Friday, December 12, 2008

ii-V7-I SWEEP ARPEGGIO

Oy, "ii--V7--I sweep arpeggio" sounds so-- so-- I don't know, like something you'd see on a guitar instruction site? Anyway, if I haven't lost you yet, here's a little gimmick you can use when you have a bunch of ii--V chord progressions in a row, as in the bridge of "Cherokee." It's loosely based on a riff Charlie Parker used on that tune, and apparently he showed it to a lot of young guys in the Jay McShann band, (note-- I have to check that reference-- at presstime I couldn't find the disc liner notes about it. ) because at that time (around 1940) a lot of young players didn't know what to play in a situation like that. This was an easy-to-remember lick that sounded hip, which makes it perfect for me.




I try to avoid sweep technique, for the most part, because I prefer the definition you get with a picked note. I like this idea, though, because it's utilitarian, and it shouldn't be too hard to segue from this into a more articulated line.

I've got it in C, in a couple different places, then I show how you can move it down a whole step pretty easily. The trickiest aspect is the stretches. If you use the tablature correctly, the places where you need to stretch should be obvious (i.e. a pulloff from 9th fret to 5th fret). I put the sweeps on the ascending arpeggios, and pick the descending ones.

A TIP FOR THE HIP-- I didn't put this in the notated example, but if you can start the lick on the "and" of 4, previous measure, and tie that eighth note to what I have written, it should sound more swinging.

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JUNIOR BARNARD GUITAR SOLO TRANSCRIPTION


Lester "Junior" Barnard is not only one of my favorite obscure guitarists, he's one of my favorite guitarists, period. Junior played with Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, notably on a classic series of radio transcriptions that have come to be known as the
"Tiffany Transcriptions." The Tiffany recordings were among the best work Wills ever did. Possibly because there were no record company weasels around to kill the mood, Wills and his band recorded in a looser, more raucous vein than most of his other studio dates. They rerecorded many Wills standards, along with the usual eclectic mix of pop, folk, blues, swing, and fiddle/dance material; these sides, bursting with great improvised solos and Wills humor, have the flavor of sitting on the floor at a private party.
Wills had many fine soloists in his western swing bands over the years, but even in that august company of redneck jazzmen Junior stands out. Blues had always been an influence on country music, since long before it was called "country," but Junior was one of the first country players to embrace the trashy distorted approach to blues.




www.karlstraubmusic.com/girl i left behind me junior solo.mp3

Some of the more rough-hewn r&b and blues players were cranking up their amps for a dirty sound in the 1940s, but this was still a pretty new phenomenon and Junior must have really sounded weird to the country audience. Along with the dirty blues sound, Junior had a strong sense of swing. The thing that makes him important to me as an influence is that he combined the trashy side of blues with articulation and timing that are jazz and country at the same time. He may be the first player that mixed the idioms up in quite that way-- although I don't know if Chuck Berry ever heard Junior play, there are some moments in Junior's work (especially on "Barnard Blues" ) that come pretty close to rock and roll. Berry was reportedly influenced by a Wills recording of "Ida Red;" I'm just not sure if he heard a version with Junior. You can hear the connection on Chuck's first single "Maybelline." Supposedly a lot of people, including some rockabilly musicians, heard this single on the radio and assumed Chuck was a redneck.

TIPS ON PLAYING THE TRANSCRIPTION

first two bars are seventh position, with one grace note slide from the sixth fret. (for discussion on position playing/fingering, see the post about perpetual motion etudes. ) 3rd bar is 8th position, with one tricky alternate fingering-- with index waiting to play B8, middle finger plays D8 and ring finger hammers D9. then shift into normal 8th position fingering. 4th bar is 10th position at first, try to use pinky for B12 and ring for G12, then reach back to G9 with index. slide on G string with middle finger to 11th fret-- you're now briefly in 10th position again. 5th bar slides with pinky to 15th fret-- dig into this note. Junior is playing out of a G shape at this point-- the 6th bar is Chuck Berry/B.B. King territory, sort of a bluesy but sweet sound-- major pentatonic, except that like blues players, Junior bends the B note slightly flat.
7th bar-- a bend and release, or "unbend" as like to call it. ( this in the middle of an otherwise Charlie Christian-type line!)
8th bar-- quarter notes. many novice players see a bar like that, especially when it's in the middle of a bunch of more complicated stuff, and tend to play it lazily. in fact, quarter notes can and should swing and they should definitely be played with gusto. (see the work of Thelonious Monk for more of this. ) Dig into those quarter notes-- Junior did. the two notes in the 9th bar were played with such energy that we can overlook the fact that the last note, a G sharp, was probably a wrong note. (I'd speculate that he was going for an A, the ninth of the chord. )

the second half of the solo features a Junior trademark-- double stops. (here's where you hear more Chuck Berry-esque sounds, and Merle Haggard has borrowed these licks from Junior). fingering is crucial with double stops. any time you have two adjacent strings with notes on the same fret, use your index finger as a mini-barre-- as in the first double stop, a major third interval. the next double stop, a minor third on the G and G strings, is middle and ring fingers. all of this should be played aggressively, once you have the fingering down. the next double stop, a minor third on the G and D strings, is played with index and ring.
the fingering from there should be more of the same. TIP ON ARTICULATION-- Junior digs in, often using a staccato approach that marks him as a country player. This generalization is too oversimplifying, but Junior digs in with a trashy amp sound (blues), swings(jazz), and uses staccato(country). when all of these elements are in place, he is literally in all three idioms at once, playing what Tommy Duncan calls "coal-mine choruses" in an often-quoted aside from the Tiffanys.

unfortunately, it's become very difficult and expensive to buy some of these Tiffany Transcription albums. (as far as I know, there are 10 volumes. ) I hope they come back in print, but in the meantime my friend Charlie McNamara says they are available on itunes.
(NOTE-- SINCE I WROTE THIS, THEY HAVE BECOME AVAILABLE AS A BOX SET ALSO.)



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Thursday, December 11, 2008

IMPROVISING COUNTERPOINT (TWO VOICES)

Warning! This improvised counterpoint business is not for the faint of heart! You need to know a bit of theory first-- you're going to be finding specific intervals on the neck, and if you don't know what that means, you're probably not ready for improvised counterpoint. However, there's no reason why you can't play the examples, and if you are gung ho to do this, you may be able to do it just from imitating what I've written, and skipping the remedial theory .

Counterpoint is two or more melodic lines moving simultaneously. The more independent they are, the more "contrapuntal" the effect. In the world of counterpoint, the stuff here is pretty basic-- but if you get the idea of this, you can do a hell of a lot with it. It will definitely help you with harmonizing a melody-- the kind of counterpoint I'm doing here is basically harmonizing a melody, but not harmonizing each note.





We'll be using two different approaches.
1. Two lines, both moving in quarter notes.
(this is not really counterpoint, it's just a harmonized line.)
2. Two lines, the primary line (either upper or lower) moving in quarter notes, the secondary line moving in half notes.
(this is a little more contrapuntal, but you still have one line in a subordinate role.)

Eventually, you can move on to
3. Two lines, moving as in #2, but the roles of primary and secondary switch back and forth.
but my examples are just #1 and #2.

We'll use simple major scale motion for the primary line. The secondary line will be formed by harmonizing with the primary line so that one of the following intervals is created--either 3rds and 6ths (either major or minor), or the compound intervals you get by adding an octave to those (10ths and 13ths). If you use the same interval each time, the lines sound less independent. If you vary the intervals, you get a more contrapuntal effect. It can sound good either way. (Incidentally, if you are operating diatonically, i.e. using just the major scale, each note will require either a major or minor interval to fit the key. If you pick the one that is not in the key, it might still sound good, so experiment. In my examples here, I'm sticking with diatonic notes.)

PLEASE NOTE: I HAVEN'T PUT RECORDED EXAMPLES HERE YET, I'LL GET TO IT EVENTUALLY.


NOTE ON THE WRITTEN EXAMPLES.
The examples all have the same top line. The first series of examples is two lines moving with the same rhythms, with the same interval throughout. The next series is half notes against quarter notes, with the same interval throughout. After that you have half notes against quarter notes, but varying the intervals. There are many other combinations than the ones here, and you should be able to figure out some other ways to put it all together.

If you work through all of these, you may find yourself experimenting with a different melody, or treating the bottom line as the primary and making the top line the harmony part. My examples are just to get your feet wet; by the time you can play all the examples, you'll probably be stumbling onto some variations. After playing some counterpoint exercises I got from John C. McCain, I found myself improvising in this vein. I suspect that anyone who puts in a lot of time with the examples here will figure out how to take it to the next level. For me, the various intervals and fingerings became familiar after a while, and my fingers started gravitating to them. There are a lot of other places on the neck to play these ideas; these examples are just to get your feet wet. If you know what thirds and sixths are, it will help you to find more of them on different string sets. ( I ended many of the examples with an octave, to suggest the ending of a phrase . You can use octaves if you want to stop the motion of the line.)

(NOTE-- if anyone wants some information about intervals, there should be plenty of theory sites . If anyone is itching to have ME explain it, please leave a comment! )


Try to keep the secondary line ringing when you change the primary note. In some cases, this will create a momentary dissonance. You may not like some of these dissonances-- I recommend being able to play the examples with the notes in the secondary line held for full value, and by the time you are able to do that well you may be used to the dissonant sound. Once you develop the technique of holding one line ringing while the other moves, you can choose whether to cut those notes off or not.

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Wednesday, December 10, 2008

BACH COUNTERPOINT EXERCISE

www.karlstraubmusic.com/BACH COUNTERPOINT.mp3


This little gem comes courtesy of guitar guru John C. McCain (no relation to the Senator). It's an excerpt from J.S.Bach's Minuet in D minor, from his Anna Magdalena Notebook. John took this from the first three bars of Bach's original piece and arranged it for guitar. John's arrangement is the first example in open position. I have refingered it so it can be played all over the neck, and the second two examples show closed position versions in D minor. The first closed position example is on a lower set of strings than John's open position version; the second follows his string sets an octave higher. The last example is the first closed position example, but transposed to G minor. Both of these closed position versions can be played all over the neck. The same fingerings can be used for all twelve keys, although some keys might be awkward or impossible on guitars without a cutaway. To put them in any key you want, find the tonic note of your new key on the A string, or D string, and then use the same fingerings as in my examples.




a few fingering tips-- in the open position, d minor, first bar-- ring finger on A, middle finger on E, pinky on D, ring on C#. this enables you to shift the middle/ring doublestop up a fret in the beginning of the next bar.

first moveable version-- same place in the music. ring/pinky for first doublestop, middle to C#, enabling you to shift ring/middle up to next fret in the second bar, and then index takes the next note.

second moveable version-- the same fingerings, more or less, as the open version should work. Index barre in the first measure enables you to hold the tonic note while the upper voice moves.

full disclosure-- i played these examples with a pick and fingers hybrid approach.

You can find music by John C. McCain at his myspace page.www.myspace.com/johncmccain


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Tuesday, December 9, 2008

FRETBOARD BLIND SPOTS

THIS IS AN INCOMPLETE (AND TEMPORARY) POST. eventually i will put up info about using the "CAGED" system to learn how to play in all positions on the guitar. I'm putting it off for two reasons--
1. it's going to be a pain in the ass to put it together for you
2. most of my students get bored with this topic, and don't put the time in necessary to use this information.



if those two excuses don't scare you away, please post a comment! I'll tell you this much for now-- being able to play all over the neck is essential for a serious player. many of my posted lessons assume you have some notion of this. if you don't, then reading tablature or notation anywhere but the first few frets will be MUCH harder than it should be. if i get some feedback about this from people eager for me to write about it, i'll get on it.

thanks!
karl

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Friday, December 5, 2008

PERPETUAL MOTION ETUDES

All contents copyright Karl Straub 2008.
www.karlstraubmusic.com/perpetual motion etudes 1-10.cpr.mp3
These are eighth-note studies that can be repeated as an endless loop, hence the use of the term "perpetual motion." i recommend playing them individually, ten times in a row without a break, once you can do that with no mistakes. until you can play an etude without error, you should break it into smaller pieces, practicing each piece in sets of ten until you eventually work up to playing the entire study multiple times with good sound and no mistakes.

These etudes can improve your technique in several ways. As a bonus, i have incorporated stylistic elements from a variety of idioms, including country, jazz, flatpicking, rhythm and blues, western swing, rockabilly, etc. the player using these etudes can develop musical vocabulary along with technique, extending his/her ability to improvise solos and fills.




HOW THESE ETUDES CAN IMPROVE YOUR TECHNIQUE


these studies are designed to develop your technique in the same way that repetitive physical exercise develops muscles. playing a musical instrument is challenging because it requires efficient use of physical and mental capacity. the sheer number of things to be learned, along with the repetitive practice required for mastery, can quickly lead to an overwhelming amount of time spent each day. even the most dedicated practicer will find it difficult to maintain a consistent practice schedule.
these studies are designed to get a variety of results even when only limited practice time is available. they develop technique in both right and left hands, as well as giving the player insights into issues such as playing in closed (up the neck) positions as well as open, playing in a various keys, position shifting, fingering, and alternate picking- all essential for advanced guitar playing.

THESE ETUDES CAN TAKE YOUR PLAYING TO "THE NEXT LEVEL," AND ARE ALSO USEFUL AS WARMUP EXERCISES.

my original goal in creating these etudes was to give myself a large amount of challenging material i could play repetitively, as a way of warming up my technique in a short time. they are excellent warmups for the player who has already achieved some basic facility with alternate picking, position playing, etc.
for the player who needs help with facility, any of these etudes on its own can help in the following ways.

RIGHT HAND TECHNIQUE


i recommend playing these studies with alternate picking, i.e. a consistent alternation of down and upstrokes. because all the etudes are eighth notes exclusively, you can begin a measure with a down pick, play the next note with an up pick, and continue alternating with each pick stroke. alternate picking takes a lot of concentration, and a lot of practice! when i first tried to learn it, it took a huge amount of work. at the time, i was a fairly lazy and unfocused musician, and learning alternate picking was by by far the greatest challenge i'd ever had as a player. trust me when i say it's worth the effort-- although alternate picking isn't the only good picking method, i believe it's the most versatile and neglecting to learn it will slow down your development enormously.
even if alternate picking is the only thing you get out of these etudes, it will be worth the time.
play with movement primarily in your wrist --- try to keep a loose wrist, and avoid arm movement as this can create stiffness and keep you from developing. make sure your wrist is ALWAYS RELAXED.

the etudes can be played with each note picked, for a great alternate picking workout. some of them include recommended pulloffs and hammer-ons for some notes. i put these slurs in where i thought they made the line sound better, but ultimately the etudes can be played with or without the slurs-- they're good for your technique either way. if the slurs make it hard for you to play an exercise, leave them out, or practice the slurs by themselves until they become easier.

LEFT HAND TECHNIQUE


some of these etudes can be played all in one position, i.e. in a four-fret span where each left hand finger is responsible for the notes on one of the four frets. others require shifting position one or more times. occasionally one finger has to shift or stretch "out of position," which means you are mostly in a four-fret span but notes not in the position require a momentary adjustment. i used to stretch rather than shift, believing that keeping my hand in position as much as possible made it easier to keep track of where i was on the fingerboard. eventually i came to prefer shifting my whole hand in a relaxed way to reach a note outside of the position. try both methods and find the one that works for you.

try to keep left hand fingers coming down straight onto the fingerboard as much as possible. my college teacher Gerry Kunkel always hounded us to keep our fingers "up on the tips," and i advise that as well.

TECHNICAL TIPS FOR THESE ETUDES

1. first bar-- first position, with open strings.this means index 1st fret, middle 2nd, ring 3rd. shift to second position for the pulloff from pinky to index finger. use the open G string to give yourself time to move the pinky and index, getting them ready for the pulloff. use next open note to shift back to first position.
2. four fret span, fifth position (this means the fifth fret is index finger, sixth fret is middle, seventh is ring, and eighth is pinky. ) no stretching or shifting needed, but you have to use the pinky for two notes in a row on different strings. try the rolling technique-- rather than lift the pinky and moving to the E string, keep it on the tip for the B string note, then "roll" it onto its side to get the E string note. this rolling techique takes getting used to, but helps keep passages like this smooth.
3.second position. use index for second fret, middle for third, and ring for fourth.
4.first bar is 9th position. second bar is tenth position. make this shift by moving index over while ring finger is on G11(G string, 11th fret. ) once you've made the shift, keep hand relaxed. shift back for repeats by moving index back to 9th fret. the key to this kind of shifting is to relax your hand while you do it.
5. begin with ring finger, shift (during open string) to index on E3. stay in this position (3rd) for first bar. second bar shifts to first position, with index on first fret, etc.
6.entire line is 3rd position, except last three notes which are in 2nd position.
7.entire line in second position, index second fret and ring fourth fret. middle finger used for only one note-- low E3.
8.2nd position, nothing tricky.
9. first bar is second position--index 2nd, ring 4th, until D3, played with ring. you're now in first position-- index on 1st, etc. second hammer-on should hammer to index on 2nd fret--now you're back in second position.
10.all first position. this is a pinky workout. try not to let your pinky pop high off the string and back into your hand when it's not being used.

NOTE ON MY RECORDING: I played these etudes pretty mechanically, in the hope they would be easier to hear that way. Keep in mind that most of them really come alive with accents and phrasing derived from fiddle tunes, or more modern kinds of "country swing," hillbilly boogie, rockabilly, etc. It seems to me that much of those more modern fifties and sixties styles of phrasing are descendents of the fiddle tune kind of phrasing, but I'm going to have to think about that for a while, and try to figure out how to present some examples at some point.

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TWILIGHT ZONE THEME


www.karlstraubmusic.com/twilight zone.mp3
I've always wanted to be able to play the legendary "Twilight Zone" lick, and I've fooled around with it since I was a teenager. I finally decided to figure it out for real. it turns out I had it pretty close as a teen, but not exactly right--

(NOTE: see comment for one visitor's correction to my rhythmic notation. I haven't had time to check what he's saying to any great extent, but he could well be right. I maintain that his suggestion that the composition really begins on the "and" of 4 may be correct, but since the accents are on that first note, it's hard to hear it as a pickup, and if you play it as written here it will sound correct, regardless of Marius Constant's original intention. I hope I've understood his comment correctly, but I'm certainly willing to hear more about it if he wants to comment further.) TIPS-- I've written it out as two guitar parts, because that's presumably the way it was played originally. it can be played by one player, though, and it sounds good but you have to tweak your guitar a bit to play it in the same key as the show.

tune your two highest strings, B and E, up a half step to C and F. (this enables you to play both parts at once. if you try to play both parts in standard tuning, there's a note that's off the guitar neck. at least on my guitar it is! if you have 22 frets you can play what i have written, in standard tuning, but all of it one fret higher. you also have the option of not retuning, and playing as written, but it will be one key lower than the show. many of you may say, as i would have in my lazier early days, that it's not worth the effort. it really does sound better in the same key as the show, though. you'll also have to play the G string note one fret LOWER if you play it in standard tuning. in the end, I think it's easier to do it with the retuning. )

once you get the retuning out of the way, and puzzle out where the 17th fret is, etc. it's time to think about how the parts fit together. the trick is to play the top part in quarters and the bottom part in eighths. i play it with pick for the bottom line (eighths) and ring finger for the top line (quarters). this means you hold the top notes as long as two notes of the bottom part. this was the detail I missed when i tried to learn it years ago-- I was playing all of it as eighths, and if you do that it's almost right, but not quite.

INCIDENTAL MUSIC

I threw these in for fun, because I heard them on the dvd while I was trying to find the main theme of the show.
the first of the two is two double stops-- not too tricky as long as you use the right fingering. try left hand index and pinky for the first double stop, and middle and ring for the second. (I'm again using pick and ring finger. You could use thumb and finger if you want-- it will sound a little different.) this is a relatively simple example of a George Van Eps or Jimmy Wyble type contrapuntal fingering situation. (lest I appear pretentious by dropping their names, I'll admit that while I have tried some of their exercises, I'm pretty much in the kindergarten stage with their stuff. Still, I dipped into it far enough to have an easier time with the Twilight Zone lick. )

the second is a single note line-- use extreme muting, and observe the odd fingering where the last three notes are just moving the pinky up one fret at a time. originally I tried it with a more efficient fingering, playing those notes on different strings, but it somehow didn't have the right sinister quality.

A LITTLE THEORY AS TO WHY THE TWILIGHT ZONE MUSIC SOUNDS SO CREEPY


the three main kinds of dissonant intervals are whole step (two frets away), half step (one fret away), and tritone (the equivalent of six frets away). although my composition and theory teachers would shake their heads at my oversimplifying here, dissonance is when two or more notes together sound a little off, even wrong. this doesn't necessarily mean bad-- I like to think of dissonance as a strong spice rather than a rank smell-- but these kinds of dissonances would be out of place in a catchy pop song, or a nursery rhyme. the Twilight Zone theme has all three of these dissonances, and basically just alternates between them. there's more to the theme than just this little excerpt, but this is the guitar part-- everyone knows this part, and it sounds good by itself.

the first short incidental lick is a whole step dissonance followed by the more consonant (or the more musical, to the narrow-minded) interval of a major third. the alternating of the two intervals causes an appealing tension and release effect. It's interesting to listen to the contrast between this short idea and the more famous "theme" lick, which is all tension and no release.

My research says that the famous theme was composed by Marius Constant. He may have written these other two short "cues", as well. Bernard Herrmann and others also wrote music for the show, so the authorship of these short excerpts is not clear to me from the stuff I read online, but here's the link.
(Another tantalizing tidbit-- according to one source I found online, Howard Roberts was the session cat who played the TZ theme.)
www.classicthemes.com/50sTVThemes/themePages/twilightZone.html
for a relatively sane presentation of Twilight Zone info, see Sci-Fi.com website http://www.scifi.com/twilightzone/gallery/
index.php


if you feel comfortable with a much more obsessive Twilight Zone experience, check out http://www.twilightzone.org/index2.html (the episode index is really demented.)

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HANK WILLIAMS INTRO IN TWELVE KEYS

Here's Bob McNett's great guitar intro from Hank Williams's "Mind Your Own Business." I've transcribed the original (key of E) and written it out in all twelve keys, in the circle of fourths order. (E, A, D, G, C, F, Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb, B)

I've positioned it on the guitar to avoid open strings, although I think the original used some open strings. This was to make the fingerings transferable. The second half of the intro uses the same fingerings and string sets in each key, the first half I wrote out mostly coming off the G string, but once or twice I put it coming off the B string. This will give you two ways to do it, if you want. They sound slightly different.

Aside from the benefits of playing in the fifties country style, playing the same intro in twelve keys has numerous advantages. Playing through exercises like this is the best way to learn how to play in different keys, and how to transpose an idea to a different key without changing fingerings. I recommend playing them in the circle of fourths order, which helps you memorize how to find keys quickly. If you find yourself memorizing the fingerings (this should happen if you practice all the keys) make sure you always know what key you're playing in.





I talk a bit more about this intro in another post, on yet another blog that's even less developed than this one. here's the link.
karlstraubcountryguitar.blogspot.com/2008/12/hank-williams-lead-guitar.html
here's a website with info about Hank's great band the Drifting Cowboys.
www.angelfire.com/ny3/thedriftingcowboys/
(incidentally, that's where I picked up the fact that Bob McNett played this guitar intro. If anyone thinks it was played by someone else, they should comment here and I'll investigate.)

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GUITAR DUET INTRO, "WOULDN'T IT BE NICE"


www.last.fm/music/The+Beach+Boys/_/Wouldn't+It+Be+Nice+(stereo+mix)

here's a transcription of the guitar duet intro to Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys's classic "Wouldn't It Be Nice." aside from being a stellar piece of music, the high part (guitar 1 in the transcription) is a great picking exercise for both hands. sort of like my perpetual motion etudes, except of course much better. both guitar parts are way up above the 12th fret, but the top part is written an octave below where it should be, with the designation 8va up. this means play an octave higher, but it's written this way to make it easier to read. (it's always wise to avoid leger line "snow blindness" if you can.)





TIPS--
guitar one--
first bar is all in 14th position.
2nd bar, reach up with pinky for the high B note, ring for G 17, index, pinky, ring, index, pinky, then reach down with index to move back to old position on last note of the bar.
3rd bar, same as 1st.
4th, middle on G13, then index, pinky, index, middle, pinky, index, middle.

guitar two all in 12th position.

IMPORTANT
-- the eighth notes here should be played in the manner of "swing eighths," which is the way jazz musicians generally interpret eighths. the feel here is not exactly swing, but it's sort of a stiffer kind of swing. the first of a pair of eighths should be interpreted as two eighth note triplets tied together, and the second of the pair is a single eighth note triplet. the attack should also be extremely clean, and I recommend alternate picking-- each pair of eighths is played with a downpick followed by an uppick. listening to the Beach Boys recording is essential here.

historical note-- the guitarists listed for the session, according to the notes in the Pet Sounds box, were Jerry Cole, Barney Kessel, Bill Pitman, and Ray Pohlman. if anyone out there knows which guy played which part, I'd love to hear about it. (if you're reading this, Pete Kennedy, get right on it!)

if you're looking for Pet Sounds info, check out this blog, which even includes podcasts about Pet Sounds.
http://petsounds40.blogspot.com/

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