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how to play "freedom of '76" by ween



this is not only one of the best ween songs, its probably one of the greatest songs ever written by anyone. the chord changes are so jazzy, and the progression is extremely musical. what sucks is all the tabs i've seen for this song are totally wrong. i mean not even close to being right, just the wrong chords entirely. luckily though, there is an instructional video floating around from miggy himself where he lays out the voicings he uses:



unfortunately, because of the video quality/size its really hard to see exactly where he's putting his fingers, and the names he gives for the chords are all wrong, so you have to sit down and fuck around with this mess and decipher what he's actually doing. i spent the last couple hours playing around and i managed to figure the song out, so i thought i would post up the results of my efforts in case anybody else wants to play the song too but hasn't been able to get it to sound quite right.

standard tuning

E
B
G
D
A
E

chord 1 - E9

4 G#
X (could play 3 D here but miggy omits it, making it a partial E9 voicing. try it either way and see how it sounds to you)
4 B
2 E
2 B
2 F#

chord 2 - F#m7b5

2 F#
2 C# --> 5 E (reach over and tag it with your pinky)
2 A
2 E
4 C#
2 F#

chord 3 - G#m7

4 G#
4 D# --> 7 F#
4 B
4 F#
6 D#
4 G#

chord 4 - F#7sus2

0 E
5 E
6 C#
4 F#
4 C#
5 G#

chord 5 - C6/Am7 (both have the same notes and are enharmonically equivalent)

0 E
8 G
9 E
7 A
X (could also play 7 E here)
8 C

chord 6 - B7 (partial voicing)

X
X
8 D#
7 A
X (play 9 F# to extend to full B7, you can get a little bobby weir type vibe going by hammering on and pulling off the F#,play around with it and you'll see what i mean)
7 B

chord 7 - D6/Bm7

X
10 A
11 F#
9 B
X (could play 9 F#)
10 D

chord 8 - C#7

X
X
10 F
9 B
X --> 11G# to extend the voicing, like with chord 6
9 C#

chord 9 - F#m7

9 C#
10 A
9 E
11 C#
9 F#
X

pull off to chord 10 - F#9sus4

9 C#
9 G#
9 E
9 B
9 F#
X

then you're going to form chord 11, a partial A chord voicing off the 12th:

X
X
X
14 E
12 A
X

and walk up like this

E--------------------------------------
B--------------------------------------
G--------------------------------------
D-------14E-------------14E----------
A---12A-----12A-13A#------13A#---
E---------------------------------------

then chord 12 - B7#9 (B hendrix chord)

X
15 D
14 A
13 D#
14 B
X

listen to the song and watch the video to get the strumming pattern. its a totally linear song and the progression just repeats.

cheers m8s!
 
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i need some HALP phriends

can anybody help me figure out what marty is doing here (starting @ 14:45). it's this sort of wes montgomery style chord solo thing that jerry would do a lot and i can't figure out wtf he's actually doing with his fingers, i've sat for a few hours and tried to get it to sound right and i just can't even get close.

is he just playing a sort of abridged form of the bar chord shapes of the chords in the progression? i have a feeling like this will eventually "click" if i mess around with it enough, but its just hard for me to get context to wtf he's actually doing.

the progression is B-->E-->F# if that helps, and it's all major pentatonic over it.

any insight that anybody could shed on this kind of this would help me immensely. i figured i would ask on the off chance that anybody can help.
 
Damn!!! Ya'll need a groupie? lol! Seriously though - Truly a lot of talent in this thread! Keep it up, you all rock!
 
I'll work it out and tab it for you if you like

dude that would be totally awesome of you :D

i can't even describe how much that would help me out. so many thanks.

if you need help working anything out in the future, don't hesitate to ask me
 
No worries, i'll start on it in a min

Anyone wanna see my jimi hendrix - little wing intro cover
 
As I type this my Standard Am. Strat is upstairs plugged into my blues junior..i really should get back.

I just came to get on the internet for a few because I was making peeps and I noticed a tiny red spot on the side of my dick, which worried me, so I googled it, but I didn't learn anything to make me feel better. I think it's ok...doesn't hurt or itch but I mean red spots don't belong on my penis, not even one! Scary..

Ahh but fuck, this looks like a good thread so i'ma come back later.
'

For some reason lately I just feel like I suck at guitar...this time last year I was learning bookoos everyday ACCIDENTALLY, and now i'm to the point I've been playing the same handful of licks for the last 6 months man!
I mean, yeah, I can play pretty good, but lately I just feel like i'm lacking motivation to play....I mean where am I going with this?
I used to constantly listen to music, now I just try to play it, but lately it just comes out like a wet fart...so I wipe off and start all over again but I just can't focus, it's like i'm so goddam distracted by SOMETHING that I can't fucking sit down and put my fingers here or there and make it sound like SRV anymore.

My rythym too, it's part of my lack of focus, but I keep rythym for shit nowadays...it's like I've got the time, but I just don't have any UUMPH left in me to make it sing.

Idk if it's the drugs or what, but it's starting to piss me off, this lack of focus and motivation. I was foolish to rely on opiates for motivation in the first place LOL what a smart guy I am. Sometimes it's like a switch flips in my head and I play really good for 5 minutes, unitll I get distracted/interrupted etc, then I start telling myself how shitty that probably sounded (you know, like if I could just hear it unbiased like,,,as if somebody else were playing it, I would probably be like "man that guy plays like shit" like swapping a wet turd for a football, but when finally I do start tossing the pigskin, I get distracted and it nails me in the nose!)

I guess better I take a pigskin to the nose than a wet turd though...:\
 
Anyone wanna see my jimi hendrix - little wing intro cover

definitely man, love your vids

and now i'm to the point I've been playing the same handful of licks for the last 6 months man!

dude this is totally normal, seriously. progress comes in fits and starts. you'll stagnate for a while and all of a sudden make a bunch of progress really quickly and then stagnate again, repeat cycle ad infinitum. i think it's just the way it goes with any creative pursuit tbh

take some time off if you need to, let your brain reset, and come back with a new perspective. listen to music just for the enjoyment of it, i know it's easy to get into a rut where every time you listen to music you start thinking "how are they playing that?" and you stop really enjoying it. i mean music is for fun, if you're not enjoying it then there's no point.

and don't worry about "getting good", just play for the sake of playing. push yourself to improve when it feels good to do that, but don't beat yourself up if you stagnate. it's about the journey not the destination. love yourself and your music, we all have a unique style that's the product of all our musical experiences and even the actual physical composition of our muscles and nervous system. look inside yourself and find your own music.

:)
 
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I'd like to see that Lil' wing cover whenever your ready dan...I always use the SRV E-flat backing track for little wing because I have trouble finding a really good Hendrix-style backing track for it.

On Jimi's studio version I love how it has the bells in the beginning at the end of every other chord, but I haven't found a backing track of that caliber, for the Hendrix version, that I really like. The SRV E-flat backing track, however, I prefer because it's pretty long, and it has a pretty good bassline to it too. But I do prefer Hendrix's version of little wing all in all.

Thanks for the advice Roger & you, I've felt quite a bit better about the situation today, played for a good 2 hours, and played along with some music I've not heard for a year or 2(alman bros, merle haggard, etc).
I think that's the real problem is that I don't listen to nearly as much music now as I did when my "talent" erupted, so to speak..i was listening to music everyday, and lots of it, so it's really no surprise that when I start listening to music at a 10th of the frequency I used to, my own interpritations and uhhh...ya know creative drive or whatever plummeted.

I guess I just sort of built up a tolerance to those licks I practiced a shit ton, got bored with them. But now that I've been listening to more music and putting less pressure on myself to play like Hendrix Ray Page, well I just enjoy the music a lot more...like I used to even just a few months ago.
Just got into a rut I suppose, far too common these days..
 
Hell yeah, is it just me or do you have some fat ass strings on that strat lol?
They'll put a dent In your fingers, but they sound good..

Good covers though man...

I've been wanting to record some of my stuff, but I suck at dealing with cameras and shit so I'm thinking about purchasing a little 6-track or 8-track recorder...they got em pretty cheap (under 200$ on MF) and i'd like to hear what I sound like with some decent quality lol...

I'm gonna look into it anyways...

Strum all over the place...on the walls, the windows, the doorknob...strum everywhere! I'm gonna strum all over that pretty little slut! I'm gonna strum on her bridge, tremolo, and her tuning pegs, and i'm gonna strum all inside her input jack...yeahh!
 
Glad to see everybody's playin music and not on BL!
Playa's play on!
 
Thought I'd bump this - always good to chat to other musicians!

I've been playing for about 14 years now - mostly electric guitars (fender jags/mustang/jazzmaster + gibson SG), an acoustic I've had forever that has had 5 strings for the past year. And a banjo I have yet to master whatsoever....

I taught myself how to play mostly through every Nirvana song imaginable, which left me with a keen interest in dissonant noise as well as melodic chord progressions instead of technical prowess in terms of lighting fast arpeggios etc,

I have no interest in that whatsoever. Robotic movement can be achieved through persistence by pretty much anyone - however creating an original melody that touches people and conveys an emotion to them is a much harder feat IMO - so I tend to also subscribe to a theory that lyrics don't actually matter - it's how you sing them that does.

Look at Radiohead, does anyone really know what he's saying half the time, even Kurt Cobain or many other bigshots over the years - their words could be completely unintelligible but the feeling behind them and how they sang them was all you needed to know to understand what they meant.

That wouldn't work for someone like Leonard Cohen or Dylan - those guys are basically poets and their words are their world. Again, i don't feel i have any message that important to impart, but I think I have feelings that i know other people share and i'd like to get a connection based on that.

Ramblings, over.
 
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