, and is therefore usually used with the heavy beats in the measure. (b) What if, after your first measure above, you want to play some shorter rhythms? you might end up with a mess like:

  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-v---^---v---^---|-v---^-v-^---v---|

which is not necessarily wrong, but the regular pendulum movement of your arm is broken, and with that the most reliable tool to keep track of time and hold a steady rhythm.

(c) Your pattern could be seen as a twice as slow version of this:

  :   .   .   .
|-v-^-v-^-v-^-v-^-|

The difference is not so much the tempo itself, as the the way the tempo feels. If downstrokes imply beat, attack, emphasis, naturally a pattern like

  :   .   .   .
|-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-|

will sound more energetic than

  :   .   .   .
|-v-^-v-^-v-^-v-^-|

even though the actual tempo is the same.

Take e.g. the classic rock’n’roll pattern, which you should be able to play now, if not perfectly, then at least good enough for this example:

  :   .   .   .     :   .   .   .
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-2-2-4-2-2-2-4-2-|-2-2-4-2-2-2-4-2-|
|-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-|-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-|

Try it first with only downstrokes, then in the same tempo but with the down-up-down-up pattern, and feel the difference.

The extreme example of this relationship between time and pattern, is reggae. A typical reggae guitar will hardly ever play a regular downstroke, but rather mark the rhythm by muting all the strings on the downstroke, and then play the full chord on the upstroke:

  :       .         :       .
|-----^-------^---|-----^-------^---|  

or

  :       .         :       .
|-x---^---x---^---|-x---^---x---^---|

(“x” marks a muted stroke. This is most easily done if you play barre chords, which we haven’t come to yet: one releases the pressure on the strings but keeps the fingers on them, so that they are muted. For the full effect using ordinary chords, one would have to place a finger over the strings, which is not a beginner’s technique, but for now, you can just dampen the strings you have fingers on, or leave them out altogether, as in the upper version, and mark the beats with your foot instead.)

What to play with

Many — not only beginners — use the thumb for the right-hand strumming. I can’t say that that is wrong, but personally I only do that if I want some special effect, such as a softer sound or some kind of slap effect. I prefer to use the index finger, for several reasons.

One is that the nail gives the downstrokes a certain edge and, conversely, the upstrokes a certain softness. In other words, the difference between up- and down-strokes is emphasised. This is, coming to think of it, an aesthetic decision: I choose to strengthen the dynamic between weak and strong.

If that is too subtle and theoretical, the second reason is more practical: the index finger is more easily fine-tuned, you have (or at least: I have) more precise control over what you’re doing, than with the cruder thumb.

The third reason is that if one uses the index finger, the hand position is the same as with a plectrum. In fact, I tend to hold my hand as if I had a plectrum there.

This is not written in stone; it’s just what I do and why. There are other possibilities, such as playing with more than one finger, or using the thumb on downstrokes and the other fingers on upstrokes. That way, we’re almost half-ways to fingerpicking.

The disadvantage of using the index finger, is that the nail tends to be worn down quickly. That’s particularly troublesome if one, like me, uses the nails for fingerpicking. I’ll come back to the question about nails later on.

*

That’s it for today. I’d better post this now, and leave some stuff for the days to come. Tomorrow: some more chords, and some more interesting things to do with them, such as: ways to get from one chord to the next.

Learn to Play the Guitar in Two Weeks, Day 3: More Chords — seventh and minor

You didn’t really think you were going to learn to play the guitar in two weeks, did you? If you did, I apologize for having deceived you. It takes a little more time.

And yet, in a way it is true: the guitar is not a very difficult instrument to get a decent sound from. It has a learning curve that is quite shallow in the beginning, and it really doesn’t get steep until it is time to pass from “intermediate” to “advanced”. Compare that with e.g. the violin, which will not sound good until you’ve played it for a couple of years and reached “intermediate”, or the recorder, which is very easy to produce sounds on once you manage to cover all the holes, but will never sound good (or at least not until youre “advanced”).

So the guitar isn’t so bad after all: with a few basic chords and some focused rehearsal every day, you could actually accompany the christmas carols a week and a half from now.

My way: Rudiments of a Method

You may even decide for yourself if you want to follow a “method”, or just play songs that you like and observe and enjoy the progress you’re making. I propose the following simple points as a rudimentary method:

  • Be smooth! Practice the transition between chords, the way I suggested on Day 1. Play
    D D A7 A7 D D A7 A7 ...
    D D G G D D G G ....
    G G A7 A7 G G A7 A7 ...

    until your fingers can do it all by themselves. Do the same for all new chords. Two minutes like this in the beginning will save you a lot of time later.

  • Be lazy! Pay attention to how many and big movements you make with your fingers, and see if you can minimize that. Move fingers as groups if possible. Don’t move your whole hand if slipping a finger to another string is enough.
  • Be straight. Related to the previous point is: pay attention to how you hold your hand. Don’t twist it, as many beginners do. As an ideal and a point of departure: strive to have a starting position where your fingers attack the strings from a straight angle, both vertically and “horizontally”: Your wrist should be next to where the chord you’re playing is — not in the area of the tuning pegs.
  • Be clear! Avoid touching other strings. Check that you can hear sound from all the strings you are playing.
  • Have patience (and expect the same of your surroundings)! If it takes two seconds to change chords and you are left hanging on “hang down your head aaaaaaaand…”, then so be it. It is not going to be that way forever, so just disregard it.
  • Have fun! Take advantage of the fact that the guitar is an easy instrument in the beginning.

Follow these steps, and you will be guaranteed a prosperous and happy future. I think.

What lies ahead

Here’s a survey of the topics I will be discussing in this series, arranged tentatively in the order in which they will be brought up, which should hopefully be the order in which you will be ready for them and need them.

  • Rhythm: the right hand
  • all strings are not created equal
  • flatpicking
  • picking out melodies
  • tab notation
  • barre chords
  • chord theory
  • a million chords…
  • fingerpicking
  • licks
  • open/alternate tuning

A lot of the topics are actually covered, in a more condensed form, in the help file at dylanchords. You may want to take a peek there already.

Can you tell me where we’re heading?

The learning goals I have in mind are defined by three Dylan albums: The Freewheelin’, World Gone Wrong and — as a bonus — Blood on the Tracks.

The Freewheelin’ is not only one of Dylan’s greatest albums, but also the most varied and advanced album guitarwise. His fingerpicking technique was never better, and songs like ‘Girl from the North Country’ and ‘Don’t Think Twice’ are good goals to strive towards.

If anyone had assumed that Dylan had forgotten his solo acoustic technique after near thirty years of touring with a band, World Gone Wrong proved them wrong. It’s his best album as a flatpicker, and the way he picks out melodies in the bass lines, incorporates licks, and positions the accompaniment in relation to the singing, is an ideal for any guitar player.

Lastly, the New York version of Blood on the Tracks is a superb example of the use of open E tuning. To be able to play those songs and make them sound like on the record is a thrill that no aspiring guitarist should be denied. The good news is that it’s not really very difficult.

But first things first: we need some more chords.

More chords: Am and C

  Am            C           Am7
 0   0          0 0        0 0 0
======       ======       ======
||||1|       ||||1|       ||||1|
------       ------       ------
||23||       ||2|||       ||2|||
------       ------       ------
||||||       |3||||       ||||||

x02210       x32010       x02010

Hopefully, it is not too confusing that the numbers mean different things in the two ways of writing chords: in the graphical representation, they denote the fingers, in the brief form: the frets.

Then two songs to use them in. They are both ideal for practice, since they consist of a simple series of chords that is repeated over and over again.

You Ain’t Going Nowhere

G
Clouds so swift
Am
Rain won't lift
C
Gate won't close
G
Railings froze
G                 Am
Get your mind off wintertime
C                 G
You ain't goin' nowhere

G        Am
Whoo-ee! Ride me high
  C
Tomorrow's the day
   G
My bride's gonna come
G           Am
Oh, oh, are we gonna fly
C                G
Down in the easy chair!

More verses.

Notice that “You Ain’t Going Nowhere is in the key of G major. That means that G is no longer just an auxiliary chord, but the Tonic. It is more important than it was as a Subdominant in D major. You are therefore urged to use the full form of G (320003).

Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door

G               D            Am7
Mama, take this badge off of me
G        D         C
 I can't use it anymore.
G             D                 Am7
 It's gettin' dark, too dark to see
G                D                    C
 I feel like I'm knockin' on heaven's door.

Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door

Mama, put my guns in the ground
I can't shoot them anymore.
That long black cloud is comin' down
I feel like I'm knockin' on heaven's door.

Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door

Again, the song is in G major, and again, a simple pattern is repeated over and over again throughout the song.

It looks like a six-chord pattern this time, and it is: G D Am7 | G D C |, but you will notice that the two halves of the pattern differ only by one chord: Am7 and C. And if you look at the chord charts above, you will see that those two chords in turn are virtually identical.

So while you practice knocking, I’ll do some more explaining. My apologies in advance for the following outpouring of theory. It is intended as reference material, not as something you are required to understand fully at this point. Again, the idea is not to burden you with things you need to know, but to give you a chance of knowing why things work, and why they work the way they do.

More chord theory: minor and seventh chords

We now have three chords with “A” in them: Am,  A7, and Am7:

  Am           A7           Am7
 0   0        0 0 0        0 0 0
======       ======       ======
||||1|       ||||||       ||||1|
------       ------       ------
||23||       ||1|2|       ||2|||
------       ------       ------
||||||       ||||||       ||||||

What’s the difference between them? What’s that “7” doing there? How are they used? And what’s with the C, which is so similar to Am7?

The Seventh chord

Let’s start with the 7. In brief: The seventh chord is a variant of a chord where the seventh tone counted upwards from the keynote is added to the plain chord. This spiced-up chord is frequently used when the chord stands in a dominant position, because the extra tone adds tension to the chord, in relation to the tonic.

Why is this so? In a scale (the classic do-re-mi, e.g.), the distance between the tones varies. In most cases there is a whole tone between the steps (two frets on the guitar), but in two places, between the third and fourth steps and between the seventh and eighth — mi-fa and si-do, or e-f and b-c — there is only a semitone or a single fret. And, to (over-)simplify matters a little, there is a certain attraction between the tones that belong to one of these semi-tone steps.

In the D chord, two of the string play the tone d: the open fourth string, and the second string, which is fingered at the third fret. (Try it; they should sound the same. If they don’t — check your tuning.)

The second string is fingered in the A7 chord too, but at the second fret — one fret away from what is played in D major. That is part of what gives the “drive” from one chord to the other: a semitone away from the keynote “wants” to be resolved.

The added seventh tone does two things to strengthen this drive.

First, the seventh chord is a dissonance, and a dissonance wants to be resolved even more strongly than a semitone. In the modern tonal world, the seventh chord is perhaps not perceived as a dissonance, because we are so accustomed to the sound, but if you play the two tones that dissonate alone, chances are that the dissonating character stands out more clearly. Try to play only these two “chords”:

x0x xx      x0x0xx
======      ======
||||||      ||||||
------      ------
|||2||      ||||||
------      ------

I.e., the fifth and third strings, first the open fifth string and the third string fingered at the second fret, then both open. The first is the tone A played in two different octaves (again: if they don’t sound the same, check your tuning), the second is the core of A7. The first should sound stable and calm — static, even: there is no drive anywhere, it’s just a tone. The second sounds displeased, somehow, happy to get somewhere else; or, if this is reading too much emotion into an interval: at least it sounds dissonant. That’s the first element of the added tension.

Besidses, the added tone (i.e. the tone g, which is the tone of the open third string) adds another pair of semitone-related tones. This is not so easily seen in this case: because of the most common shape of these two chords, the corresponding tone in the D chord is usually not played next to the open third string, but one octave higher. So let’s try this: play the first string, fingered at the third fret. Sounds the same as the open third string? Good. (If running ahead of things hadn’t been such a damned unpedagogical idea, I would at this point have disclosed that another way of playing A7 is indeed x02223, where the first string is indeed played at the third fret.)

First string, third fret: that’s again one fret (one semitone) away from one of the tones in the D chord — another driving force from one chord to the other.

As a final illustration, play the two semitone steps together, first only those, then with the bass note added:

 'A7'      'D'             A7       D
xxxx     xxxx            x0xx     xx0x
======   ======   and    ======   ======
||||||   ||||||   with   ||||||   ||||||
------   ------   the    ------   ------
||||2|   |||||2   bass:  ||||2|   |||||2
------   ------          ------   ------
|||||3   ||||3|          |||||3   ||||3|
------   ------          ------   ------

Hopefully, you hear the tension, and the delight of getting “home” when you reach D. If not: don’t despair; this is not your last chance.

That leaves just one more thing to be said about the seventh chord: it is almost exclusively used in the Dominant position. That almost goes without saying, given the mass of tension-generating features that go into the seventh chord, since “tension” is the dominant’s middle name.

The Minor chord

You probably know already what a minor chord is, and how it differs — at least in sound and character — from the major. Major chords are bright and happy — minor chords sombre, sad, melancholy, etc.

We haven’t had any use for the plain A chord yet, but for the sake of completeness and argument, here it is:

  A
x0   0
======
||||||
------
||123|
------
||||||
------

Compared to the minor chord, you will see that one note makes all the difference.

  A       Am
x0   0  x0   0
======  ======
||||||  ||||1|
------  ------
||222|  ||22||
------  ------
||||||  ||||||
------  ------

I won’t go into as much detail about the minor chord as with the seventh chord. A summary of some central points will suffice for now:

  • Notation: a single letter “A” conventionally denotes a major chord. The minor chord is denoted with an added “-m” (Am), or — in some systems — as a lower-case “a” (I consistently use the Am notation).
  • A song in a minor key also has a family of chords with specific relations between them. These are to some extent different from the corresponding major keys.
  • One of the differences is that the dominant of a minor chord is still a major chord. E.g. A7 is the dominant of both D and Dm.
  • The minor seventh (m7) chord, consequently, is not usually an ordinary seventh chord in the “dominant” sense, but rather a colouring of the plain minor chord.

The last point can be illustrated by “Knockin’ on Heaven’s door”, where there is a minor seventh chord, but it does not stand in a dominant relation to the chord that follows.

Another minor/major relationship: Am vs. C

One last thing before we call it a day: C and Am are closely related — so closely that they are called “relative chords”. The relation is not of the dominant kind as with D and A7, the quarreling siblings where the older brother always wins, but more like good old friends, one slightly melancholy, the other more on the gleeful side, but both deeply affected by and affectionate towards the other. That is why the two patterns in “Knockin'” are virtually the same. The colouring of Am to Am7 is in fact a way to make it even more similar to C.

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Learn to Play the Guitar in Two Weeks, Day 2: First songs, first theory

So why is, then, that D is such a boring chord? To answer that, I’ll have to give you some theory. You probably don’t mind, since you’re going to rest your fingers a little while longer anyway.

“Grau ist alle Theorie”

If you think theory is boring, think again. Think of it, not as something you have to know in order to do something right (as most schools teach grammar, e.g.), but as a way of explaining what it is that you already know.

All chords belong together in families — the famous three chords, plus relatives and friends. Every song, at least in the popular music repertory, has a keynote (also called the ‘tonic’, hence abbreviated T), the main tone or chord around which the song revolves. This is almost always the tone/chord on which the song ends, and most frequently the tone/chord on which it begins, but that is not always the case. It is safest to go by the end.  A song in C major ends on a C major chord, etc. The keynote represents the stable level from which everything develops and to which it all returns.

In addition to the keynote, there are two different functions: that of extension, and that of tension. They are represented by the tones (and the chords built over these tones) a fifth and a fourth above the keynote, respectively. They are called the dominant and the subdominant.

The dominant (D) is the stable, loyal companion to the keynote, always there, not without its conflicts, but they are always resolved, and always in favour of the tonic – somewhat like a good old (or bad old, depending on the perspective) patriarchal marriage. In fact, one might consider all music within the western musical tradition (until the late nineteenth century in the art-music tradition, and until this day in the popular traditions) as nothing more than a play with the balance between these two scale steps. The dominant is there to generate tension, which is then resolved by the keynote.

The subdominant (S) usually stands a little behind the other two in the lineup – doesn’t have the self-conscious power of the tonic, nor the rebellious subservience of the dominant. It has a double role. Partly it is a chord closely related to the tonic, in many cases hardly more than a variant of it. In this capacity, it functions as a reenforcement of the tonic. But it also has a more expansive role, as the first step away from the tonic, especially in combination with the dominant, in some kind of cadential progression. The mother of all such cadences, at least in text books, is T–S–D–T (the beginning of ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ is an example). The dominant creates a tension which demands a resolution, back to the tonic, and the subdominant is a helper on the way to get there, roughly speaking.

What does this mean in practice, then? A few examples are in place, before you can go on to play them yourself.

Tom Dooley has two chords: the keynote (tonic) and the dominant. In this case, the tonic is D, the dominant A7. The musical “story” of the song thus is a simple one: Establishing the key; deviation; return. This is the basic structure of every tune you are ever likely to play. (Avant garde genres in classical music do what they can to eschew this pattern; the question is if they can ever succeed).

The beauty of it is that almost no matter how long one holds the A7, it will retain the memory of the keynote, and the urge to get back there will be stronger the longer it is sustained.

The Talking Blues genre is a perfect illustration of this flexibility, this time with the Subdominant taking part in the play. See e.g. “Talkin’ World War III”, where the buildup to the climax in the verses is accompanied — literally — by a gradual escalation through the S and D steps, which can be stretched almost indefinitely, to accomodate verses of different length, until the final resolution to the keynote and the textual punchline, to great effect. This is most clearly seen in the last verse, where the “half the people … some of the time” lines are finally released by “‘I’ll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours.’ I said that” — the young Dylan’s greatest punchline.

The legendary three-chord chords

To summarize: all songs have a primary key, and two main secondary steps. Just about every chord in any song in the popular music repertory can be reduced to one of the three chord steps. Thus, in theory it would be possible to learn only three chords and play everything with those. In practice, it’s a little more complicated, but the fact remains that three chords is enough to play 90% of popular songs satisfactorily.

The three chords in the most common keys, are:

+------------------------------------+
| Keynote  | Dominant  | Subdominant |
|----------+-----------+-------------|
|  C       |    G      |     F       |
|  D       |    A      |     G       |
|  E       |    B      |     A       |
|  G       |    D      |     C       |
|  A       |    E      |     D       |
+------------------------------------+

The Third Chord: G

With the G major chord, we have the full trio of chords in the key of D. Its basic form is:

G major
  000
======
||||||
------
|1||||        320003
------
2||||3
------
||||||

Beginners will face two problems here: it’s a bit of a stretch since it covers everything from the first to the sixth string; and it doesn’t share any fingers or finger positions with D or A7.

For now, this can be remedied with some cheating: leave out the two bass strings and play only xx0003. Then G goes from being the beginner’s first hurdle, to being almost the easiest chord in the book. You should not get into the habit of playing it like that, of course (and eternal damnation on you if you do), but it will allow you to play more interesting songs with fairly more ease. Why not the campfire classic “Blowin’ in the Wind”?

Blowin’ in the Wind

D         G            A7       D
How many roads must a man walk down
D          G          D
Before you call him a man?
D        G            A7         D
How many seas  must a white dove sail
D          G             A7
Before she sleeps in the sand?
D        G               A7           D
How many times  must the cannon balls fly
D              G       D
Before they're forever banned?
    G          A7         D              G
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
    G         A7             D
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

G, it’s good to see ya!

You need not pay much attention to what I’m about to say here at this stage, but if you need a break from Blowin’:

If D is my hate chord, G is the chord I love the most. It is full-bodied and versatile where D is thin and limited. I will save the full explanation for later, but if you know how to master the G major chord, you are a huge step towards mastering the guitar itself.

There are many ways to finger G. The form I’ve given above, with the index, middle and ring fingers, is usually favoured by beginners, because the alternatives all involve the pinky, which may be a bit awkward to use at this point:

G major, variant fingerings
  000       000       00 
======    ======    ======
||||||    ||||||    ||||||
------    ------    ------
|1||||    |2||||    |1||||
------    ------    ------
2||||4    3||||4    2|||34
------    ------    ------
||||||    ||||||    |||||| 

It may come as a surprise if I say that the middle form is the preferred, the goal you should work towards. Why bother putting that huge span over all the strings between the ring finger and its little brother when there are so much easier ways to do it?

It has to do with sonority and versatility. The rightmost version above does not just use different fingers, but has different tones as well, and it gives a different sound (incidentally, this is the chord shape that is used in The Times They Are A-Changin’ and which gives the special sound of that song). It it good to be able to vary the sound, and being used to using the little finger makes it easier to play this variant chord.

The second reason is a little further ahead in time, but I’ll mention it already now, to give you an idea where you’re heading. If you use the fingering in the middle, you have a space defined by the outer strings, and between them there are four wonderful strings that you can play melodies and fills on while still playing the basic chord, and two wonderful fingers (index and middle) that are free to play them, in exactly the right area. This is what makes G such a unique chord, and it’s no coincidence that many of Dylan’s greatest acoustic songs are in the key of G (Times; Girl from the North Country/Boots of Spanish Leather; It ain’t me, Babe; Blowin’ in the Wind, which actually uses chords from the G major family, although it is sounding in D major; Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door; You ain’t going Nowhere; etc.), and Dylan uses the “awkward” fingering with long, ring and middle fingers — so why shouldn’t you?

Compare what I’ve said about G with the D chord: three fingers are in use, in a rather fixed position; besides, since you are avoiding two strings, there isn’t much of a space to move in.

Further songs

Here are two more songs to practice on. First the definition of “bittersweet”: “To Ramona” off Another Side of Bob Dylan.

D
Ramona, come closer
                        A7
Shut softly your watery eyes

The pangs of your sadness
                              D
Will pass as your senses will rise
    G
The flowers of the city
                                    A7
Though breathlike, get deathlike sometimes

And there's no use in tryin'

To deal with the dyin'
                                D
Though I cannot explain that in lines.

(For the rest of the verses, see dylanchords).

Then one of the gems from his lastest effort, Christmas in the Heart:

          D
Come they told me, pa rum pa pom pom

A new born King to see, pa rum pa pom pom
A7           
 Our finest gifts we bring, pa rum pa pom pom
         D                 G                
To lay before the King, pa rum pa pom pom,
D              A7
rum pa pom pom, rum pa pom pom
D
  And so to honor Him, pa rum pa pom pom,
A7       D
When we come.

If this is not enough, you may take it as an exercise to find other songs and see how you can make them work with your three chords. Everything will not work, but most blues-based songs will.

Try to use the full version of G, but you are allowed to cheat. For now.

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