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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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