By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Universal Truths And Cycles “Pretty Bombs” is my favorite kind of Robert Pollard song to play on guitar. It moves around a lot from one part to another, and incorporates both strummed chords and arpeggio figures. I used to consider this to be a song that I would probably […]
Tag: Guided By Voices
Everybody Thinks I’m A Raincloud (When I’m Not Looking)
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Hiking Skin
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: August By Cake On “Hiking Skin,” Robert Pollard uses some simple chord shapes and the often-employed “floating chord shapes” guitar technique of moving an open D major chord shape to different frets on the neck. You need to be logged in to view the rest of the content. Please […]
Coming Back From Now On
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Warp And Woof “Coming Back From Now On” is based on a guitar riff that would sound right at home on any live arena rock album. Actually, this might account for the audience samples that were used on this track, not to mention the inclusion of the traditional song […]
My Feet’s Trustworthy Existance
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 […]
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 […]
