Ballad - Part 3

How to play “Something” part 1

How to play “Something” on guitar. Play the first part of this lovely Lennon/McCartney song for solo guitar. The chord changes are fairly easy and the melody can be picked right out of the chord shapes! The think I really like about it is that beautiful chromatic drop- CM, CM7, C7 to the F, so we’re dropping the notes from C to C to Bb to A. I find it’s a great way to introduce the CMm CM7 and C7 chords to new guitar players!

“The musician is perhaps the most modest of animals, but he is also the proudest.” – Erik Satie

Paul2026-05-09T13:00:58-04:00

Brokedown Palace

How to play Brokedown Palace

Fare you well my honey
Fare you well my only true one
All the birds that were singing
Have flown except you alone

Going to leave this broke-down palace
On my hands and my knees I will roll, roll, roll
Make myself a bed by the waterside
In my time, in my time, I will roll, roll, roll

In a bed, in a bed
By the waterside I will lay my head
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

River gonna take me
Sing me sweet and sleepy
Sing me sweet and sleepy
All the way back back home
It’s a far gone lullaby
Sung many years ago
Mama, mama, many worlds I’ve come
Since I first left home

Going home, going home
By the waterside I will rest my bones
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Going to plant a weeping willow
On the banks green edge it will grow, grow, grow
Sing a lullaby beside the water
Lovers come and go, the river roll, roll, roll

Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

“Each of us is climbing a mountain called ‘Music’. The mountain remains, but the climbers are forever changed.” – Suzanne Guy

Paul2026-05-03T08:57:35-04:00

How to play Fields of Athenry

how to play fields of athenry fingerpicking lesson part 1. A beautiful song, and not too hard to pick the melody out of the chords, or accompany yourself singing!

“The Fields of Athenry” is a song written in 1979 by Pete St. John in the style of an Irish folk ballad. Set during the Great Famine of the 1840s, the lyrics feature a fictional man from near Athenry in County Galway, who stole food for his starving family and has been sentenced to transportation to the Australian penal colony at Botany Bay. It has become a widely known, popular anthem for Irish sports supporters and those who favour a United Ireland. Enjoy!

Download the PDF notation and tab for fields of athenry here

Paul2026-04-25T19:22:41-04:00

How to play “Take it to the limit”

How to play take it to the limit on guitar. Download the chord and lyric sheet here: Take It To The Limit

“Take It to the Limit” is a song by the Eagles from their fourth album One of These Nights from which it was issued as the third and last single on November 15, 1975. It reached No. 4 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and was also Eagles’ greatest success to that point in the United Kingdom, going to No. 12 on the charts. Billboard ranked it as the No. 25 song for 1976.

The song, written by Eagles members Randy Meisner, Don Henley and Glenn Frey, began as a solo composition by Meisner, who sang lead on it. As it remained unfinished when time came for the One of These Nights album to be recorded, Henley and Frey assisted Meisner in completing it. Meisner’s performance of the song was popular with the audience in Eagles concerts but disputes over his reluctance to perform it would also directly lead to Meisner’s departure from the band.

Composition

According to Meisner, he wrote the first few lines of the song one night while playing an acoustic guitar after returning from the Troubadour; however he was […]

Paul2026-04-18T12:24:40-04:00

Stand by me

Download PDF

“Stand by Me” is a song originally recorded by American singer-songwriter Ben E. King in 1961, and written by him, along with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who together used the pseudonym Elmo Glick. According to King, the title is derived from, and was inspired by, a spiritual written by Sam Cooke and J. W. Alexander called “Stand by Me Father”, recorded by the Soul Stirrers with Johnnie Taylor singing lead.

“Stand by Me” was featured on the soundtrack of the 1986 film Stand by Me, and a corresponding music video, featuring King along with actors River Phoenix and Wil Wheaton, was released to promote the film. The song was also featured in a 1987 European commercial of Levi’s 501 jeans, contributing to greater success in Europe. In 2012, its royalties were estimated to have topped $22.8 million (£17 million), making it the sixth highest-earning song of its era. Fifty percent of the royalties were paid to King. In 2015, King’s original version was inducted into the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress, as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”,^[4] just under five weeks before his death. Later in the year, the 2015 lineup of the Drifters recorded it in tribute.

There have been over 500 recorded versions of the song,

Paul2026-05-09T13:08:16-04:00

My Religion

Often students want to learn to accompany themselves on guitar while they sing, and I love to help them with that! This is an example of a tune that a remote student is working on currently.

Paul2026-03-10T11:42:58-04:00