Beginner Guitar Lesson 12

Time Of Your Life 2nd guitar part

As you might know by now, I’m not into parrot guitar.

You copying what I or someone else do might be a good starting point, but if you really want to learn guitar, you have to come up with parts, be creative and start arranging.

As a guitarist this will be your job; you will spend your life arranging.

See the problem is, since multi-track recording came around (60s) guitar was not about just one part anymore, it all became about layering.

So in the studio you will find the producer wanting you to come up with ideas, try new things, add more.

What is then decided to go in the mix is a different matter, your job will be to come up with several parts that work.

It doesn’t change much live either, in this situation you will have to take all those layered parts you find on a record, maybe even look at horn and keyboard parts and work them into one guitar part that work for the occasion.

For example, I play Hard To Handle with several bands. Sometimes it is the Black Crows version with another guitarist, sometimes only me on guitar. In another band I’ll play the Otis Redding version in Bb rather than B (Black Crows). Sometimes I might even have to play it in a completely different key if it’s a female vocalist.

There might also be a horn section on one gig, none the next.

During all these situations I will have to adjust my guitar part to best suit the band.

After, say 10 gigs with different bands I’ll have plenty of ideas for how to play Hard To Handle, no matter what the other band members do, I’ll find something that fits.

This is the reality for the professional guitar player.

So in this lesson, let’s look at how to add another guitar part to Time Of Your Life by Green Day, which we studied in the last guitar lesson.

The part below is just one idea, can you see how the 2nd guitar part pick the rhythmical punctuation of the first part, but plays it in different shapes?

Can you develop this for the Chorus section as well?

There is no right or wrong answer here, as long as it fits, it’s right.

A successful student do this in as many shapes as possible.

To learn more, check the barre chord exercises in intermediate guitar.

If you don’t want to go that far, just place a capo on fret 7 and play the open position chords of C, F and G.

Then move on to try different areas of the neck.

Next up is Beginner Guitar Lesson 13.

Happy playing!

Dan (your guitar guru)