Chords for Norman Greenbaum - Spirit In The Sky (guitar lesson)

_ _ _ [A] _ _ _ _ [Dm] _
[A] _ _ _ [Dm] _ [A] _ _ _ [Dm] _
[A] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ [Dm] _
[A] _ _ _ [Dm] _ [A] _ _ _ [N]
Norman Greenbaum's Spirit in the Sky is a 12-bar blues progression in [E] A.
The [B] chords
[A] are A, a [D] C, a D, [E] and an E.
[B]
And behind all of the nifty lead guitar is somebody strumming
a guitar.
And here's what [A] they're playing.
_ _ [C] _ [A] _ _ _ [C] _
[A] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ [C] _
[A] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ [D] _
_ _ _ _ [E] _ _ _ [A] _
_ _ _ [Eb] Those are the same chords.
The D, I often
play it with the F sharp [D] here on the fourth string.
[Gm] And then when [Gb] I play an E in this
song, I [Eb] often just slide that [E] D shape up two frets to there.
But you can play an open E
there, or you could play barre [D] chords.
_ _ [Bb] _
So that's the basic [F] structure, and that actually
carries on throughout the song.
Things get a little more interesting, though, when you
crank up the distortion and play [A] the lead.
_ _ _ [Dm] _
[A] _ _ _ [Dm] _ [A] _ _ _ [Dm] _
[A] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ [Dm] _
[A] _ _ _ [Dm] _ [A] _ _ _ [Dm] _
[A] _ _ _ _ [D] _ _ _ [G] _
[D] _ _ _ [G] _ [Dm] _ [A] _ _ [Dm] _
[A] _ _ _ _ _ _ [Eb] So the lead work is all structured around
an A barre chord, or at least this is how I play it, is structuring it around an A barre
chord, the fifth [D] fret, like that.
And [Gb] you're doing a lot of stuff with octaves here.
_ _ [E]
[D] You've
got an A here on [G] the sixth string at the fifth fret, and you've got an A that's an
octave [Ab] higher on the fourth string at the seventh fret.
And a lot of it is just back
and forth [A] between the two of those. _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [Ab] _ You can play this in different places.
You can play
the A open on your fifth string, and the octave you could fret [Gb] on the third string at the
[A] second fret.
_ _ _ _ [B] I prefer to play it up here.
I [E] think it sounds a little better, and I find
it a little bit easier.
[Gm] In between those, you're playing these [A] octaves, [N] and then in
between them you're doing from a C to a D, and sometimes from a D to [A] a C.
It [D] climbs down
and climbs up at the same time.
[C] Not at the same time, but in [A] this song.
_ _ _ _ _ _ [D] _
[A] _ [N] And the whole
time you're kind of using this octave note here as kind of a pedal, I think is the technical
term.
You're just bouncing all those [Gb] changes, all that [E] progression, you're bouncing off
of that [A] note.
_ _ _ [F] _ [A] _ [Ab] I play this with my fingers, using [E] these two keys.
_ _ [N]
You can play it with
a pick, you can play it with a pick and your fingers in a hybrid pick fashion, if that's
what you like.
This is just how I do it.
When it gets to the D, when the progression in
the song moves from the A to the D, you can just keep the same chord shape, the same fingering
shape, [Bb] and move down two strings.
[D] _ _ _ [G] _
[D] _ _ _ _ [Bb] _ [A] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [F] _ _ [Ab]
And then similarly when you get to the E, [Bb] you can drop
[Ebm] down two strings and then also [B]
up a couple frets.
_ _ [E] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [A] _ _ _ [Dm] _
[A] _ _ [N] Now, there's this kind of cool thing
that goes on that the lead guitarist plays, and I think sometimes it's described as the
beep beep noise.
And I went online and read an interview with the lead guitarist to find
out what he was doing.
_ [Bb] It sounds like this.
So _ [B] the sound that he's getting is this.
[F] _
_ _ _ [B] _ What
he's doing is he's, well first of all, _ [C] he's fretting the first string at the 8th fret,
the second string at the 10th fret, and bending [Gm] that second string way up.
And then strumming
them both, [Bb] _
_ [F] _ and [C] _ [D] _ [B] then releasing the bend as it sustains, he's releasing the bend on the
second string.
While he's doing that though, he's flicking back and forth between the pickups.
And to do this, you need a guitar, I've got a little SG here, but you need a guitar that
has a toggle switch between the volume [G]
controls on the two different pickups.
So in this case,
I've got the neck pickup turned off, [Gb] you can hear a little bit, and I've got the head [E] pickup
[B] cranked on.
So you start that [Bb] bend, and the first strum, with the dead pickup selected,
and then you flick [C] back and forth, _ _ _ [Eb] like that.
You do another one of these bends up at the
15th and 17th fret. _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [D] _ _ _ [Ebm] _ _ [N] _