By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Warp And Woof “My Angel” from Warp And Woof is a fairly simple Guided By Voices song to play on guitar; Robert Pollard wrote it using standard chord shapes and then crafted a beautiful melody on top. Doug Gillard adds some guitar flourishes, of course, but in this post I’m […]
Category: tab
Hotel X (Big Soap)
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Please Be Honest “Hotel X (Big Soap)” is another great Guided By Voices song wherein Robert Pollard eschewed standard song structure in favor of a collage style. There is a bit of the intro that makes an appearance again later in the song, but for the most part, there […]
How Wrong You Are
By: Boston Spaceships Appears on: Zero To 99 Chris Slusarenko has talked before about how he tuned his instruments down for some of the Boston Spaceships recordings to match the pitch of the demos he received from Robert Pollard. I believe he did this again for the recording of “How Wrong You Are,” tuning the […]
Your Lights Are Out
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Zeppelin Over China On “Your Lights Are Out” from Zeppelin Over China, Robert Pollard uses a variety of guitar riffs, all based around open note drones (for the most part, the B on the open second string and the G on the open third string), along with some open […]
Cow Headed Moon
By: Ricked Wicky Appears on: I Sell The Circus With its gentle acoustic guitar pluckings and lyrics referencing the moon, stars, and a pillow, you might consider “Cow Headed Moon” to be Robert Pollard’s version of a lullaby; then again, it’s hard to imagine anyone falling asleep to this beautiful piece of music. You need […]
A Real Stab
By: Ricked Wicky Appears on: I Sell The Circus “A Real Stab” features some really fun guitar work. For the verses, Robert Pollard and guitarist Nick Mitchell combine palm-muted notes and staccato chord phrasing for a “stabbing” effect. The verse chords themselves should feel familiar if you’ve learned some of the other songs on this […]
Everything’s Thrilling
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Zeppelin Over China On “Everything’s Thrilling,” Robert Pollard is once again up to his old tricks. This song is based on an open D note drone and a lot of the same chords he typically uses with this drone technique: D, G/D, and Cadd2. When you consider how many […]
Why Did You Land?
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: The Official Ironmen Rally Song One of Robert Pollard’s most often used songwriting guitar techniques involves fretting a note on one string and allowing an open string either above or below it to ring out with it. For example, in “Why Did You Land?” he uses this technique with […]
Tourist UFO
By: Boston Spaceships Appears on: Let It Beard When Robert Pollard prepared his demos for the Boston Spaceships album Let It Beard, he recorded his vocals and guitar on his boombox, then spliced sections of songs together to form a full composition. With this method in mind, I’m wondering if he ever had to actually learn […]
Dancing Girls And Dancing Men
By: Robert Pollard Appears on: From a Compound Eye Learning how to play “Dancing Girls And Dancing Men” on guitar had me pretty stumped for a while; with the prominent (and very bouncy) bassline, drums, and keyboards, it doesn’t seem like a particularly guitar-driven song. Especially with the Todd Tobias-produced Robert Pollard songs, I often […]
