By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Zeppelin Over China On “Everything’s Thrilling,” Robert Pollard is once again up to his old tricks. This song is based on an open D note drone and a lot of the same chords he typically uses with this drone technique: D, G/D, and Cadd2. When you consider how many […]
Tag: Open String Drone
Why Did You Land?
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: The Official Ironmen Rally Song One of Robert Pollard’s most often used songwriting guitar techniques involves fretting a note on one string and allowing an open string either above or below it to ring out with it. For example, in “Why Did You Land?” he uses this technique with […]
Tourist UFO
By: Boston Spaceships Appears on: Let It Beard When Robert Pollard prepared his demos for the Boston Spaceships album Let It Beard, he recorded his vocals and guitar on his boombox, then spliced sections of songs together to form a full composition. With this method in mind, I’m wondering if he ever had to actually learn […]
Far-Out Crops
By: Robert Pollard Appears on: Kid Marine On “Far-Out Crops” from Kid Marine, Robert Pollard uses a songwriting technique of repeating the same guitar riff while changing the chords that are played along with it. You’ll see this happen on two different riffs in this song. The riffs will appear in the guitar tab, and […]
Earmarked For Collision
By: Boston Spaceships Appears on: Let It Beard “Earmarked For Collision,” from the Boston Spaceships masterpiece of a double album, Let It Beard, is all about nuance. Robert Pollard uses a couple of his trusty guitar techniques to craft a song with many parts that are very similar to one another, but with subtle differences. For […]
Let More Light Into The House
By: Boston Spaceships Appears on: Let It Beard For the studio recording of “Let More Light Into The House,” fellow Boston Spaceshippers Chris Slusarenko and John Moen transformed Robert Pollard’s acoustic guitar demo into a full-on dirge; an open string drone guitar figure plods along during the first section, giving way to shuffling drums, urgent piano […]
Weatherman And Skin Goddess
By: Robert Pollard Appears on: Robert Pollard Is Off to Business Today’s post features guitar tablature and chords for a true musical masterpiece: Robert Pollard’s “Weatherman And Skin Goddess.” It’s one of his longer songs, clocking in at just under five and a half minutes, so there are a few parts here to learn. You […]
Bunco Men
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Mirrored Aztec, Suitcase – Failed Experiments and Trashed Aircraft I used to write songs. After a while, it started to feel pointless. Robert Pollard was writing songs like “Bunco Men” and then not even releasing them on albums; we didn’t get to hear most of them until the first […]
Know Me As Heavy
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: English Little League There’s nothing I don’t love about “Know Me As Heavy” from English Little League. There’s a great combined vocal performance by Robert Pollard and Tobin Sprout, some of Pollard’s trademark cryptic lyrics, and also a sampling of some of his various guitar songwriting techniques at play. This […]
Christmas Girl
By: Boston Spaceships Appears on: Let It Beard When I create these guitar tablature posts, the tablature and chord diagrams are all made from shapes and tables in Google Slides, so I start by copying a song from a previous post that used similar tablature or chord diagrams and modify as needed. As it turns […]
