This exercise is a little different. I thought this would be fun. What we are doing is taking “Desperado” by The Eagles and stripping it down to the bare bones. Before anyone says that this isn’t the right way to play the song, I must mention that it has been transcribed in the key of G, with an intro in D. When you play the song passage, you’ll hear the essence of the music come right out, but it’s a little different than the original song.
The tempo is a smooth 70 bpm, which should allow you to slowly transition notes with ease. I’ve included both the lead, or accompanying piece, as well as the chords you can reference with the song key accompaniment. In this exercise, the use of low melody notes is a MUST! Remember to follow the low melody note arrangement in terms of note value and it will sound 100% accurate. Remember that the low melody notes will always show ‘upside down’ in tablature. I’ll give a rundown below.
Video
Audio File
Click Here to listen to the MP3 for practice (right-click to ‘save as’)
The Lesson
Here is the lead for the passage:
Part I
Measures 1 and 2
We begin the song with a D7 intro using tied eighth notes in all high melody. (You’ll know this because the tied eighth notes at the beginning of the passage are actually ON the staff. Remember that a low melody note should show OFF the tab staff.) From the D7, you play the G and G7 using fingerstyle. The low melody note of G on the low E string is played as a half note while the high melody note of G on the G string plays as an eighth note. This is followed by an open G string note using eighth notes, which ties to an open dotted quarter note. Then, the low melody note, played again on the low E string, is played as a half note again. You then form the G7 in fingerstyle starting and ending the G7 chord with eighth notes.
Measure 3
Here we have the C to Cm. This should be rather easy, but it’s a little faster than the previous measures in terms of note striking. The low melody note on the C chord, played on the A string on the 3rd fret, runs as a half note, and duplicates itself when playing the Cm. Since most of this measure runs right through, the only thing I would pay close attention to is the 16th notes at the end of this measure. The “2” and “0” should be played as such, leading into the 4th measure.
Measures 4 and 5
By now you should have started seeing a trend in the low melody notes. Notice that within each measure, you’ve got two low melody notes. So far, they’ve all been half notes. Easy huh?! That’s the case with these measures as well, so there’s no need to explain it again. The last thing I want to mention is to pay attention once again to the 16th notes played at the end of Measure 5 with the added pull off. This should be elementary for you by now.
PIMA Legend:
(I snuck an “A” in on you! Remember these are only recommended patterns. You can variate them based on comfort.)
Part II
Measures 6 and 7
These are simply repeats of Measures 2 and 3. Easy!
Measures 8, 9, and 10
Though there isn’t much difference between the eighth measure and the fourth measure, you will need to add the pull off, just as you played earlier, in preparation for the quick time signature change. Don’t worry. The time signature change doesn’t even feel like one, since it changes to 2/4 instead of 4/4. The only real difference in the 2/4 change is that instead of playing half notes with the low melody, you play quarter notes. Bam. That’s it! End the song by going into Measure 10 and playing the low melody note of G on the third fret. Notice that since it shows as a whole note, it will not be upside down. You can’t really turn a full circle upside down, BUT it show below the tab staff as always. (well, most of the time, but we’ll get into that later).
PIMA Legend:
Adding Chords
Here are the chords associated with the lead pattern:
Part I
Notice that all the chords added are played as half notes. That will guarantee that the lead stays with the rhythm. Alll of the chords associated here are literally the basic chord form of the accompaniment that is being played. You can add or remove notes, or create partial chords with this, which I did a little below.
As you can see, the Em7 doesn’t sound as good with the full chord being played, so I created a partial by simply removing some of the notes associated to lighten the chord up. If I were to add all the open strings, it muffles the song badly. The same applies with the D7, in which I omitted the open D string note for giggles. We’re still playing all half notes.
Part II
Download This PTB File
Download This PDF File
The only other thing that needs to be addressed here has actually already been addressed, but notice that when we switch to 2/4 time, the chords played with the accompaniment now resort to quarter notes to keep it all together. Finally, the song switches back to 4/4 time, and we end the chord part with a half note. That allows the lead to ring through with the whole note and keeps it from muffling the overall accompaniment.
Did you enjoy this exercise? One thing I always want to do is introduce living, breathing guitar work instead of charts,text and chord diagrams to keep this exciting. True fingerstyle guitar can get really frustrating, but I think so far so good with what has been presented so far.
Next: Intermediate Exercise 1-4