It looks like I’m up to Episode #5 of Picked to Pieces… I’ve given you a bit more detail in this episode, breaking down the parts and showing you what i was thinking.
Enjoy!
Kris
\m/
Why this Song?
It was one I got asked to play it got requested for a while ago when I’m out there doing gigs and it actually hadn’t left my mind. I pulled it out it was on my mind a couple of weeks ago. I pulled it out to give it a go. I was playing it in the original key and I didn’t really give it too much thought didn’t get any inspiration to do anything new so I brushed it to one side. This week I pulled it out again and it all came together. So I thought sweet let’s roll with it.
Give us an overview of the parts
So the basic chord progression is D, A, B MINOR G. So I’m playing it in D with D being chord I. The original is in E. If you have a look at the chords in numbers so we have D being chord I in the key of D major, A is chord V, B minor is chord VI and G is chord IV. So we have a I, V, VI, IV progression. Now that’s actually the winning combination of chords. If you have a look at the majority of songs that have broken over the past 40 years your going to find that this chord progression is in about 70-80% of them at a rough guess. So to give you an idea, so we have Demons “When the days are cold and the cards are fold, and the saints we see are just made of gold” and then you could jump into your Katy Perry “ Your hot and your cold, your yes and your no, your in and your out your up and your down”
“R-o-a-r oh oh oh oh oh, R-o-a-r oh oh oh no no no, R-o-a-r oh, oh, oh, oh, oh your gonna hear me roar” there are so many of them “With or without you, with or without you, I can’t live with or without you” If I could, then I would, I’d go wherever you would go, way up high or down low, I’ll go wherever you will go” even Beatles “ When I find myself in times of trouble Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom let it be, there’s a couple of little changes here and there but basically the essence of the chord progression is the same I, V VI, IV is the magic winning combination.
So what I basically did was for the intro I started off with single strums and it was basically an improvised solo where I played around with a Lydian mode a major scale with a sharpened fourth so if you imagine a D major scale being 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, it’s playing a G sharp instead of a G. A Lydian approach is a major scale with a sharpened fourth. I wanted to start with something that’s really unresolved, and cool sounding. It something that the guys on Satriani are huge on using that Lidian scale and hitting one note and soloing out on it. You can literally set it up and do it for ages, I’ve sat there and soloed for hours just hitting one note and improvising around it. You can get some really haunting sounds out of it. That’s what I basically wanted to do the lyrics have got that really dark haunting melody which I really wanted to capture that in this version that’s why I started with that little solo at the beginning. When the chord progression comes in obviously knowing that it’s that I, V, VI, IV progression I needed to do something different. I played around with this idea, D Major going down to the D Major 7. So it’s starting with a major 7th to the D major and back to the major 7th a and back again. When I started playing this part I was actually thinking of the M.A.S.H theme for some strange reason and that’s what prompted me to go for that expression/rhythmic pattern on the chords. When I change I’m changing bass notes while keeping that consistent so it’s the D major 7th to the D then an A to an A sus 4th when I’m playing the A on the bass, when I hit the B minor, it’s a B minor 7th down to a B minor 7th sus 2nd and back again. Then when I hit the G I’m basically just hitting the chord there. What I’m doing is keeping the D shape in on the lower four strings so I’m holding the A and the D down with the G in the bass which makes it a G sus 2nd. When I hit the pre-chorous I actually changed it up a little bit by using one of my favourite things to do. I’m coming up to the higher octave, I’m playing a D chord there but I’m playing around with the fifths. I’m accentuating the fifth of the chord by bringing it up to the higher octave and then I’m keeping the same idea with changing the chords and on that one I just went back to the G again. I think on the second chord I simplified it, that’s right. Yeah so that’s what I did for the pre-chorous.
When I hit the chorus, I was basically hitting those two notes again as the basis of the progression, I just changed the picking pattern up a bit, so these two notes become a pivot point. The second bass note I’m hitting twice but the second one I’m hitting really soft, I’m keeping the dynamics really low on that one you can almost miss that second bass note, I’m using it to push it along just a little bit. That’s basically the parts.
With a familiar I, V, VI, IV Progression, what did you do to make it sound different?
I basically layered guitars to try to take away from that chord progression. Although the melody is based on that basic chord structure by layering guitars and using ostinato’s and almost orchestrating the guitar part it disguised that fundamental chord structure. So I sort of hid it a little bit. So where I started was actually in the same place the original song started. It has that keyboard ostinato that runs in the background and loops. All I basically did with that lick was just a basic hammer on. I’d change my fingering around so that I could keep that constant so wether it’s the A the B or the G as the tonic or pedal note I’d keep that note ringing all the way through the lick. The second thing I did in the pre-chorus I did a little octave run which sort of made that change it up a little bit. So I’ve got that running as a counterpoint melody or as a counter melody running against that high ostinato aswell as the main chords and the vocal melody and then when I got to the chorus I basically changed that octave theme part and played it as thirds instead. I played around with it using thirds. I started with a D power chord and then up into thirds. What I will do is play through each of the parts and I’ll use a looper pedal to layer it up so you can see where it starts and where it ends up. Obviouslly when your recording you do all the parts seperatly and on different tracks but for the purpose of showing you we’ll just do it here. So I’ll start off with the basic chord structure so it’s a D A B minor G The I, V , VI, IV. Next I’m going to add the keyboard ostinato, so I’ll do that on the next progression through. Alright, got that happening so now we’ll try that higher octave melody. So you can already hear how busy it’s getting, it’s really starting to sound full, so I’ll do the other counterpoint harmony now. In the track there’s actually a base so I might just throw that in just for the hell of it. That’s basically how I layered it, when I got to places like the solo or the intro I’d just start playing over the top of it and just see what happened. That’s pretty much how you layer the parts.
