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How to play Dock of the Bay on guitar

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how to play dock of the bay

“(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” is a song co-written by soul singer Otis Redding and guitarist Steve Cropper. It was recorded by Redding twice in 1967, including once just three days before his death in a plane crash on December 10, 1967. The song was released on Stax Records’ Volt label in 1968,[2] becoming the first ever posthumous single to top the charts in the US.[3] It reached number 3 on the UK Singles Chart.

Redding started writing the lyrics to the song in August 1967, while sitting on a rented houseboat in Sausalito, California. He completed the song in Memphis with the help of Cropper, who was a Stax producer and the guitarist for Booker T. & the M.G.’s. The song features whistling and sounds of waves crashing on a shore.

Looking for more guitar playing stuff? Try Regular Folks Playing Guitar

G                      B7
Sittin’ in the mornin’ sun
        C                        A                      G

2022-05-25T17:01:46-04:00
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How to play “Cry Me a River”

Intro 2X (Am   Am6 Dm6 E7) 2x  

|Am   | Am6   | Am7 | Am/F#     | Dm7 | G7  G7#5 | CM7 |
Now you say you’re lonely,   You cry the whole night through,
 |  Bm7 E7  | Em7     | A7#5 |  D9 | D9 |                                    
Well, you can cry me a river             cry me a river

 Dm7    | Dm7/G  | C6 | B7b9 Bb7b9      

 I cried a river over you.

|Am   | Am6   | Am7 | Am/F#     | Dm7 | G7  G7#5 | CM7 |
Now you say you’re sorry,     For bein’ so un.. true,
 |  Bm7 E7  | Em7     | A7#5 |  D9 | D9 |    
Well, you can cry me a river, cry me a river,
|  Dm7 |       Dm7/G | C6   | F#m7b5 B7b9 
I cried a river over you.

Em     |     Em |   Am6 | B7

2021-02-17T21:33:23-05:00
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How to play “Ain’t Misbehavin'” on guitar


aint misbehavin chart

How to play “Ain’t Misbehavin'” on guitar

ain’t misbehavin’. First performed at the premiere of Connie’s Hot Chocolates in Harlem at Connie’s Inn as an opening song by Paul Bass and Margaret Simms, and repeated later in the musical by Russell Wooding’s Hallelujah Singers. Connie’s Hot Chocolates was transferred to the Hudson Theatre on Broadway during June 1929, where it was renamed to Hot Chocolates and where Louis Armstrong became the orchestra director. The script also required Armstrong to play “Ain’t Misbehavin‘” in a trumpet solo, and although this was initially slated only to be a reprise of the opening song, Armstrong’s performance was so well received that the trumpeter was asked to climb out of the orchestra pit and play the piece on stage. As noted by Thomas Brothers in his book Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism, Armstrong was first taught “Ain’t Misbehavin'” by Waller himself, “woodshedding” it until he could “play all around it”; he cherished it “because it was ‘one of those songs you could cut loose and swing with.'”

Intro C  | F Fm |   C | G13

C      | Edim7   | Dm7 | F#dim7
No one to talk to, all by myself;
C     | C7    | F |    Fm
No one to walk with, I’m happy on the […]

2023-06-06T08:33:06-04:00
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Upside Down in the Boneyard

A trip to New Orleans with Mrs. E was lots of fun and very inspiring! This is a photo of the the musician’s tomb in St. Louis Cemetery #1. All the tombs are exclusively for family except this one. It is available for non-family New Orleans musicians. According to our tour guide, if you have New Orleans in mind as a final resting place, he suggests as a first step, moving here and learning to play an instrument… I especially like the blue note symbol in the center of the cross. The blue note is pretty darn important!

Our visit inspired me to write some music. This is  “Upside Down in the Boneyard” and the name comes from a story our Uber drive told us on the way out of town.

Upside down in the Boneyard

and download the sheet music here.

New Orleans Weekend

And during some down time on our last day in N’awlens I put this down- “New Orleans Weekend”. Sounds like it has a sort of French influence to me. Or maybe that’s the fried oyster po’boy I hear… This sheet music you can get here

These were written with musescore btw which is FREE! and pretty easy to get a handle on. If […]

2022-10-03T09:37:03-04:00
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Power chords!

If you think about a scale as having eight notes – do re me fa so la ti do-  and then assign numbers to the notes, you’d get one through 8, right? So your first note would be 1 and your last note would be 8 The one note is the “root” note in the scale and the other notes all different jobs to do when we play them as chords. 

For instance a major chord has the scale notes 1, 3 and 5. For a C scale, which has no sharps or flats, the notes corresponding to the numbers 1 through 8 are C, D, E, F, G, A, B and C.   So for our major C chord, 1,3 and 5 are the notes C, E and G. That makes a C major chord. 

When you take the 3rd out though, something interesting happens. Playing the 1 and the 5 makes a very beefy, crunchy sort of chord, and playing a simple 1/4/5 pattern with that power chord is like the basis for tons of rock’n roll songs.

Conveniently for us as guitar players it doesn’t matter if you play the 5th note above or below the 1st note, and we have two strings in standard tuning, the D string and […]

2021-02-15T13:01:33-05:00
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C and his excellent minor relative, Am

We know the C scale has no flats or sharps and we can play it in the first position using D, G and B open strings.
We can play, as shown here: C, D, E, F, G, A, B and C

Also the C scale continues both below and above the two Cs, so we can actually start playing that scale from the open E and above the C on the B string, as far as we want. Let’s go to G (third fret of the E string) so we’re using the C scale notes on the first 3 frets including open strings.A Minor (Am) is the relative minor of C and it doesn’t have any sharps or flats either! You can spell the Am scale just like the C scale just starting on the A! Try it out! What this means is, we can play these notes over changes like Am, G, F and Em which would be 1, 7, 6 and 5.

Try playing the chord and then the scale from the root note. So, play an Am, then play the scale from the A and so on.

Cool, right? Sounds sort of “Spanish ” to […]

2021-02-18T21:49:33-05:00
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Simple Strumming Patterns

Simple strumming patterns improve your playing for guitar and ukulele!

simple strumming patternsSimple strumming patterns will improve your playing! Using strumming patterns can be super handy for perfecting your guitar or ukulele accompaniment. Eventually you will figure out your own patterns for any song that you do, but in the meantime try these as a place to start. Just choose a chord you can play easily and strum down or up where indicated. Count out loud to help yourself with your timing.  Click here to download the PDF

One interesting exercise is to choose a lyric line for a song you know well- for instance, from the Eagles’ Hotel California: “On a dark desert highway”. Now see if you can strum that “syllabically” meaning, use either an up or a down strum per each syllable. Something like this below, which you can download a pdf for here.

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2023-11-08T21:37:56-05:00
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Tune your guitar with a Snark tuner!

If you’re just starting out, tuning your guitar can be problematic. Knowing what note the string should be tuned to and whether the tuner is indicating a note higher or lower than that will be helpful. Here’s a video that will help you tune your guitar correctly.

2021-02-13T15:32:59-05:00
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Learning an instrument is great for your brain!

There’s an excellent article here about just how good learning an instrument is for your brain health: brain structure, function, development and acuity. From John Rampton’s article:

“The more we know about the impact of music on really basic sensory processes, the more we can apply musical training to individuals who might have slower reaction times,” said lead researcher Simon Landry.

“As people get older, for example, we know their reaction times get slower,” said Landry. “So if we know that playing a musical instrument increases reaction times, then maybe playing an instrument will be helpful for them.”

Previously, Landry found that musicians have faster auditory, tactile, and audio-tactile reaction times. Musicians also have an altered statistical use of multisensory information. This means that they’re better at integrating the inputs from various senses.

“Music probably does something unique,” explains neuropsychologist Catherine Loveday of the University of Westminster. “It stimulates the brain in a very powerful way because of our emotional connection with it.”

If you’re looking for a way to maintain or improve brain function, you could do much worse than picking up a guitar!

Playing music:
  1. strengthens bonds with others
  2. strengthens reading and memory skills
  3. Make you happy!
  4. Enhances the ability to process more than one thing at once
  5. increases blood flow to your brain
  6. helps the brain recover (from a stroke, for instance)
  7. Reduces stress and depression
  8. strengthens the […]
2023-06-07T13:50:18-04:00
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