guitar chords | Jacob Morrison | Musician

Tag Archives: guitar chords

December 16, 2014 · 5:30 pm

John Newman – Cheating Chords

Download the capo free version here: John Newman – Cheating (Bm Version)

Download the bar-chord free version here: John Newman – Cheating (Easy Version)

This song was brought to me by two of my younger students, 8 year old Bodie and Louis. We looked at it with the capo on fret 2, using simplified partial chord shapes (e.g. G as xx0003, C as xx2010). Without the capo it makes a good bar chord workout for more advanced students. Ukulele players will need to play it in Bm to match the original recording key.

In a full band situation advanced players may want to try partial chord shapes up the neck, as you can see John Newman’s guitarist playing in this live band version. These are mainly chords played on the top four strings, based around the 7th fret (e.g. Bm: xx9777, A: xx7655, E: xx7775).

For the solo singer/guitarist you are better sticking to the full open chords, as in this live acoustic version. The more advanced of you can work out some of those licks too!

Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here Chords

Download here: Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here

Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here is a great song for working on mixing up picking individual notes with full chord strumming. The chords are fairly basic, the main challenge being the D/F# chord.

Slash Chords

With slash chords, the note after the slash (/) is played in the bass. So D/F# is a D chord with an F# bass note. On guitar this can be played like a regular D, with your thumb wrapped over the 2nd fret of the low E string. There are other ways to finger a D/F#, without the high E string, but the full 6 string version sounds great on this song if you can get it. If you’re struggling to get your thumb over or find another way to play the chord, a regular D chord will sound fine.

Strumming

Suggested strumming pattern for the verses:
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + D d DUd D d DUd

Suggested strumming pattern for the intro:
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + B DUDU U UD

Beat “4” and the “and” of the intro are taken up by the single notes of the riff (see the tab).

To get the intricacies and variations of the strum, you really need to listen to the record – I’ve just given you a starting point. Pay attention to the small down strums (lowercase d’s) – these are softer strums. Also, on the record there are two guitars strumming slightly differently, one panned to each side, so you can take your pick when playing along.