HOW TO PLAY THIS MONTH’S SONGS By Jimmy Brown
“RUNNING ON EMPTY”Jackson Browne
THIS SIGNATURE JACKSON Browne song, recorded live with his band in 1977, features the combined use of three different tunings — standard, open A and open E (transposed up a perfect 4th) — which together create a rich bed of harmony, along with the piano, bass and lead and background vocals.
Browne (Gtr. 1) plays the song in open A tuning (low to high: E, A, E, A, C#, E), using mostly one-finger barre chords and a Keith Richards-style move for D/A that includes a rich-sounding “bonus add9” color tone on the 1st string. Meanwhile, fellow electric guitarist Danny Kortchmar performs the song in standard tuning (Gtr. 2), using stock major and minor chord grips and voicings that fill out the arrangement nicely, in conjunction with Craig Doerge’s piano chords and Leland Sklar’s bass line. Kortchmar also adds tasty, well-timed single-note fills, such as during bars 27, 28 and 52, that complement Browne’s vocal melody without competing with it for attention.
D a v i d L i n d l e y t o p s off this classic performance with beautiful complementary chord voicings, melodic fills and sweetly singing slide licks, which he performs on a lap steel in an open E-voiced tuning that he transposed up a perfect 4th, to A (low to high: A, E, A, C#, E, A). Tuning a conventionally strung electric guitar this high is impractical and inadvisable, due to the excessive string tension and resulting stress on the neck. And so we’ve arranged this part (labeled Gtr. 3) for electric guitar in open E tuning (low to high: E, B, E, G#, B, E), with a capo at the 5th fret. When playing this transposing part, keep in mind that, as is always the case when using a capo, all chord shapes and tablature positions are relative to the capo, as if it were the nut, or “zero” fret. Thus, every note here is actually five frets higher than written. This “+5” transposition can be tricky to keep track of in the higher positions, such as during the solos at sections D and G, where Lindley soars high up the neck on his top three strings. But with practice and familiarity, you’ll soon get used to thinking “17” whenever you see “12” and “22” when you see “17.”
“BEST OF YOU”Foo Fighters
ONE OF THE Foo Fighters’ biggest hits, this jangly alternative rock song from 2005 is built around a handful of 2nd-position chord shapes, all of which share the open B and high E strings as droning common tones, which add a rich textural shimmer to the voic
