By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Suitcase – Failed Experiments and Trashed Aircraft “My Feet’s Worthy Existance” contains a few oddball chord shapes that somehow work together to form a cohesive, and fairly traditional, song structure. It seems to be Robert Pollard’s specialty to make such unconventional, dissonant chords sound great in a song (see […]
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Universal Truths And Cycles
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Universal Truths And Cycles The title track from Universal Truths And Cycles features a Robert Pollard guitar technique that I call “Barre Four.” This consists of barring (pressing down multiple strings at once across the same fret) across four consecutive strings. In some cases (as with “Downer” or “My […]
Man Called Blunder
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Surrender Your Poppy Field “Man Called Blunder” is one of my favorite songs from Surrender Your Poppy Field to play on guitar. There are a lot of changes from one section to another, as well as a few fun riffs using open string drones. A favored Robert Pollard guitar […]
Volcano
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Surrender Your Poppy Field Guided By Voices guitarist Doug Gillard spices up the “quiet verse/loud chorus” dynamic of “Volcano” with a few cool guitar moves. During the verses, he plays a sparse open string drone figure, leading to explosive power chord choruses. You need to be logged in to […]
Cul-de-Sac Kids
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Surrender Your Poppy Field With all his years of songwriting experience, Robert Pollard shows us yet again that he still knows how to write a song that’s just plain fun. “Cul-de-Sac Kids” begins with gentle acoustic guitar strumming, bursts into power-chord poppiness, and ends with whistling over a string […]
Always Gone
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Surrender Your Poppy Field For Surrender Your Poppy Field, Guided By Voices really ran the gamut production-wise. There are songs with sleek, shiny production like its predecessor Sweating The Plague on one end of the spectrum. On the other end, we have a song like “Always Gone,” which sounds […]
Arthur Has Business Elsewhere
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Surrender Your Poppy Field In terms of song structures, “Arthur Has Business Elsewhere” is one of the more conventional songs from Surrender Your Poppy Field, and its circus instrumentation and waltz-y ¾ time signature have earned it comparisons to The Kinks and Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles. Beneath it all, though, […]
Useless Inventions
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Earthquake Glue In “Useless Inventions,” Robert Pollard crafts a verse chord progression using a fifth chord shape (root note and fifth note) on the fourth and third guitar strings combined with a technique he frequently uses which I’ve nicknamed “Drop The Bass.” You need to be logged in to […]
Airs
By: Robert Pollard Appears on: Honey Locust Honky Tonk For the verses in “Airs,” you’ll just alternate strumming between the G5 and Csus2 chords. In the chorus, however, Pollard uses a two-note chord shape on the second and first strings with an open G note on the third string and moves this shape to various […]
My Wrestling Days Are Over
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Sweating The Plague On “My Wrestling Days Are Over,” Guided By Voices took a Psycho And The Birds approach to recording: the band used Robert Pollard’s original boombox demo as the main vocal and guitar track and then recorded additional guitar and synth overdubs to it. In my opinion, […]
