Chords for Guinnevere Guitar Lesson Preview - Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

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[Em] _ _ _ [B] _ _ This is a song that intrigued me for years, [E] decades, before I had enough knowledge and
technique and stuff to be able to figure it out.
This is, of course, [G] Guinevere by David Crosby, recorded on the first Crosby, Stills, and
Nash album that had stuff [A] like Sweet Judy Blue Eyes and Wooden Ships and You Don't Have
to Cry and Helplessly Hoping and Long Time Gone [N] and a fabulous album.
So if you don't have the album, you've got to get it.
But the thing that is fascinating about this song and a lot of Crosby's tunes is that they
are in open tunings.
Well, it's better to call them alternate tunings because this is actually just the same notes
as in a standard guitar tuning.
Some of them just happen to be rearranged to other notes that are normally in there.
So I have a lesson that I've put together recently up at Totally Guitars that goes through
this song in great detail.
Now, you may have seen tablature out there for this if you've been trying to learn Guinevere.
It can be a real pain because some of the tablature out there is 8 or 9 or 15 pages
long, note for note how he did it one night.
Every night he did it differently.
And so Crosby plays very smoothly and very musically and is never concerned with playing
things exactly the same way twice.
He recreates the song every time he plays it.
Now this is something that is hard for students to get the hang of.
So what I like to do with this song is we take a look at multiple ways of playing many
different measures just with the basic technique of this arpeggio picking where you're playing
three bass notes in a measure.
There are eight eighth notes in the measure.
So it's a pattern of eight notes using your thumb to hit the sixth, fifth, and or fourth
strings at least three bass notes.
And then your three fingers, your ring [D] finger playing the first string, your [A] middle finger
playing the second string, [E] and your index finger playing the first string.
So if you want to get started on this, first we have to talk about the tuning, but if you
want to get started on [N] this, all you have to do is get a pattern going where on the
first beat you play your thumb and your third finger together.
Then you play your second finger and your index finger, two notes by themselves.
Then you repeat that pattern, thumb and third finger together, then your middle finger,
then your index finger.
Then the pinch again followed by only one finger.
So the eight eighth notes in the measure are pinch, middle, index, pinch, middle, index,
pinch, middle.
I'll show you what that sounds like, for example, in the [E] introduction, _ _ _ _ _ _ _ which has a slight variation
on it in that there is no pinch on the third beat, or on the third bass note.
The tuning though, sorry to keep you hanging on how to tune it, it's [D] very simple.
You tune the first two strings each down a whole step.
So the A string, the B [A] string goes down to A, the second string goes down a whole step,
[N] and then the first string goes down a whole step.
The easiest way to do this, if you don't have an electronic tuner, is the second string
that is normally tuned at the fourth fret of the third string, tune it to the second fret.
_ Once you've done that, [D] then come back to the fifth fret of the second string, which is
a new note because we just tuned it down, and make sure the [Abm] first string sounds the
same as that.
That gets your [Db] second string to A, [B] and your first string to D.
Then, the tricky part is,
or the unusual part, the fifth string has to be tuned up a whole step, to B.
So [A] rather
than tuning it to the fifth fret of the sixth string, [Bm] tune it to the seventh fret.
[E] And now your sixth strings are E, [Abm]
B, _ [G] next to our normal, D and G, [A] then an A [D] and a D.
[Em] _ _ _ [B] _ _
When Crosby uses this tuning, as he does in many songs, he frequently [Em] uses harmonics at
the twelfth fret.
That's what gave away the tuning to [E] me, by the way, when I first was trying to figure
it out, was hearing him hit those harmonics, because then you could hear what notes were in there.
[Bm] But _ now with that, [A] the very first thing you hear in the beginning of the song is a really
simple chord that just follows that pattern I showed you, [Ab] or talked about.
I do have a tablature to this in [N] the lesson, but we can't attach the tablature to here
for some reason.
_ Anyway, partly because you want to see the rest of the lesson.
But what we have is two notes.
Put your second finger on the fourth string of the sixth fret, [Ab] G sharp.
Put your third finger on the [Ab] seventh fret of the fifth string, [G] which because of this
tuning right now would be an F sharp.
So we have two notes that are just a whole step apart.
[Eb] Now we do that pattern.
Pinch sixth [E] and first strings, followed by [A] the second string and the [E] third string, just
both played open.
Now the next three notes are the same thing except the bass note changes to the fifth [D] string.
_ [E] _ _ Then, the fourth string alone played with your [Ab] thumb, and the [A] second string played alone
with your middle finger.
[E] _
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_ _ Just that is a really cool sound, a great opening to a song.
_ [A] _ [N] Anyway, that is what's happening at the very beginning and the very end, or you can use
it as the outro to whenever too.
So in the lesson, we talk about some of the different places where this song appeared.
Again, it first showed up on that Crosby, Stills, and Nash album.
This one, which you hopefully have.
It also showed up on a later, they performed it later.
This was an album that came out called A Very Stony Evening that eventually made the record
company release an album called Another Stony Evening that was better sonic quality, but
it didn't come out until about 30 years after that one did, maybe 35.
So if you have any of those, there are plenty of live versions too, of especially Crosby
and Nash with their great vocals doing it.
So I encourage you to check [Eb] that stuff out, but if you really want to learn how to play
the song, have a very detailed lesson, [G] along with all kinds of other, hundreds of other
lessons of course, as you probably have heard by now, [Gb] but over [F] at totallyguitars.com.
So if you want to learn Guinevere and some other tunes by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young,
and anybody else that happened to be playing with them at the time, they are all there.
Hope you get a chance to come check us out soon.
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