I’m trying to start Girlchild off on guitar, so I asked her to give me a list of songs she liked to sing so that I could look them up and get the words and chords.
Here’s one she came up with.
Here’s the lyrics and chords. I took them for a cranberry-esque Irish band at first, but they’re from Texas. The bridge is quite creepy in a Flowers in the Attic kind of way, but do I understand what it means? Hell no.
Gorgeous harmonies. Girlchild will have to wait, though, because there are a few too many chord changes for her. And I don’t like F chords for beginners. They are a bey-otch.
Nick Possum
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Comments (7)
I s’pose she’s something contemporary – ie anything over 10 years old will be out? Shame – Eagles is perfect beginners music. I’ll look through my tab books if I get a minute and see if there’s anything at all new-ish.
There was another Irish band pre-Cranberries – Mondays? Tuesdays? Wednesdays? the point I’m attempting to make is slicker version thereof.
That your sprog should display such taste in music – The Tormentor’s idea of music cool consists only of the Hotwheel movies’ soundtracks….
I may be a bit hasty about that – Blogger Space Cowboy at Shakesville is waxing enthusiastic about… Neil Peart and Rush.
Corblimey.
You could try transposing to another key and giving your daughter a capo if necessary, to put it back into the right key for her voice. Still, F shouldn’t be that difficult for a beginner (it’s one of the first chords I learnt about 45 years ago) – half-bar on strings 1 and 2 with index finger, then strings 3 and 4, maybe damp bottom strings with thumb if her hands are big enough. The change from F to Dm is easy, in fact she could almost get away with playing a Dm all the way through, as Dm7 is almost identical to F.
Thanks David!
Their name – Eisley – was one of the reasons (along with the lead singer’s voice and the folk-influenced style) I thought the band was Irish. Here’s where it actually comes from:
(From Wookiepedia)
They dropped the “mos” because they were afraid the George Lucas monolith would come after them for copyright violation. This has been a most interesting exercise in challenging my assumptions!
Yes, I’m just being a bit open-F-ist because it can be a tricky chord to strum.
The thing is, with a 4-string F, that it isn’t really any harder to strum than the Dm. In each case, if she accidentally snags the open A string, it’ll still sound OK (if a little odd), as A is in both Dm and F, and it’s only the open E that’s a real problem. It’ll give her an incentive to strum accurately (or you could start her out on a tenor guitar).