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 […]
Tag: Guided By Voices
I Love Kangaroos
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Space Gun When I saw Guided By Voices live during the Space Gun tour, “I Love Kangaroos” was the only song from the album they did not play that night. I was a little bummed because I was hoping to learn how to play it on guitar by watching […]
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 […]
Queen Parking Lot
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Surrender Your Poppy Field For a lot of the chords in “Queen Parking Lot,” you can keep two fingers on the third frets of the first and second guitar strings and just move your other fingers to different frets on the remaining strings. This is similar to the verse […]
Show Of Hands
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Mirrored Aztec The main guitar riff in “Show Of Hands” is an instant classic Robert Pollard riff, alternating between strummed fifth chords and arpeggios. All in all, this song is fairly simple in terms of song structure and ease of playing. You need to be logged in to view […]
I Think I Had It. I Think I Have It Again
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Mirrored Aztec Mirrored Aztec opening track “I Think I Had It. I Think I Have It Again” starts off with a guitar riff built on open string drones. From there, Robert Pollard uses some floating chord shapes in the chorus, with an open D note droning throughout. You need […]
She Lives In An Airport
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: The Bears For Lunch For the verses in “She Lives In An Airport,” Robert Pollard uses a two-note C5/G chord, with the G on the sixth guitar string being the lowest note. This gives the verse riff a heavy, crunchy feel. Other than this main riff, there are a […]
Ark Technician
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Space Gun For “Ark Technician,” Robert Pollard crafted a beautiful guitar riff on the fourth and third strings that comprises the song’s verses. Lead guitarist Doug Gillard also plays some counter-melodies during the verses that perfectly complement this main riff. You need to be logged in to view the […]
The Quickers Arrive
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Please Be Honest The entire Please Be Honest album showcases Robert Pollard’s multi-instrumentalist skills, but I believe “The Quickers Arrive” stands out as having one of his most creative bass lines. This post contains tab for both the guitar and bass for this song. You need to be logged […]
