Jan 28, 2012 | Guitar Tabs |
The song that everyone’s been waiting for, just in time for the end of January when the Xmas season is so far away not a soul wants to think of it. “Brothers” isn’t in any way a holiday song, but those unfamiliar with the movie you’ll find it in should head over here and start reading. I’ll take anyone in a battle royale to the cold, grueling death over whether there’s a better Emmet Otter song. (“Riverbottom Nightmare Band” fans I’m looking in your directions.)
I’m not the sort of guitar player who does well with riffs and ditties, particularly in folksy/bluegrass/jugband genres. But lemme try to get the opener down to give you an idea:
e-----------5-3-|------------|
B-------5-------|-3-3-3-5---:|
G-5-7-5---5-----|---------5--|
F
How much alike we are! Perhaps we're long-lost brothers?
G7
We even think the same! You know, there may be others.
Am C/G C/A C/Bb C/B
We can always use a friend.
Am G G7 Gadd6 Gadd5
This family just keep growing! This family doesn't have to end!
C
Brothers!
C
Brothers!
Verse 2:
So many things to learn! But we'll enjoy each lesson.
Problems don't worry us when half the fun is guessin'.
Live a lifetime of surprise.
We'll all become musicians, and leave the wonder in their eyes.
Brothers!
Brothers!
Then there’s a fancier ditty than the one that opens the song and a kind of G7-C ending. Note the ways the notes walk up and then down in the chorus.
Nov 14, 2011 | Guitar Tabs |
This is the bleakest song I’ve heard since “Tom Traubert’s Blues” maybe. From what little I know, Charles Latham is from DC and now lives in Philly (via London). If I had the book with me, I’d quote in advance of the song I’m about to tab from Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs, which in addition to being all-over incredible has a bit about tragedy as a luxury for the happy, healthy, and generally well-off. Much of my love for this song comes from its role as a kind of check or reminder, and needing such a thing’s a pretty nice position to be in. But at any rate that book’s in my campus office and I’m on my couch for the time being. (more…)
Jul 10, 2011 | Guitar Tabs |
Not even the lyrics for this one is anywhere online. A new-ish band. Another track from the inimitable Steve May, whose 8track.com mixes should be part of your daily music regimen.
The song’s in irritating Bb major, so do what I do and capo up a fret. All chords below are relative to the capo. If you’re not playing along with the music then just play whatever. Of course you know this. I’m not trying to tell you how to play your instrument. And once again, there are lyrics below that I’ve assuredly misheard. Mr. Withered Hand: the last time I did this, Vic Godard himself came onto my blog and posted the correct lyrics to his song (though he missed a verse…). I welcome you to rise to the challenge.
(more…)
Jun 7, 2011 | Music |
My mom when I was seven or so bought from a friend or coworker an upright piano. They put it at the top of the stairs. I guess she learned how to play it when she was young. Sang in the choir. Was proud of her musical background and hoped, the idea was, to instill this in her kids. Shani, the eldest, was probably a lost cause, already into her teen years by then.
But Jenny and I, we ate it up. The piano came with a ton of instructional books in the bench, most of them from the early-to-middle part of the twentieth century. Our friends the Soltyses up the street had an upright, too, and their bench was filled with books that had sheet music for current TV theme songs. I learned to play the “Cheers” theme by myself, though I feel like Jenny learned it before I did and was better at mastering it.
At any rate, the first song I ever taught myself to play with both hands at once—and if you want your children to learn how to read music, put a bunch of early-level piano instruction manuals in your piano and keep those idiots bored to tears on summer afternoons—was this one, “Swans on the Lake”, from the John Thompson instruction manual. I’m pretty sure it’s Grade I of a V-grade series.
Here are the lyrics, which until I found them online had only sketchily been running through my head all day:
Stately as princes the swans part the lilies and glide,
under the willows.
Are they enchanted men soon to be free again here,
under the willows?
Oh how I would like to be
here when the fairy wand
touches the leader and
changes his looks!
Would he be handsome and brave as the heroes that live
hidden in my fairy books?
It’s a dumb song, right? But in many ways it’s my ur-song. And if you know me, go ahead and Freud-up the whole thing to say A-ha! No wonder! and we’ll call it a late-spring’s eve.
