Paul | Guitar Lessons and Performance - Paul Elwood

Nutshell

“Nutshell” is a song by American rock band Alice in Chains that originally appeared on the band’s 1994 EP Jar of Flies. The band played it on MTV Unplugged in 1996, and this rendition of the song was included on both the box set Music Bank (1999) and the compilation album The Essential Alice in Chains (2006). Since 2011, guitarist/vocalist Jerry Cantrell dedicates “Nutshell” to Alice in Chains’ late original members Layne Staley and Mike Starr during the band’s concerts.

Lyrics

The lyrics were written by vocalist Layne Staley, and the music was written by bassist Mike Inez, guitarist/vocalist Jerry Cantrell, and drummer Sean Kinney.

Bassist Mike Inez said of “Nutshell”, when asked what song makes him think of Layne Staley the most:

I think the No. 1 for me is “Nutshell.” Layne was very honest with his songwriting. And in “Nutshell,” he really put everything in a nutshell for everybody. That song still gets me choked up whenever I play it. I get a little teary-eyed, and sometimes when we’re doing the arena runs especially, they’ll have some video footage of Layne. And I look and see me and Jerry [Cantrell, vocals and guitar] and Sean [Kinney, drums] looking the wrong way. We’re not looking at the audience, we’re looking back at Layne, and it’s pretty cool that there’s still that song for us. Yeah, it’s just a sad thing.

Paul2026-04-23T15:18:38-04:00

monkey gets in the way

…well day and night,
I wanna do right but the
monkey gets in the way.
I try to walk to walk the walk
I try to talk the talk
but the monkey gets in the way.
Well try as I can to get control
He’s got a hairy-toed death grip on my very soul.
I’m startin’ to suspect that this is never gonna stop
he’s gonna ride me around until the day I drop!

Know what I mean? Download the lead sheet with chords and lyrics:

Monkey gets in the Way

Look up for inspiration, look down on nobody –

Paul2026-04-30T08:11:39-04:00

jingle bells

Jingle_Bells in G music and lyrics

“Jingle Bells” is an American song and one of the most commonly sung Christmas songs in the world. It was written by James Lord Pierpont. It is an unsettled question where and when Pierpont originally composed the song that would become known as “Jingle Bells”. It was published under the title “The One Horse Open Sleigh” in September 1857. Although it has no original connection to Christmas, it became associated with winter and Christmas in the 1860s and 1870s, and it was featured in a variety of parlor song and college anthologies in the 1880s. It was first recorded in 1889 on an Edison cylinder; this recording, believed to be the first Christmas record, is lost, but an 1898 recording—also from Edison Records—survives.

James Lord Pierpont originally copyrighted the song with the name “The One Horse Open Sleigh” on September 16, 1857. The songwriting credit given was “Song and Chorus written and composed by J. Pierpont.” Possibly intended as a drinking song, it did not become a Christmas song until decades after it was first performed. Pierpont dedicated the song to John P. Ordway, Esq., an organizer of a troupe called “Ordway’s Aeolians”.

Paul2026-04-20T08:24:23-04:00

hands on the wheel

“Hands on the Wheel” is a celebrated country song written by Billy Callery and famously recorded by Willie Nelson for his landmark 1975 concept album, Red Headed Stranger. It is a melancholy yet grounding song about finding peace amidst life’s chaos, often noted for its themes of staying centered.

Album: Originally released on the 1975 album Red Headed Stranger.
Writer: Written by Billy Callery.
Theme: Focuses on finding tranquility and control (“hands on the wheel”) when the world feels chaotic.
Covers & Features: The song was notably covered by Jerry Jeff Walker (1979) and has appeared in films like

Paul2026-05-26T20:54:11-04:00

All that love for you!

It struck me how much his in-laws love him- really adore my kid! Typically when I’m composing I keep a picture of something in my head to focus on while I’m inventing and In this case I was thinking about his wife’s family, how lovely they are to him and to Deb and me as well. I worked this up to a built-in drum track in logic pro and the idea is to substitute a track that my son makes in Beats, and then sort of present this to his in-laws as a token of our appreciation for them. That’s the idea anyway.

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” – William Arthur Ward

Paul2026-04-29T15:38:39-04:00

pentatonic power chords

The minor pentatonic scale has 5 notes: 1, b3, 4, 5 and b7. We can find all of those on one string by understanding the intervals between them. Let’s start with the 1 note on the 2nd fret of D/4

If we want to play E minor pentatonic on the D string, our 1st note is E, and that’s on the 2nd fret of the D string. If we move back two frets to the open D string we can get our flat seventh, often written “b7” and referred to as a ‘dominant’ 7. In this case, that’s a D, a whole step below E. Moving back to 1 on the 2nd fret (E), we can find our b3 note (G) on the 5th fret one whole and one-half interval above the 1. Next up is the 4 note, a whole step up from the b3 so that’s A on the 7th fret. Now the 5, a whole step up from 4 so that’s B on the 9th fret of D. The pattern repeats with b7 (D) on the 12th fret.

Now this is the really cool part: a ‘power’ chord is a diad (two note chord) with no 3rd! It just has the 1 and 5 notes. Because the A & D strings are a 4th apart, the 5 of any note on the […]

Paul2026-03-09T18:16:12-04:00

silent night

silent night in F

“Silent Night” (German: “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht”) is a popular Christmas carol, composed in 1818 by Franz Xaver Gruber to lyrics by Joseph Mohr in the small town of Oberndorf bei Salzburg, Austria. It was declared an intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO in 2011. The song was first recorded in 1905 and has remained a popular success, appearing in films and multiple successful recordings, as well as being quoted in other musical compositions. You can download the pdf notation and tab sheet here

Paul2026-05-09T12:50:34-04:00

I think Robin Williams saw it coming

I think Robin Williams saw it coming

I think Robin Williams saw it coming.
He was as sensitive a soul as you could find
A gentle true spirit with a razor sharp mind
A genuine human exclamation point
And one of a kind

I think Robin Williams saw it coming
And it must have made him awful sad to see
The day beyond the day beyond the day of his demise
And that he wouldn’t be here To brighten peoples eyes

I think Robin williams saw it coming
All the anger and the stupid, stupid shit
And it rose within his mind
And it broke his fuckin heart

It broke his fuckin heart.

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

Paul2026-04-30T11:59:47-04:00

Play more melodically with this simple technique

Play more melodically with this simple technique!

The sound you create with your instrument is the vehicle that the idea- that is, the music- uses to communicate itself. When you listen to an instrument playing a melody, can you hear the “words” that are being sung? We can begin to think about music as if it was language (which it is) and so consider it “syllabically”

Think about a common word… how about “kitchen”? If you were going to describe the sound of that word, you might say it has two syllables – a short, percussive one: “kit” and a longer one that starts off sharp – “ch” – and sort of trails off the “n” sound till it’s done… “chennnn”. Also when you say the word “kitchen” is the first syllable higher or lower than the second one? Higher, right? So how might you represent those two ideas on your guitar? How about playing a short, sharp note and then a slightly lower one that kind of trails off? Does that sound like the two syllables in “kitchen”?

This kind of thinking about music in a different way needs to be practiced for sure, but look: the tiniest change in the way you think about something can have profound effects in the way you perceive it. Thinking about musica “syllabically” might be the change that drives […]

Paul2026-03-09T18:16:33-04:00

How to play Box of Rain

Box Of Rain – Grateful Dead

chord and lyric sheet

“Box of Rain” is a song by the Grateful Dead, from their 1970 album American Beauty. The song was composed by bassist Phil Lesh and lyricist Robert Hunter, and sung by Lesh.

The song

Key: G
Time signature: 4/4 (with an occasional 2/4 measure)
Chords used: A, Bm7/A, A4, D, Am, Em, C, G, Bm

“Box of Rain” is drawn from American folk and country musical roots. This is true of many Grateful Dead tunes, including most of the songs on American Beauty and their other 1970 release, Workingman’s Dead. As the first song on American Beauty, it was also the first Grateful Dead song released on record to feature Phil Lesh as the lead vocalist.

The song also featured two musicians who are not in the band. Dave Torbert played bass, while Lesh played acoustic guitar. David Nelson (of New Riders of the Purple Sage) plays the lead guitar with a Fender Telecaster, while Jerry Garcia plays the piano. Bob Weir sings harmony with Lesh and Garcia.

“Sight-reading is like playing. It’s a question of doing.” – Johnny Smith

Paul2026-05-03T08:55:43-04:00

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Lyrics

The song