Hey, Hey, My, My – Neil Young – Rhythm part

Hi there,

In the last blog we covered the lead part of Neil Young’s magnificent Hey, Hey, My, My, linking elements of both the ‘into the blue’ version and ‘into the black’

If hooking up with a mate to add a rhythm part, this would be what i’d suggest to go underneath the melody. I’ve detuned my guitar a whole step (D,G,C,F,A,D) to coincide with the other blog.

The chords used are:

For the Lead PT 1 section in the first blog play this underneath:

Here’s an audio clip of me playing it (don’t forget you can click on the picture to see a bigger one)

HEY HEY MY MY RHYTHM PT1

Then over the lead part 2 on the previous blog you can play this underneath it:

Here’s the audio for the 2nd part:

HEY HEY MY MY RHYTHM PT 2

Here’s both parts together.

HEY HEY MY MY BOTH PARTS TOGETHER

Many thanks for reading

You can find free regular tips via my twitter feed @Jsmusicschool

ROCK N ROLL

James

 

Hey, Hey, My, My – Neil Young – Chords + Melody together – LEAD

Hi There,

This is a great song for integrating both melodies and strumming together.

This is kind of my own version, mixing together the various different Neil Young rock/acoustic versions

What i’m going to do is provide tab and audio for the main intro riff part which is in 2 main parts:

When playing this live Neil tends to tune down a whole step (D,G,C,F,A,D) for a bassier sound, but not essential

He does the below part twice: (click on the pictures for a bigger view)

Here’s the audio of me playing it for those not great with sightreading!: (i’ve detuned my guitar)

LEAD PT 1 HEY, HEY, MY MY

Then there’s the next part (that’s in the Hey,Hey,My,My – into the black version)

Here’s the audio: (again detuned)

LEAD PART 2, HEY, HEY, MY, MY

Then it goes back to the original riff once before he starts singing.

Here’s both parts together in audio:

HEY, HEY, MY, MY BOTH LEAD PARTS

In the Into the black version (heavy distorted rock version) the riff just loops round with someone playing the chords underneath.

I’ll reveal the strumming patterns you can use for that in the next blog

Many thanks for reading

You can find free regular tips via my twitter feed @Jsmusicschool

ROCK N ROLL

James

 

Noel Gallagher strumming – AKA Broken arrow

Hi There,

In this blog we’ll look at how to imitate the sort of strumming that can be found in many of Noel Gallagher’s songs for Oasis.

There is a myth that a lot of Oasis songs like ‘Wonderwall’ should be one of the first songs you learn on the guitar but many people play it wrong as you need to develop your sixteenth note strumming to play it well.

AKA.. Broken arrow is a song of Noel Gallagher’s high flying birds album and uses 3 slightly different strumming patterns that will be great to practice (and you’ll be able to apply to lots of other songs as well)

The song uses a Capo on the 2nd fret so your Em7 will actually be a F#m7 and so on

Now the thing to remember with sightreading quavers is that generally you play downstrokes on the beat and uptrokes off the beat. (occasionally though for more pumping bass like rhythms we may do more downstrokes)

When sightreading semi-quavers you want to play downstrokes on the 1 and + and upstrokes on e and a

The first part of the verse goes like this:

the strumming will be:

1   +  a      2  e  +  a       3 e +         4   + a

D   DU      D H  D U          U D        D   DU

The ‘H’ signifies the hammer on where he takes his 1st and 2nd fingers off for the 4th chord and then hammers them on

Here’s an audio clip of me playing it:

BROKEN ARROW 1ST VERSE PART

2nd part of the verse goes like this:

the strumming will be:

1  + a     2  e  +  a       3  e +         4  e  + a

D  DU    D U D  U           U D         D H D U

Here’s an audio clip of me playing it:

BROKEN ARROW 2ND VERSE PART

Here’s a clip of me playing both parts together:

VERSE 1 AND 2 TOGETHER

The chorus goes like this:

The strumming for both lines goes like this:

1   +     2   +   a      3  e  +  a    4  e + a

D  D     D   D U          U D        D U D U

Here’s an audio clip of me playing it:

BROKEN ARROW CHORUS

There’s a few little other parts to the song but these 2 parts cover the basis for the majority of the song.

Hope you’ve enjoyed reading and listening to the blog

Again regardless of whether you like the song or not, for developing your strumming, these patterns will be very useful for loads of other songs

You can find regular free guitar tips on twitter @jsmusicschool

Many thanks

ROCK N ROLL

James

 

Sus4 chords in songs – Tom Petty – Free Fallin’

Hi There,

In the last blog we looked how suspended chords work and how you can spice up your chord progressions by using them.

Now we can start using them to play a well known song – Free Fallin’, by Tom Petty.

The great thing about this song like Bob Dylan is it only uses a few chords the whole way through.

The 3 chords that are used are Fmaj, Fsus4 and Cadd11

(don’t think about the add11 and why it’s called that at the moment – we’ll come onto compound intervals at a later date)

So using the previous blog on suspended chords you can work out the notes of F major and Fsus4 and understand how they work:

F contains F, A and C

Fsus4 contains F, Bb and C (the Bb causing the suspended sound)

Here are the 3 chords below:

In terms of your right hand and the timing here is the verse timing:

Here’s an audio clip of me playing it below and explaining the timing:

TOM PETTY VERSE AUDIO

Now in the chorus’s they play something like this – this is a great strumming pattern as it uses a mixture of quavers, crotchets and semi-quavers:

Here’s an audio clip of me explaining how to play it for those not too comfortable with sight reading!

TOM PETTY CHORUS

Have fun and thanks for reading and listening.

ROCK N ROLL

You can find regular guitar tips on twitter @jsmusicschool

Many thanks

James

 

Semi-quaver strumming patterns and knocking on heavens door – Bob Dylan

HI there,

In my last blog you were shown how to play crotchets/quavers/semi-quavers and how to count + strum them.

Now what you want to be able to do is have a mixture of these rhythms to increase variety.

A common strumming pattern that I teach in lessons and seems to come up time and time again is the Down, Down, Down, up pattern.

This pattern is a 2 beat pattern that’s repeated twice in every bar (of 4 beats) and is a really good one to start changing between 2 chords in 1 bar.

Here it is below:

Now as you can see beats 1 + 3 are crotchets and last for 1 beat.

beats 2 and 4 are made up of 3 notes each.

Now the first half of beat 2 is a quaver so that should be counted as ‘2’

the second part of that beat is 2 semi-quavers so this would be the ‘+ A’ of the beat.

So you’d count this as ‘2 + A’

You wouldn’t need to count the ‘E’ in beat 2 as the quaver covers the 2 and the ‘E’

Also pay attention to the strumming pattern. This coincides with how you strum crotchets/quavers and semi-quavers.

Here’s an audio clip below that will show the 2 beat pattern alone, and then repeated to make the full bar:

DDDU

So now you can play hundreds of songs that use this very common pattern. Take Knockin’ on heavens door for example:

and then part 2:

This song is great as it has 4 chords and repeats them over and over again:

Check this audio sample for help:

KNOCKIN ON HD