Strum Pick Pluck

What’s LE playing on his guitar, part something or other.

Excellent question!

In no particular order, you might hear me playing any of the following should you creep up to my window and place an ear to the screen:

“Godzilla” by Blue Oyster Cult

C’mon, now, got to really bend those fifths! And play the chorus as funky as possible, with pentatonic F-sharp runs thrown in liberally. Fun and dopey song which I never played much before. Remember one time warming up for a gig and hearing these notes slide in from an adjacent room where another guitarist was bending the power chords so hard and heavy I thought he was playing on rubber bands.

“Lonesome Me” by Neil Young

What a great song, simplicity being its greatness. Take a regular blues progression and throw minor chords into the mix. Never really figured it out until I happened across those weeping thirds. The verses go E – A – E – A in slow triplets, leading into E – Em – A – Am (wow!) and then yer D – A – E denouement. I like to play the A as an Asus2 and keep that B string droning in for extra lonesomeness factor.

“High Voltage” by AC/DC

Tough to play this on an acoustic, so I dropped everything down a fifth and modulated accordingly. Very neat 50s-ish guitar sound. Gotta love old, old AC/DC when Bon Scott was still alive. Much different band than the one that’s been phoning it in for the past three decades. This song is good to play very aggressive, with lots of H-Os and P-Os. Makes me wish I had an amp and an acoustic guitar pick-up.

“All Apologies” by Nirvana

Another simple song, best played in dropped-D but I just move everything up two frets. Drives my wife crazy ’cuz she hates the dreariness of Nirvana and Kurt Cobain. Neat little tune but grows kinda stale after a few minutes. I also play a bit of “The Man Who Sold the World” but missing some notes here and there, so I can’t add that to this list and feel good about myself in the morning.

“Roundabout” intro by Yes

Back in the 80s my lead guitarist used to always play this intro on his electric. Sounded good, but a bit rushed, and I think he missed a few notes here and there. So I cheated, went online, found the tab, wrote it out, played it s-l-o-w-l-y, then sped up as I mastered the notes. Not much for the objective listener, but very profoundly subjectively satisfying.

“Sesame Street” theme song

You know I spend six hours a day with a two-year-old, right? So it was only naturally I’d fiddle around with that melody until I got it right. It’s in the key of E, and I play it on the low E and low A strings. Easy to figure out, took me maybe ten minutes, but it impressed the heck out of the wife and little ones.

Also wrote two new songs for the solo album, which should be coming out in fifteen to twenty years. Soon as I get the old band back together … (yes, it’s a Blues Brothers reference).