Chords for Canadee-i-o by Nic Jones - Tips for guitarists by Sam Carter

Hi folks, my name's Sam Carter.
This is a little video I've decided to make to show as best I [Ab] can how Nick Jones played
Kennedy I.O. on the Penguins album
_ [Gb] One of the reasons for this is just because I love it.
It's a great piece of guitar playing
Also because there isn't that much [Abm] information on how Nick Jones played
[F]
out there and also that as many of you know from Nick Jones fans, he had an accident in the 80s which
_ Doesn't mean you can't play anymore [B] tragically and so [G] the information isn't really [Abm] available
firsthand so
_ Without further ado first of all the [Ab] tuning
Then he goes plays in on this song is from [Bb] low to high B [F] flat F
B flat F B flat C.
That's
from low to high and that gives us a kind of _
_ B flat sus2
_ tuning technically
[Ab] _ _ [Bb] _ _ [Bbm] There's no minor or major third in this tuning which [Gb] means it has a modal quality which is quite characteristic of
[F] Tunings of folk guitar _ _ _ chords with major [Gb] or minor thirds in them
_ [Eb] but anyway
One thing that's important about this tuning as far as Nick Jones style goes is that it's very low most of the tunings he used were low
_ [C] in pitch and obviously at the same [Gb] time in tension on the neck, which [Bb] means that we
Get this [F] very snappy sound quite easily
_ _ _ [Gm] _ _
_ [F] _ _ _ _ [Am] Nice buzzes and other things going on [Eb] and also allows us to snap [C] against them snap the strings without
causing
[Eb] _ [Gb] injuries to ourselves
_ _ [Dm] To get that sort of sound what I'm doing there is pulling up
I'm pulling the [D] string up if you're a classical [G] guitarist, you know that you your [Gb] intention
Most of the time is to try and push the string down into the guitar
I mean, that's how you get the most [Db] resonance
Normally [Bb] with it and a nice sort of [F] clean pure sound
This is [G] a completely different way of doing it.
We're pulling [Gb] the string up to create quite an aggressive attack.
So
[C] _ _ _
[Bb] _ _ _ [Eb] _ _ [Bb] _ _ _
_ [F] _ _ _ [Bb] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [D]
So being in that low tuning allows us to get this quite _
sort of
Aggressive sound out of the guitar without causing ourselves massive amounts of pain
[Ab] _ _ [E] Another sound that we're going to be hearing a lot in this is
_ This percussive sound [Gbm] which is actually the first [Bb] sound we hear
_ _ [C] _ _ _ _
_ _ [Bb] _ _ _ _ _
The way [B] I'm getting that sound is by flicking the [Gb] strings close to the bridge with my middle finger
by burying it in the
bottom part of my thumb
flicking against the
Strings close to the bridge takes a while [A] to get some accuracy.
Most of the time I'm
[Ab] You need to be hitting [F] the G [G] string or the third string and this [Ab] was just actually an F string at the moment
_ [F] _
And
to hit that
[E] _ Consistently you're gonna need to [Fm] spend a bit of time just practicing
Hitting it.
It's quite a [Gb] difficult thing
It's just a matter of practice five minutes a day for you know, two weeks
We will [F] probably get you to a point of accuracy with it
[G] one thing that's kind of interesting to me about this the [Gb] the
The right hand in the opening sequence and actually through most of the songs [Bb] that _
We've got this on the two and the four one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four
Got this sort of snare effect, which is created by the flicking
technique I was talking about and then on the offbeat we've got the thumb _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ Which gives us this kind of [C] delayed and this sort of sense of momentum going on [Fm] all the time
[Bb] _ _
[C] _ _ _ _ _ Which [Ab] is really nice [Bbm] and it's also quite characteristic [F] of _ _ _
[Gb] Banjo playing I wouldn't be surprised if Nick Jones did play banjo
It's a complete conjecture, but the style of the right hand is is [E] quite like the way
[F] _ _ You play [B]
banjo
With the thumb on the offbeat a lot of the time [Bb] which is upside down for most guitarists most of the time we're doing _ _ _
[E] some kind of
_ _ On the beat thing with our with our thumb.
Another thing is you'll notice that I'm wearing a thumb pick which is a
[Gm] It's a plastic thumb pick
[Gb] _ Which is I believe from what I can work out from listening to what Nick [Ab] Jones was using
This one is made by John Pierce.
They're about [N] the best
Commercially available ones you can get
Because they're not too long don't buy a long thumb pick.
I [Dm] don't know why they even [Gb] exist
_ they're not [Fm] very good for your technique and
_ _ [C] _ _ [F] _ So try and get a short thumb pick if you can if you can't find a [G] short one file a long one [E] down _
_ [Bb] That just [Ab] again it's about attack really allows us to get a bit more [Db] attack with the with the thumb
_ _ [Dbm] Apart from that I'm gonna leave
[C] _ all
[Dbm] The songs to speak for yourself.
So have a listen to the recording
[G] I'm not going to take the whole thing to bits, [C] but I hope that's giving you some
[G] Insight [Gb] into the way this song
[N] was played and
[Gb] _ _ _