Paul | Guitar Lessons and Performance - Paul Elwood

How to play love and marriage

Play “love and marriage” on guitar. “Love and Marriage” was introduced by Frank Sinatra in the 1955 television production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, which aired on Producers’ Showcase. Sinatra went on to record two versions of the song. The first was recorded for Capitol Records on August 15, 1955 and became a major chart hit. (A competing version by Dinah Shore also achieved popularity.) This first recording appeared on the 1956 album This Is Sinatra! The second version was recorded for the Reprise Records album A Man and His Music on October 11, 1965. The Capitol version was later used as the theme song for the 1987–1997 Fox TV sitcom Married… with Children.

Paul2026-03-09T18:19:45-04:00

How to play “ring of fire”

Paul2026-03-09T18:19:53-04:00

play “East Of The Sun”

East of the sun

“East of the Sun (and West of the Moon)” is a popular song written by Brooks Bowman, an undergraduate member of Princeton University’s Class of 1936, for the 1934 production of the Princeton Triangle Club’s production of Stags at Bay. It was published in 1934 by Santly Bros. and soon became a hallmark of the Princeton Tigertones, Princeton University’s signature all-male a cappella group. The Princeton Triangle Club performs the number every year at its annual Frosh Week show. The standard is also sung by the Princeton Nassoons.

“Don’t become so enraptured by certain heroes that your playing is exactly like theirs.” – Jimmy Wyble

Paul2026-04-22T19:57:15-04:00

How to play “Eleanor Rigby”

download chord/lyrics pdf for eleanor rigby

Eleanor Rigby for solo guitar. “Eleanor Rigby” is a song by the Beatles, released in 1966 on the album Revolver.It’s known for its melancholic melody, string quartet arrangement, and lyrics that explore themes of loneliness and isolation. The song tells the story of two lonely individuals: Eleanor Rigby, who lives a solitary life and dies alone, and Father McKenzie, a priest who performs her funeral with no one in attendance.

“Eleanor Rigby” is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1966 album Revolver. It was also issued on a double A-side single, paired with “Yellow Submarine“. Credited to the Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership, the song is one of only a few in which John Lennon and Paul McCartney later disputed primary authorship. Eyewitness testimony from several independent sources, including George Martin and Pete Shotton, supports McCartney’s claim to authorship.

“Eleanor Rigby” continued the transformation of the Beatles from a mainly rock and roll and pop-orientated act to a more experimental, studio-based band. With a double string quartet arrangement by George Martin and lyrics providing a narrative on loneliness, it broke sharply with popular music conventions, both musically and lyrically. The song topped […]

Paul2026-05-02T10:48:48-04:00

How to play Peter Cottontail

Download the tabs, lyrics, notation and chords for “Here_Comes_Peter_Cottontail”

Here comes Peter Cottontail
Hopping down the bunny trail
Hippity-hoppity, Easter’s on its way!

Peter Cottontail is a name temporarily assumed by a fictional rabbit named Peter Rabbit in the works of Thornton Burgess, an author from Sandwich, Massachusetts In 1910, when Burgess began his Old Mother West Wind series, the cast of animals included Peter Rabbit. Four years later, in The Adventures of Peter Cottontail, Peter Rabbit, unhappy at his plain-sounding name, briefly changed his name to Peter Cottontail because he felt it made him sound more important. He began putting on airs to live up to his important-sounding name, but after much teasing from his friends, soon returned to his original name, because, as he put it, “There’s nothing like the old name after all.” In the 26-chapter book, he takes on the new name partway through chapter 2, and returns to his “real” name, Peter Rabbit, at the end of chapter 3. Burgess continued to write about Peter Rabbit until his retirement in 1960, in over 15,000 daily syndicated newspaper stories, many of them featuring Peter Rabbit, and some of them later published as books, but “Peter Cottontail” is never mentioned again.

There’s […]

Paul2026-04-08T16:01:36-04:00

How to play Gentle on my mind

How to play gentle on my mind. This part 1 lesson is for solo guitar fingerstyle and includes tablature

How to play “Gentle on my mind” fingerstyle guitar.

tab for Gentle on my mind

“Gentle on My Mind” is a song that was written and originally recorded by John Hartford, and released on his second studio album, Earthwords & Music (1967). Hartford composed the song after watching Doctor Zhivago in 1966, as he was inspired by the film and his own personal experiences. The lyrics describe the reminiscences of lost love of a man as he travels through the country. The following year, Hartford released the song as a single on RCA Records.

It then caught the attention of Glen Campbell, who recorded his cover version with a group of session musicians known as the Wrecking Crew. Campbell’s cover of “Gentle on My Mind” peaked in the top 30 on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart. In 1968, between Campbell’s and Hartford’s recordings, the song earned four Grammy Awards. It ended up being popularized by Campbell, whose version became by 2001 the second-most-played song on the radio in the United States.

“Chord substitution isn’t some mysterious religious sect.” – Howard Roberts

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Paul2026-03-10T11:46:16-04:00

Blowin’ in the wind

Blowin_in_the_Wind

“Blowin’ in the Wind” is a song written by Bob Dylan in 1962. It was released as a single and included on his album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan in 1963. It has been described as a protest song and poses a series of rhetorical questions about peace, war, and freedom. The refrain “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind” has been described as “impenetrably ambiguous: either the answer is so obvious it is right in your face, or the answer is as intangible as the wind”

In 1994, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2004, it was ranked number 14 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.

Dylan originally wrote and performed a two-verse version of the song; its first public performance, at Gerde’s Folk City on April 16, 1962, was recorded and circulated among Dylan collectors. Shortly after this performance, he added the middle verse to the song. Some published versions of the lyrics reverse the order of the second and third verses, apparently because Dylan simply appended the middle verse to his original manuscript, rather than writing out a new copy with the verses in proper order. The song was published for the first time in May 1962, in the sixth issue of Broadside, […]

Paul2026-05-02T09:55:14-04:00

Blues Guitar

Regular Folks Playing Guitar: Blues Guitar

Blues guitar is great fun and pretty simple once you understand the scale numbers! The video above is an example of following a backing track and playing blues scale notes over the top as a melody line. You can hear how the chord tones and blues notes work with passing notes to create a cool bluesy-sounding melody. Once you understand the numbers and the target chords, it’s almost impossible to make a mistake! Click the chart to download a printable PDF instruction sheet For E major, minor pentatonic and blues in the first position. And there’s a Zeppelin lick for you there too. E-penta-major-and-blues

Lovers have come and gone, but only my mistress stays. She is beautiful and gentle. She is a swinger. She has grace. To hear her speak, you can’t believe your ears. She is ten thousand years old. She is as modern as tomorrow, a brand new woman every day. Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to no one. – Duke Ellington

Building major chords from the 5 string

Regular Folks Playing Guitar: Build a major chord from the 5th string

It’s handy to be able to build chords from the 5th string! Let’s talk about C in the first position as an example.

When you make a C chord – usually this is the first way we learn how to play it- the notes that make up the chord, just using the 4 inside strings are C, E,G and C again. “CEG” spells C major because those are the 1st 3rd and 5th notes of the C scale. We can play those notes in combination in lots of places on the neck of the guitar and another way to do it allows the shape to be “portable” – that is, we can use the same chord shape anywhere up and down the neck.

Start with your first finger on the 3rd fret of the A string – That’s your C. now 2nd finger on the 5th fret of D gives you a G, the 5th note of the C scale. 3rd finger on the G string gives you a C again, and pinkie on the 5th fret of B gives you and E note now you have four fingers, one […]

Paul2026-04-25T19:23:42-04:00

C scale in the first position

Regular Folks Playing Guitar: C scale in the first position

This is usually the first scale we learn because it’s easy to spell- no sharps or flats! And we can play it with open string notes. Follow the pdf carefully and remember to use the correct finger on the correct fret. First finger, first fret, second finger, second fret, third finger, third fret, fourth finger, fourth fret.

The video above shows not just one octave but all the C scale notes in the first position. You’ll notice that I name the notes in a few different ways- by their name, by their fret position and by their scale degree. You can also name the notes by their intervals! It is useful to think of scale notes in a few different ways. Believe it or not, all notes are related in some way and knowing a couple of different ways to think about them helps us understand the relationships better.

A downloadable chart of t

Paul2026-04-15T07:25:07-04:00

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Regular Folks Playing Guitar: Blues Guitar

Regular Folks Playing Guitar: Build a major chord from the 5th string

Regular Folks Playing Guitar: C scale in the first position