The Blog

This chart for “Laura” will be fun for budding fingerstylists who already have some basic strumming skill. Below the chart is a simple fingerstyle arrangement of the chord progression played by the piano during the intro and verses. Assign your thumb to the 5th and 6th strings, and 1st, 2nd, and 3rd fingers of your picking hand to the 4th, 3rd, and 2nd strings, respectively.

You can also just strum the song with the patterns provided.

Enjoy this beautiful, mysterious song. Here’s the chart.

What a fantastic arrangement. The quiet fingerstyle acoustic guitar groove, the delicate xylophone/marimba part, the tremulous electric guitar melody, and Gotye’s whispered verses and sing-to-the-sky chorus. Great song to listen to with headphones and eyes closed.

Here’s the chart.

Note that this is an easier, strummed arrangement of the song. There’s tablature below the chord chart to show you how to play the xylophone and lead guitar parts, but they probably won’t sound good unless you’ve got a band or at least a friend to hold down the rhythm part.

But playing solo doesn’t mean you have to skip all the cool instrumental melodies this song features. Advanced guitarists can come up with chord/melody arrangements of these parts, where they play the chords (or at least the bass line) and the melody simultaneously. But if that’s beyond you, consider whistling the parts (if you can), or singing them using syllables like “ba-ba-ba” (my favorite) or “la-la-la” or “doo-doo-doo”.

Have fun!

Today's chart is "Poor Little Fool," a 50's pop/rock number performed by Ricky Nelson, but written by a 15-year-old Sharon Sheeley, who pretended her car broke down in front of Nelson's house in order to get him to listen to the tune. That's courage. Or pride. Or innocence. Any way you call it, it's awesome.

Here's the chart.

Notice that the strum pattern I've recommended accents the 2nd and 4th beat, called the "backbeat" (those ">" symbols are accent marks):

            >       >
        B   D   D U D U     w/swing feel
Strum:  1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +

They're the same beats that are usually accented by the snare drum in a rock band, so you'll often accent the backbeat while playing solo versions of rock songs in order to capture the overall groove of a full rock band. It's like you're doing double duty, playing guitar and drums at the same time. If you've never done it before, accenting the backbeat can be hard to learn, but just start super-slow and then gradually increase your speed.

Want to hear this kind of backbeat accenting in action? Check out this great cover of Neil Young's "Harvest Moon" by Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. I first heard Ben sing this at his sister's wedding, unamplified, filling the hall with his gorgeous voice. One of my all-time favorite musical performances.

Next up: A chord chart of Neil Diamond's classic singalong song, "Sweet Caroline."

Click here to go to the chart.

When I was writing this chart for my beginning guitar student, I struggled and failed to find an easy way to approximate the intro melody on guitar. Advanced guitarists could probably make up a simple chord-melody arrangement, playing the melody on the 3rd (G) string while letting the 4th (D) string drone. A richer-sounding intro could even be achieved using Drop-D tuning. But if that's over your head, I'd recommend shortening the intro, just playing that D7 for a few measures (not 7--way too tedious) or even playing a more predictable G chord for a couple measures.

Remember, as a guitarist you might be obsessed with things like getting the intro to sound good. But most of the people you're going to play with--family sitting around the campfire, classmates hanging out after school, friends swapping songs over a few beers--could care less about the fancy riffs that serve as intros or interludes to songs. Sure, they sound nice, but what they really want to do is sing along, or hear you sing. So don't sweat the riffs you can't play. And don't interrupt an otherwise great singalong song by laboring through a hard guitar part at half-speed, breaking the song's momentum. Just skip that part until you've got it down.

Have fun!

The first chart of my 30 Charts in 30 Days series is “Little Talks,” a song chosen by Mark DiFlorio’s drum student Tess for the Spring 2013 Coffee Shop Jam.

Here’s the chart.

So fun singing this duet with a talented young singer and drummer (and great to have Brady Millard-Kish’s son Luca on keys).

You’ll notice I embedded the video of our performance, which I thought might be helpful for guitarists learning the song. What do you think? Does it help, or just clutter up the chart? If people find it helpful, it’d be easy to embed videos in all the songs I’ve performed with my students–they’ve all been filmed.

Enjoy the music.

Ready for a month of new music? I'll be uploading the following charts I've written for my students in the past year, posting one chord chart per day for the next 30 days. If you see a favorite song below, let me know and I'll put it on the fast track. Otherwise, I'll just post 'em alphabetically.

Hope you enjoy the new tunes.

Avett Brothers - Live And Die
Bat for Lashes - Laura
Beatles - I Will
Beatles, The - In My Life
Beatles, The - You've Got to Hide Your Love Away
Bowie, David - Space Oddity
Cash, Johnny - A Boy Named Sue
Cash, Johnny - I Got Stripes
Decemberists, The - June Hymn
Diamond, Neil - Sweet Caroline
Dylan, Bob - Roll on, John
Gotye - Somebody That I Used To Know
Jennings, Waylon - Only Daddy That'll Walk the Line
John, Elton - Crocodile Rock
Keir, Nick - Fires of Edinburgh
Kingston, Sean - Dumb Love
Lewis, Jenny - Carpetbaggers
Loesser, Frank - Baby It's Cold Outside
Lumineers - Ho Hey
Mayer, John - Half of My Heart
Naim, Yael - New Soul
Nash, Graham - Be Yourself
Nelson, Ricky - Poor Little Fool
Of Monsters and Men - Little Talks
Rise Against - The Dirt Whispered
Sheeran, Ed - The A Team
Simon and Garfunkel - Hazy Shade of Winter
White, Jack - Love Interruption
Wilco - The Late Greats
Wray, Link - Fire and Brimstone