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 […]
Tag: Guided By Voices

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 […]

Pretty Bombs
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 […]

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 […]