9 ms·
This is a Chord (2016)
- grensley 4y agoThe real punk rock thing is: "here's a power chord, slide it around, NOW FORM A BAND"
- gaudat 4y agoLike 0-4-5, 0-4-6-5, 0-4-5-4-0? It may be off by a step or two, it has been years since I last touched a fretboard.
- Eavolution 4y ago0-3-5, 0-3-6-5, 0-3-5-3-0
- schwartzworld 4y agoDuh duh duh, duh duh da-nuh, duh duh duh, duh duh
- Hamuko 4y agoI thought punk rock was "here's a guitar, play it loud".
- jppope 4y agoLove this... and I agree with it
- sambapa 4y agoThat's quite an unusual collection of chords, maybe because B major chord is too hard for beginners. I-bIII-IV is some Bela Bartok-level shit.
- cramjabsyn 4y agoI guess D would make more sense than E, but also G E A sound great in a progression
- p_j_w 4y ago>I guess D would make more sense than E Just learning to play the guitar myself and at least personally, have found D to be a pain in the ass of a chord shape. I can switch between A, E, and G all day long, but throw a D in there and I have to slow down and be a little more intentional. Muscle memory will happen, but for the combination of my brain and that shape, it happens more slowly. I don't think I'm the only one, either, because it was called out specifically by the guy who did the video lessons I'm using.
- ghostpepper 4y agoAre you playing the open D in the "bar plus one finger" style or the "3 individual fingers" style?
- p_j_w 4y ago3 individual fingers. I haven't seen the bar plus one finger way of playing it, though I think I get that now. I'm going through some video lessons with a companion app and there have been zero bar chords so far. Might give it a try later, though, thanks for the hint there.
- cramjabsyn 4y agoIt’s a pain at first but it will come in time. This is true for barre chords like F and B too. The cool thing about the D shape is you can move it up the neck. Move it up 2 frets and its a an E, 1 more and its an F. And so on
- adrianmonk 4y agoJust sing an E blues scale over an E G A G progression. Sing a G over that E, and it's practically an E7#9. Maybe change your E and A to E7 and A7 if you feel like it. They're easier for beginner guitarists to play anyway.
- naet 4y agoThese are more or less the three easiest open guitar chords for a beginner to learn, all major, so not very unusual IMO. The roots fall on a pentatonic scale which works well with basic rock music (see the referenced TNT song by AC/DC).
- sambapa 4y agoIdk. C, am, F and G are as easy, if not easier, and you can play with them a nice I-IV-vi-V instead of this modal interchange shit.
- technodelic 4y agoThat's assuming E is the root. The order it's listing chords is I-V-bVII, which isn't that strange. Pretty familiar sound in pop music.
- sambapa 4y agoI think it's best to begin at the beginning and learn to hear tonic, subdominant and dominant. After that you can pretend that you're Radiohead.
- cramjabsyn 4y ago"One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz." -Lou Reed
- michaelcampbell 4y agoThat reminds me of another yarn: Rock Music: 3 chords played to 1000 people Jazz Music: 1000 chords played to 3 people
- Blackthorn 4y agoThe power of writing your music for people vs writing your music for musicians.
- andrei_says_ 4y agoAnd then someone like Jacob Collier comes along and we don't know what to say anymore because language just does not apply to such a phenomenon.
- arrakeen 4y agohad to look this guy up and watched the video for "All Night Long". with audio only, this is pretty much just a sample-heavy jazz-pop cover that would be indistinguishable from just a regular multi-track recording. i'm assuming what makes him special is his video approach where all the "samples" are shown as video clips of the musicians performing them. i'd probably describe the approach as "an actually talented version of pomplamoose" not really my thing, but definitely interesting. thanks for the mini rabbithole
- mtinkerhess 4y agoJacob Collier is a legit next level musician. He does a lot of overdubbing of himself but he does other styles also. His recordings like Moon River and Flintstones are incredible both in terms of arrangement and performance. In a very different style, his Piano Ballads record is great, Let it Be is great on that one. Totally understand if none if it is your style!
- raincole 4y agoIt's probably the first time I see a tumblr post on HN.
- max182 4y agoI think this is a good way of approaching life. Learn the absolute basics, then start making things. Trying to learn everything first will keep you in the consumer mindset. Be a producer.
- spudlyo 4y agoBe a producer![0] [0] https://youtu.be/a_0YDe1yZnY?t=36 https://youtu.be/a_0YDe1yZnY?t=36
- grensley 4y agoI really like this explanation from Ira Glass on the gap between taste and talent and how you just need to do a ton of work to fight through it. https://vimeo.com/85040589 https://vimeo.com/85040589
- klodolph 4y agoI saw a post recently—a musician was asking for advice about how to set up some super-complicated one-person performance rig. They wanted guitar, bass, keyboard, synths, amps & pedals, mic for singing, etc. This would be for their first live performance, or something like that. It’s so tempting to do a ton of prep and try to blow people away. I think it’s a flavor of procrastination or perfectionism that gets in the way of your real goals.
- danray 4y agoMakes me think of the second verse of "Joyride," from one of Built to Spill's first, punkier albums. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gncB-kQUUgQ&t=72s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gncB-kQUUgQ&t=72s "This part of the song is called the second verse Sounds just like the first verse but with different words But all it has is three chords and they are A D E and D There are A D and E and D There goes the Dm D A E D"
- phkahler 4y agoWhy didn't they put DOTs BETWEEN the frets?!? Arrrrrrgh!
- bmelton 4y agoI know it's not the convention, but I almost prefer it this way. As someone who is self-taught (read: bad) on guitar, I spent literally years playing songs and suffering hand cramps before realizing that it takes a lot less pressure to fret the note closer to the fret. All because I initially learned on tablature, and tablature typically shows it "wrong." (or I read it wrong for a long time -- feel free to blame me as much as you deem appropriate if you are fond of tabs)
- olnluis 4y agoYou'd use a lined fretless bass this way, so it might have been a lined fretless guitar on that drawing! Also, when you're pressing a fret, the pitch isn't coming from where you have your finger, but from the following fret which is making contact with the string. You can actually press the actual fret instead of the area between the fret and the one before it, and it should sound the same. Now if the person that drew this knew that, I don't know.
- brudgers 4y agoThis is from the era when guitar tab was not so ubiquitous…and I seem to remember a lot of the chords in pop song books printed with dots on the fret 45 years ago. But it has been awhile.
- DonaldFisk 4y agoI have music books I bought in the 1970s, and those all have dots behind the frets.
- brudgers 4y agoI think you are right, and I just checked out a preview of Mel Bay's Rhythm Chord Guitar Method, and it's dots between frets. Maybe it was my guitar teacher who wrote tab that way when I asked him how to play something. Which makes sense to me since it seems like it would be simpler to write tab that way by hand...as opposed to typesetting it where it would probably be about the same amount of work either way. What I mean is dots on frets would almost certainly be how I would write down tab for myself...and it seems like it would be clear enough to anyone who had a guitar in their hand.
- thanatropism 4y agoAm-E-G would have been ii-V-I, the everpresent faux-jazz progression (also common in actual jazz of a certain vintage).
- tunesmith 4y agoThat would be Am-D-G. This one is probably more like A major with a flat seven since G major has two tones in common with the ii.
- thanatropism 4y agoD-oh. You're right.
- ghostpepper 4y agoModern jazz doesn't use ii-V-I?
- ksherlock 4y agoNo sweat. G is really just another way to say Bm♭6, so G-E-A is a ii-V-I. Or if you'd prefer, E is just another way to say D13 so E-G-A is a backdoor (v-♭VII-I) ii-V-I
- j-kent 4y agothose X marks are on the frets, they should be in the middle between the frets...
- klodolph 4y agoThis is fine. The fret is the important part, it’s the part you want to communicate, the space between the frets is just where you touch the strings if you want a clear sound, and your guitar is fretted. You can place your fingers directly on the frets, it just makes a different sound.
- veganjay 4y agoI first saw this in Sniffing Glue magazine - today I learned it first appeared in Sideburn.
- r_transpose_p 4y agoMusic aside, I believe the first place I saw a copy of this old zine illustration was in the book "Getting Started with Arduino" by Massimo Banzi (page 10 if you're curious : https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-Arduino-Electronics-Prototyping/dp/1449363334 https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-Arduino-Electronics-P... ) Obviously the authors of the Arduino book were reprinting it because they'd seen it somewhere else, where, in turn, it had been copied because someone else had seen it in another source, etc. But I thought it was extremely poetically true to put that illustration in the Arduino book. That made sense to me. Now form a band!
- joduplessis 4y agoBootstrap for life, yo. Side-note: don't start a band with those chords.
- veganjay 4y agoReminds me of this poster: http://www.southendpunk.com/html/damnadv.html http://www.southendpunk.com/html/damnadv.html "The Damned can now play three chords. The Adverts can play one. Hear all four of them at..."
- hayley-patton 4y agoThere is a line in How Music Works by David Byrne, of Talking Heads fame, talking about the album Remain in Light (IIRC) "While punk rock was celebrated for needing only three chords, we had now stripped that down to one."
- tylerFowler 4y ago> Why are the markings on the frets and not in between them? Those aren't frets, those be strings.
- d23 4y agoI'm not sure how to word this, but he's not talking about the strings, he's talking about the frets. Usually these diagrams have the marking where the finger goes, not where the string hits the fret.
- JKCalhoun 4y agoYeah, if you put your fingers where the X's are you would mute (or buzz) the notes.
- otikik 4y agoFirst draw two ovals. Then draw the rest of the owl.
- neonscribe 4y agoHot take: the third chord should be D, not G.
- tastysandwich 4y agoEvery time I think that I'm not good enough at guitar to write songs, I leaf through one of my songbooks and find all the fantastic, catchy songs with three basic chords. I just can't get into guitarists like Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen, Stevie Ray Vaughan, etc. I can't even get into John Mayer (though he can be more tasteful with his improv). It's all just a big dick-measuring contest. Believe it or not, this is not meant to be ironic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46qjDJ0lLdE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46qjDJ0lLdE Give me Townes Van Zandt, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell - all fantastic *songwriters*. The Beatles have so many simple songs - eg Blackbird (simple two note chords), Twist & Shout (three chords), etc, but they're all beautiful and will live on forever. I cannot imagine people listening to Steve Vai in 50 years, because I can't imagine why people listen today.
- JEDI-HACKER 4y ago[dead]