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Here’s my take on one of the all-time great guitar solos.
I’ve transcribed the solo below. Be sure to listen to the original recording to appreciate the nuances of rhythm and emphasis which are hard to pick up from musical notation alone.
In this lesson we’re going to be learning a great fingerstyle piece by American folk guitarist John Fahey. Check out the original recording (1967 version, at least I think it is):
Here’s my video. You’ll need to tune to open C which is C G C G C E from low to high.
I’ve written it out below. There are four parts: Intro, A, B and C and I’ve also included the little variation he sometimes throws into the B section. Listen to the recording to piece it all together. A printable PDF of the tab is available on my Patreon page.
A few other fingerstyle lessons you might enjoy:
Freight Train by Elisabeth Cotten
Back to the Old House by The Smiths
And if you’re feeling Christmassy then here’s the other Fahey lesson I did a while back: Joy to the World
The original recording:
Here’s a more recent live video. Good view of Lloyd if you want to see just how he fingers certain licks. These days they play tuned down a semi-tone.
And here’s my transcription. Lloyd is the upper part, Verlaine below. I’ve made a tiny fingering adjustment to how I do it in the video on one of the chorus licks, just to bring it in line with Lloyd’s fingering in the above video. Such is the level of nerdy commitment I bring to these lessons for you! If you want a high-quality PDF of the tab/music, click here.
Here’s my follow up lesson to Shot by Both Sides: another classic bit of John McGeoch. It took quite a bit of careful listening and study of various live videos to get to the bottom of exactly how this one is played, but I think I’ve more or less cracked it. I’ve written it out below in the form of the various different riffs which make up the song. Just check out the original recording to hear which bit goes where.
There are a couple of great live performances which are worth watching. I used these to check some of the fingerings and details of exactly how McGeoch does it:
McGeoch’s sound for this is track is heavily effects-laden – this was the 80s after all. I’m not sure exactly what he would have used on the recording, but I’m guessing it was his main Yamaha SG1000 through a whole ton of processing – chorus and/or flange, reverb, delay, compression…
For this video I plugged straight into my computer for convenience and because I didn’t have all my effects pedals immediately to hand. I used Amplitube for the guitar amp and effects simulation: just a Fender Deluxe amp model, with some chorus, delay and reverb. Then I just played around until it sounded acceptably close to McGeoch’s sound.
McGeoch nerds might be interested in this link, which goes into some detail about exactly what gear he used at various points during his career and includes some great scans of old guitar magazine interviews: http://equipboard.com/pros/john-mcgeoch
For this year’s Christmas Special I’ve done a chord melody arrangement of one of my favourite festive tunes. It’s taken from the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas, a brilliant film which always seemed to be a part of my childhood Christmasses, and one that I still watch every year.
Whilst I wouldn’t describe it as easy to play, I have tried to make this version accessible to non-jazz players. If you work on it slowly, phrase by phrase, making sure you’re using exactly the right fingering, then you should be able to get it together without too many problems. It needs to be played fingerstyle in the right hand. I generally use my thumb for the bass notes and three other fingers for all the other notes. Occasionally there are chords which contain 5 notes and here you can either use your little finger as well, brush 2 strings together with your index finger, or just omit one of the notes.
My arrangement is written out below. Click here to download a high-quality, printable PDF. Merry Christmas!
I only got into the music of rock n roll legend Cliff Gallup relatively recently, but after I learned this track and a couple of others, it was easy to see why his playing is held in such high regard. This song contains many of his most famous licks and, as I say in the video, if you learn it from start to finish you’ll be giving yourself a thorough schooling in the style and techniques of rockabilly guitar. Gallup has been described as one of the first shredders and he was certainly technically a long way ahead of his time. Even for the modern player this song is still quite demanding, and you’ll want to get it together slowly and accurately first if you want to play it with groove and precision at the tempo of the original.
Below is my transcription of the intro and verse part. Cliff Gallup is one of those players of whom there appears to be no video footage, (I couldn’t locate any on You Tube – let me know if you can find anything elsewhere) so I’ve just followed my ears and my instincts as far as the particular fingerings I’ve chosen go. It works well, and feels right to me. Other people might do it a bit differently, and you’re certainly free to experiment with playing notes on other strings or in different positions if you like. I’ve marked the most obvious whammy bar scoops with the little v-type symbol above the tab. The subsequent verses are almost identical to this one. When the key change kicks in, just move everything one fret higher to the key of F. Click here if you want a high-quality PDF you can print off.
Here’s part 2 in my series of lessons looking at Cliff Gallup’s playing on Race With The Devil. In this video I look at the first guitar solo. It’s a perfectly formed rock ‘n’ roll solo – flashy, memorable and grooving. Below is my best attempt at a transcription – I hope it’s pretty accurate, but it’s definitely no substitute for careful listening to the original. I’ll leave the right-hand picking up to you. Mostly I aim to pick down on the strong beats and up on the off-beats, though sometimes I break this rule and throw in more downstrokes for extra emphasis. You can download a high-quality PDF of the transcription here.
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So here we have Gallup’s second dazzling solo from the tune Race With The Devil. And it’s another corker: packed with great rockabilly licks, technical prowess and whammy bar subtleties. We’ve moved up a semi tone to the key of F, and the entire solo is played in the 1st position apart from a momentary sliding excursion up the high E string. Below is my best attempt at a transcription. I think it’s pretty accurate, though there were one or two notes where it was hard to tell if a bend had been achieved with the fingers or by using the bar. Have a close listen yourself and see what you reckon. Download a high-quality PDF of the music here.
If you’re a real gear nerd you might like to check out this article I found which goes into the minutiae of Cliff’s equipment. Even if you don’t own the Gretsch Duo-Jet and vintage tube amp that our man used, you should still be able to get close using whatever gear you have. The key elements to the sound are a fairly warm, clean tone and some kind of delay effect. Use a clean, Fender-y sounding amp, with a fairly low gain setting. Dial back the treble if you’ve got a particularly bright sounding guitar. Grab a delay pedal and set it to a single, fairly quick repeat for that classic rock n roll slap-back echo. It helps if you have a guitar with a whammy bar so you can do some of the little glides into notes. In the absence of a Duo-Jet, I’m using my Bigsby-equipped Les Paul which actually works quite well for this song. Usually I’m a stickler for using old-school gear and effects, but for convenience when filming this video I recorded straight into my computer and used Amplitube software (a Fender tweed emulation) to get the guitar tone.