Vintage

I have seen many incorrect tabs and chords for this song on the Internet and I've had requests for it from some of my students. The chords are easy enough, it's mostly the picking pattern that is a little tricky. But once you get the hang of it, the fingers should just roll through it.

If you like classical notation, the right hand fingering on the patterns below should be: m p a m p i

"The Weary Kind" - Ryan Bingham

From the movie "Crazy Heart" with Jeff Bridges
Chords and Tab

Figure 1

Picking pattern: This is a two-beat pattern so play each pattern twice to fill one whole bar.

D                           A
|--------2-----------|     |--------0-----------|
|---3-------3--------|     |---2-------2--------|
|.---------------2--.|     |.---------------2--.|
|.----0-------0-----.|     |.----2-------2-----.|
|--------------------|     |--------------------|
|--------------------|     |--------------------|

G                           Bm
|--------3-----------|     |--------2-----------|
|---0-------0--------|     |---3-------3--------|
|.---------------0--.|     |.---------------4--.|
|.----0-------0-----.|     |.----4-------4-----.|
|--------------------|     |--------------------|
|--------------------|     |--------------------|

Figure 2

In the chorus, the chord A7 has this common variation. Use the same picking as figure 1, but each of these chords gets only half a bar, so the whole sequence of four chords fills two bars.

A7:      x02020
A7sus4:  x04030
A7 (v2): x05050
A7sus4:  x04030

The only difference between people who can play guitar and those who cannot is this: the people who can play guitar DO IT.

You can too.

I often wonder how many guitars are purchased each year only to be abandoned in the closet shortly thereafter. A guitar was meant to be played. A guitar wants to be played. Your guitar wants you to pick it up and play something... anything. When left alone for long periods of time, guitars get lonely. They feel neglected. Please don't let your guitar feel neglected.

Think you don't have enough time?

If you want to do something inspiring in your life but feel that you don't have enough time, take a close look at the things that you do each week that are not fulfilling and stop doing them so you have more time to do what matters to you.

There's a new study out that demonstrates how musical experience can change people's taste in music. This is good news to me because I've often wondered why I like so much music that other people couldn't care less about.

It can be quite amusing when journalists who are not musicians are assigned to write stories about music. It's often clear they don't quite get the story. Writing for Canwest News Service, the journalist gets this story mostly right, but not quite.

Most people, especially non-musicians, prefer the sound of harmony over dissonance. Harmony is when two notes ring together and sound similar--alike but different. For example, notes at frequencies of 200, 300, 400 hertz, tend to sound good together because they are all multiples of 100.

But notes that are somewhat dissonant tend to have a wobbling sound. This is called "beat." We listen for this beat when we're tuning our guitars -- if the notes are not in perfect unison, you can hear a fluttering underneath the tones. As the notes get closer in pitch, the fluttering dissipates. When the notes are exactly the same, it disappears.

But there are many musical genres that intentionally use dissonance to create dramatic tension. For example, blues musicians use the tritone interval, and that's as dissonant as it gets. They called it "the blue note." It's exactly half-way to the octave, and if you play it against the root, it is pure dissonance! (For example, play G and C# together)