auld lang syne
how to play auld lang sine on solo guitar, fingerstyle
we wish you a merry Christmas
“We Wish You a Merry Christmas” tab, chord and lyrics for ukulele and guitar
We Wish You a Merry Ukulele
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How to play “8 days a week”
Here’s a great Beatles tune with pretty simple, hand-friendly changes. You can certainly play this just by strumming the changes but you can also pick individual notes out of them- and even better, the melody notes are not difficult to get out of the chord shapes at all. Give it a listen and reach out to me if you’re interested in more information about how to play “8 days a week” solo finger style on acoustic guitar.
Building chords from the 5 string
Building chords from the 5 string!
Building chords from the 5 string. We know the C scale has no flats or sharps and also that we can play Major chords (triads) with the 1, 3 and 5 scale notes. We can figure that combination out from any note on the 5th string! For instance a C Major is made of a C, and E and a G (1,3 and 5): C D E F G A B C
We know that the “two strings up and two frets back” rule can give us the same note but an octave up. We can do that from the 6 string and the 5 string. Let’s concentrate on the 5 string first. So C on the 5 string is at the 3rd fret and consequently, on the 5th fret of the G string. That gives us our one note in two places!
Starting with C on the 3rd fret of the A string, we can see D on the open D string, E on the 2nd fret, F on the 3rd and G on the 5th. The G on the 5th fret is important to us! Now we have 1 […]
Autumn Leaves
“Autumn Leaves” is a popular song and jazz standard composed by Joseph Kosma in 1945 with original lyrics by Jacques Prévert in French (original French title: “Les Feuilles mortes”), and later by Johnny Mercer in English. An instrumental version by pianist Roger Williams was a number one best-seller in the US Billboard charts of 1955.
Kosma was a native of Hungary who was introduced to Prévert in Paris. They collaborated on the song Les Feuilles mortes (“The Dead Leaves”) for the 1946 film Les Portes de la nuit (Gates of the Night) where it was sung by Irène Joachim and Yves Montand. The poem was published, after the death of Jacques Prévert, in the book “Soleil de Nuit” in 1980. Kosma was influenced by a piece of ballet music, “Rendez-vous” written for Roland Petit, performed in Paris at the end of the Second World War, large parts of the melodies are exactly the same, which was itself borrowed partially from “Poème d’octobre” by Jules Massenet. The first commercial recordings of “Les Feuilles mortes” were released in 1950, by Cora Vaucaire and by Yves Montand. Johnny Mercer wrote the English lyric and gave it the title “Autumn Leaves”.
The song is in AABC form. “Autumn Leaves” offers a popular way for beginning jazz musicians to […]
How to play “Pennsylvania 6-5000”
How to play “Pennsylvania 6-5000” A fun tune and not too hard to get under your hand.
Pennsylvania 65000 chord chart- iReal Pro
Pennsylvania 6-5000 chord lyrics
The song became a jazz and big band standard also recorded by the Andrews Sisters, Judy Garland and Martha Raye in a duet, the Brian Setzer Orchestra, Jimmy Mundy and His Orchestra (1959), Louise Gold, Kathy Miller, Martin Brushane Big Band, the Blue Moon Big Band (1999), in a 1976 Carol Burnett Show episode in a tribute to Glenn Miller, Syd Lawrence, Michael Maxwell and His Orchestra, Richard Hunt and Jerry Nelson (Bobby Benson and the Baby Band) in The Muppet Show (1979, Episode 319), Fud Candrix and His Orchestra, Jerry Gray, Mina, Lou Haskins, Jack Livingston, Raquel Rastenni (1941) in Copenhagen, Starlight Orchestra, Klaus Wunderlich, New 101 Strings Orchestra, Heptet, Meco, Tex Beneke, The Modernaires, Jack Million Band, Al Pierson Big Band, BBC Big Band Orchestra, SWR Big Band, and by Captain Cook und seine singenden Saxophone in 2012.
Fats Waller’s arrangement of the song for piano was published in the UK songbook Francis & Day’s Album of Fats Waller: Musical Rhythms in the 1940s.
“Sometimes you want to give up the guitar, you’ll hate the guitar. But if you stick with it, you’re gonna be rewarded.” – Jimi Hendrix
looking for online guitar lessons? First one is […]
Yankee Doodle
how to play Yankee doodle on solo guitar, left-hand, finger-style illustration. This technique is actually simpler than you might think! It involves alternating the thumb and first finger on adjacent strings and like any technique, the way to get it under your hand is verrrrrrry slooooooowly
The tune of “Yankee Doodle” is thought to be much older than the lyrics, being well known across western Europe, including England, France, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Spain. The melody of the song may have originated from an Irish tune “All the way to Galway”, in which the second strain is identical to Yankee Doodle. There are rumors that the earliest words of “Yankee Doodle” came from a Middle Dutch harvest song which is thought to have followed the same tune, supposedly dating back as far as 15th-century Holland. It supposedly contained mostly nonsense words in English and Dutch: “Yanker, didel, doodle down, Diddle, dudel, lanther, Yanke viver, voover vown, Botermilk und tanther.Farm laborers in Holland were paid “as much buttermilk (Botermelk) as they could drink, and a tenth (tanther) of the grain”.
“The greatest teacher is just going out and playing.” – George Benson
song lessons for guitar students (by artist/composer)
Song Lessons. Here are some of the songs my students and I have looked at together.
Many have a video lesson, pdf chord and lyric charts and/or tabs and notation.
I offer lessons for any level of experience or aptitude and the first online lesson is always free!
Song Lessons By title, alphabetically
If you’re looking for a song you don’t see here, just reach out-
I’m always adding to the song lesson list!
Alan Jackson
Allman Brothers
Alice In Chains
Alison Krauss
Allman Brothers
Andrew Bird
BB King
Beachboys
Ben E. King
Bill Withers
Beatles
- All my lovin’
- And I Love Her
- Blackbird
- Can’t Buy Me Love
- Come Together
- Eight days a week
- Eleanor Rigby
- Hey Jude
- Help!
- Honey Don’t
- Let it Be
- Oh Darlin’
- Something
- Till there was you
- What is Life
- Yesterday
Ben Bernie
Bennie Goodman
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funk on a classical guitar
There’s nothing quite like jamming out over the top of funk changes and you don’t even need to be plugged in to do that! Once you understand the blues scale- even in one spot on the neck- well, you can either look at it like it’s easier to play reasonably decent lines, or harder to make mistakes. Or both, I guess!
This tune is in C#m, so that’s the 1 chord. Since its a minor chord, the 3rd of the chord is flattened. That tells us what notes are going to work correctly when we play them over the top of the chord. To get started we can play C# (root note) E (flat 3rd) F#(4th) G#(5) and B (flat 7) and if you want to call these guys by their fancy-pants name, that would be “C# minor pentatonic”.
How I generally start with something like this is by remembering that if I’m on the the 1 chord, I need to keep coming back to the 1 note! It might sound crazy to just play one note over the chord but think about it – just concentrating on that single note lets you focus on making making interesting rhythmic patterns rather than worrying about where to put your fingers and scales and modes and all that other stuff. So try this: listen for the 1 chord […]