By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Under The Bushes Under The Stars “Burning Flag Birthday Suit” uses a bit of the Floating Chord Shapes technique, with Pollard moving an open D chord shape up and down the guitar neck for some parts, and doing the same with an open G5 chord later in the song. […]
Tag: Floating Chord Shapes
Run Son Run
By: Robert Pollard Appears on: Fiction Man “Run Son Run,” the opening track on Robert Pollard’s Fiction Man, has that wonderful gritty feeling that permeates so much of the production of this album. I think that’s what makes it a favorite of mine; there’s such a dirty sound to it that complements these songs so […]
The Ballad Of Bad Whiskey
By: Boston Spaceships Appears on: Let It Beard “The Ballad Of Bad Whiskey” from the final Boston Spaceships album Let It Beard sounds like The Beatles’ “Sexy Sadie” stumbled across an old saloon and stayed for too long, getting boozed up and slurred. This, according to Boston Spaceships member Christopher Slurarenko, was exactly the intention. He […]
Gonna Never Have To Die
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Half Smiles of the Decomposed When trying to learn how to play Robert Pollard’s songs on guitar, I’ve had the most success when I have access to either live footage of the band playing (actually seeing them live is better, of course) or a stripped-down recording of the song, such […]
You Satisfy Me
By: Boston Spaceships Appears on: Brown Submarine If you’re a member of the GUIDED BY VOICES Facebook fan group, you may have heard of the synchronized listening sessions that someone organized. Basically, it’s a bunch of people listening to an album at the same time and commenting about it in real time to a Facebook […]
Sport Component National
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Space Gun Just as Robert Pollard uses a collage as the artwork on many of his album covers, so also does he write some of his songs in the same fashion. In “Sport Component National” from Space Gun, he combines snippets of seemingly unrelated melodies and music into a cohesive […]
Flight Advantage
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Space Gun “Flight Advantage” from Space Gun comes charging like a wild stallion right out of the gate, and the energy doesn’t relent until its frantic race is finished. The song uses an open string drone, with the open D note on the fourth string ringing throughout each chord. You […]
King Of Arthur Avenue
By: Robert Pollard Appears on: Not In My Airforce When it’s just Robert Pollard and an acoustic guitar, the beauty of his songwriting really shines through. Listen to some of the early Guided By Voices recordings, some of the material on the Suitcase box sets, or demo recordings such as those on Edison’s Demos. On these bare-bones […]
Question Girl All Right
By: Boston Spaceships Appears on: Zero to 99 Boston effing Spaceships. What more needs to be said? Robert Pollard devoted some of his finest material to this side project, so it’s no surprise that he also decided to add some of their songs to the Guided By Voices live set lists. They played “Question Girl […]
Make Use
By: Robert Pollard Appears on: Waved Out For “Make Use,” the opening track on his 1998 solo album, Waved Out, Robert Pollard crafts an entire song with basically just one chord shape. It’s a perfect example of how much can be accomplished with the “floating chord shape” guitar technique that he uses in many of his […]
