By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Earthquake Glue Back when Earthquake Glue was released, I was a frequent contributor to the Guitar Chords page of the old GBV website, where guitarists could tab out a song and submit it to the site via email. I was also catching a lot of live GBV shows during […]
Tag: Floating Chord Shapes
Mobility
By: Ricked Wicky Appears on: I Sell The Circus On “Mobility,” Robert Pollard uses just two very common chord shapes and then moves them up and down on the guitar neck. It’s a fairly simple song, but the dynamics between verse and chorus really make it fantastic. You need to be logged in to view […]
I Touch Down
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Mirrored Aztec When I first listened to “I Touch Down,” I heard a lot of unique chord voicings and assumed Robert Pollard must have been using a slew of unconventional chord shapes to play this song. As I started to learn how to play it on guitar, however, I […]
Roll Me To Heaven
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Styles We Paid For There’s a lot to love about “Roll Me To Heaven,” at least from this guitar-player’s perspective. It features quite a few interesting chords, several distinct sections, and an ending that contains an unexpected chord change and arpeggio, in true Robert Pollard fashion. All these elements […]
Endless Seafood
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Styles We Paid For The main guitar riff in “Endless Seafood” uses a Robert Pollard guitar technique of playing a common chord shape—in the case of this song, an open Em—in different spots of the guitar neck. This is a bit different from the “Floating Chord Shape” technique I […]
Crash At Lake Placebo
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Styles We Paid For How Robert Pollard continues to still write such memorable guitar riffs is beyond me, but here we are with “Crash At Lake Placebo,” with once again a super hooky main guitar riff. This song features an extended instrumental section, which seems a bit rare in […]
The Enemy
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Isolation Drills In “The Enemy,” Robert Pollard dips into his arsenal of guitar writing techniques and pulls out a little bit of everything: a heavy, bottom-string guitar riff that’s played during the verses, a gentle arpeggio riff during a quiet section of the song, and a floating chord shape […]
Queen Of Cans And Jars
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Bee Thousand Bee Thousand‘s “Queen Of Cans And Jars” features one of Robert Pollard’s most instantly recognizable guitar riffs, which is played using fretted notes on the second string along with a constantly droning open first string. This song also contains a slew of chord shapes that are moved […]
Nothing Gets You Real
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: How Do You Spell Heaven “Nothing Gets You Real” features a common Robert Pollard guitar technique that I refer to as “Floating Chord Shapes,” where an open position chord shape is moved up the neck to a different fret. In the case of this song, the open position chords […]
Soft Smoke
By: Robert Pollard with Doug Gillard Appears on: Speak Kindly Of Your Volunteer Fire Department “Soft Smoke,” at just under one minute long, seems to waft in and out of Speak Kindly Of Your Volunteer Fire Department as quickly as an actual plume of smoke. In its forty-nine seconds, however, Robert Pollard packs in quite […]
