By: Robert Pollard And His Soft Rock Renegades Appears on: Choreographed Man Of War In my opinion, what sets “Aeriel” apart from most other Robert Pollard songs is its lengthy intro section; the song is 3:15 long, but the section with the vocals doesn’t even come in until after two minutes! In fact, the intro […]
Tag: Open String Drone
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 […]
Arthur Has Business Elsewhere
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Surrender Your Poppy Field In terms of song structures, “Arthur Has Business Elsewhere” is one of the more conventional songs from Surrender Your Poppy Field, and its circus instrumentation and waltz-y ¾ time signature have earned it comparisons to The Kinks and Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles. Beneath it all, though, […]
Airs
By: Robert Pollard Appears on: Honey Locust Honky Tonk For the verses in “Airs,” you’ll just alternate strumming between the G5 and Csus2 chords. In the chorus, however, Pollard uses a two-note chord shape on the second and first strings with an open G note on the third string and moves this shape to various […]
Kick Me And Cancel
By: Robert Pollard Appears on: From A Compound Eye “Kick Me And Cancel” is yet another great example of the Robert Pollard guitar technique I call “Open String Drone.” This technique consists of playing a melody on one guitar string while also playing an adjacent open string. In the case of this song, the melody […]
Game Of Pricks
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Alien Lanes, Tigerbomb There’s an exciting moment in all live Guided By Voices shows where Robert Pollard brings the microphone to his lips and shouts, “PRICKS!” That’s the band’s cue to launch into the Alien Lanes classic, “Game Of Pricks.” Except they usually don’t play it the way it […]
Cut-Out Witch
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Under The Bushes Under The Stars Long-time Guided By Voices guitarist Doug Gillard has mentioned that Robert Pollard gives the band a fair amount of freedom with his songs so that they can incorporate their own ideas. In this way, some songs have evolved a bit from their original […]
Strictly Comedy
By: Robert Pollard Appears on: Kid Marine According to its entry on GBVDB, “Strictly Comedy” from Kid Marine was only ever played live four times. Fortunately for us, there’s video footage of the band rehearsing for one of those performances on the excellent The Who Went Home And Cried documentary (which is available in its […]
