The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #85294   Message #1580348
Posted By: M.Ted
10-Oct-05 - 03:03 PM
Thread Name: Incomplete Beatles songs
Subject: RE: Incomplete Beatles songs
A sterling point, Kevin. A sterling point. You can sing them twice--in fact, because people know the songs and often want to sing along, the second time through is often appreciated--


Here's a bit of help for you, Les--

The trick is not trying to recreate the recording, but to identify the basic sound and feel, and to find a way to voice that on your guitar--

Beatles stuff is actually kind of easy to do on solo guitar, because so much of it was written on a guitar(Cole Porter tunes are a bit trick to arrange for guitar) --

"Eight Days a Week", for instance, is a walk in the park--think about it like this--it has a basic, rockabilly feel, but in Beatle-style 4--Play it in E, to get a big fat acoustic sound--the chords are:

||: E E/ F7 F7/A A/B7 B7:||

|C#m C#m/F# F#7/ C#m C#m/F#7 F#7|

||: E E/ F7 F7/A A/E E/ A A/ EE||

For each measure(4 counts), play two solid downstrokes, emphasizing the low E string, then two down-up strokes, emphasizing the high strings--That's all you need to do (except to remember to really roll when you play it)--

If you want an instrumental break, simple play a "drum solo" rhythm pattern over either the into chord progression or the bridge progression--

The bottom line is that have to become an arranger, which is to say, you have to be a bit creative in finding a way to express the most compelling elements of the song on the instruments you have at hand.

Sometimes it is pretty obvious, and sometimes you have to reach a bit, but you can always find a way to make it work--