In this video
Monday night live stream focusing on 80s and 90s acoustic requests from Discord and YouTube members. Big update! levels one and two of Intermediate Electric are now filmed and mostly edited, level three starts Wednesday, aiming to launch all three before end of month.
Guitar positioning reminder: Following up on the Birmingham Guitar Show lesson with John - the most important thing I corrected was his "sofa player posture." Guitar wedged right in at the hip, no space there. Lower back support against the chair, foot raised slightly (I use a guitar pedal under my heel), elbow resting on top of the guitar not reaching over it. If the guitar's wobbly, you're constantly supporting it with your fretting hand and can't relax. This is critical for everything you play.
Counting Crows "Elevator Boots": The song John mentioned at the guitar show. Capo third fret, mostly D major to G major with wonderful country-esque embellishments. The rhythm is tricky - it's a clave pattern over an underlying 4/4 pulse. Same rhythm as Sia's "Chandelier." Don't worry about counting every down and up - just memorize the pattern. Taking the first finger off D creates movement, same technique Foo Fighters use in "Times Like These."
The bridge progression is very Paul McCartney/Wings - reminds me of "Maybe I'm Amazed" which has that same vibe. McCartney uses the Hendrix chord (D7#9) a lot in his songs.
The Cure rhythm pattern: I discovered loads of Cure songs basically use the same bassline and strumming pattern. "Just Like Heaven," "In Between Days," "Friday I'm In Love," "Love Song," even "Pictures of You" - they all use variations of: down-down-down-up-down-up-down-up-down-up. It's THE Cure rhythm. Once you've got that pattern at different BPMs, you can play most of their catalog. "Love Song" uses an A minor 9 chord which could honestly almost be a Counting Crows song when you break it down.
John Mellencamp - King of three-chord songs made interesting: "Small Town" is super easy with capo second fret. But "Hurts So Good" and "Jack and Diane" are where it gets fun. These use the one-finger A chord technique (same as Keith Richards "All Right Now" shape) moved around to create riffs. "Jack and Diane" has that iconic riff at the 9th fret and 5th fret using A major triads with hammer-ons. Perfect open mic fodder, easier than you remember.
"Addicted to Love" is a blues song: People don't realize this but it's totally a blues progression in A major - same as "Sledgehammer" by Peter Gabriel (which is basically a 60s soul song). The blues riff works in A, then moves to G using the same pattern. Here's the trick: you don't have to relearn the riff in G, just move the same shape. All rock songs use the same notes for these progressions.
Thanks for watching, see you every Monday 6pm UK time!