I learned this song and recorded the guitar backing for this video recently and I would like to share the guitar chords with you, and also promote the youtube videos that I used to learn the song.
So for this version, I transposed the guitar chords up 4 semitones (up 4 frets) so that it fitted the vocalist’s range.
Below are the untransposed chords for the original version. As they are all barre chords, they were easy to move up 4 frets without a capo. There are no chords shown for the instrumental part, as this is skipped.
This song has been written as an educational piece for Drums, Guitar, Bass and Ukulele. I made it for my students to learn and I am sharing it online for everyone else too. I created the piece in Guitar Pro 7, which is a great way to learn and practice this because you can mute insruments and change the speed and even change parts if you like.
This blues song is played straight, without swing. There are drum beats and fills in the piece in keeping with the blue style. You could solo the drums and bass on it’s own to practice locking in with the bass – making sure the bass drum syncs up with the bass guitar when ever they are played together.
12 Bar Blues
The pattern of the 12 bar blues usually follows a pattern of chord changes. The pattern of bars where the main chord changes are is this: 4,2,2,1,1,1,1.
The pattern below is clearer. It uses roman numerals to show which chord in the diatonic chord sequence that is being used.:
I / / /
IV / I /
V IV I V
Lyrics
I wrote this song originally for just the instruments, but I thought it would be good to write some lyrics in case there are any singers out there that would like to sing along too. I have a rough idea of how it would go in my head, but I’m no singer, so you’re on your own!
VERSE 1
The sun shines through the window
And I’m stuck inside the house
It’s half past 1 in the afternoon,
And the day is going fast
I’m tryin to make things work
I’m tryin to make things rhyme,
But there’s harder times ahead,
And I’m running out of time.
I can’t see when this will end
All my plans are on their head
But the sun keeps shining through
Takin’ away those blues
VERSE 2
The sun shines through the window
And I’m stuck inside the house
It’s half past 2 in the afternoon,
And the day is going fast
I’m tryin to make things work
I’m tryin to make things rhyme,
But there’s harder times ahead,
And I’m running out of time.
I can’t see when this will end
All my plans are on their head
But the sun keeps shining through
Takin’ away those blues
VERSE 3
The sun shines through the window
And I’m stuck inside the house
It’s half past 3 in the afternoon,
And the day is going fast
I’m going to make things work
I’m going to make things rhyme,
But there’s harder times ahead,
And I’m running out of time.
I can’t see when this will end
All my plans are on their head
But the sun keeps shining through
Takin’ away those blues
About the lyrics
This song and it’s lyrics were written during the Covid-19 corona virus and it’s about having your job taken away and having to rebuild and adapt before you get into financial trouble. Many people will be in this situation with governments being very slow to offer financial support. I hope learning and playing this song can give some enjoyment to people in this strange time of crisis.
Send in videos of you playing this song
I will add your videos to this page if you record yourself playing it. Please get in contact.
The Buy Now button will take you to the product page. There you can download a free 9 page preview by clicking the ‘Preview’ link at the top right of the cover image.
3. Contents
4. Introduction
5. Scales & Arpeggios: Grade 3 – Fretboard Shapes
6. Grade 3 Scales in G
7. Grade 3 Scales in A
8. Grade 3 Scales in B
9-10. B minor pentatonic scale exercises (8th notes)
11 . Grade 3 Arpeggios in A, B and G (major & minor)
12-13. Arpeggio Chord Progressions
14. Notes on the Fretboard for Grade 3+
15. Grade 3 barre chord shapes
16. Part 1 – grade 3 barre chord progression exercises
17. Part 2 – grade 3 barre chord progression exercises
18. 12 bar blues solo in G
19. Guitar Solo in Gm
20. 12 bar blues solo in A
21. Fallout Guitar Solo in Em
22-23. Grade 3 Chords, Scales and Arpeggios Exercises
24. Grade 4 barre chord shapes
25. Part 1 – grade 4 barre chord progression exercises
26. Part 2 – grade 4 barre chord progression exercises
27-29. B minor pentatonic scale exercises (8ths, triplets and 16th notes)
30-32. Grade 4 Chords, Scales and Arpeggios Exercises
33. Songwriting Cheat Sheet
Introduction
Guitar teachers can print the book or single sheets for their students.
Guitarists can teach themselves following on from a strong basic foundation in reading and playing
Guitarists that want to build up a foundation in the core aspects of Grade 3-4.
About the book
This Grade 3-4 ebook is a compilation of almost 9 years of preparation work teaching guitar. I have included guitar lesson sheets that I have prepared and revised many times over the 9 years to be the best they can be for use with my lessons.
To create the book I selected only the best sheets from my selection of many more that I created for teaching with. I printed them all out and arranged them into a coherent order. Finally, I created and modified a few more just to make the book run smoothly.
I have included only the sheets, rather than add lots of teaching text you might normally find in tuition books. This is partly to limit the amount of pages for those printing, and also to give teachers using the books freedom to put their own take on the lesson sheets. Personally when I get a tuition book for myself, I tend to go straight to the exercises. This will probably make it harder for self taught players, so to anyone getting stuck reading the book I would recommend giving it a go and if you get stuck, research how to read the parts you struggle with. There are plenty of youtube videos out there and help articles that you will find to help. Sometimes youtube videos lack sheet music and written parts, so you should be able to use this book alongside these popular methods of learning, if you are not learning with a teacher.
Guitar teachers can use this ebook as a guide for their own teaching. These are the core parts of grade 3-4 but it does not nearly cover every aspect of these levels, so you can dip in and out of this book with your teaching. Let the book provide a fundamental knowledge to the student and loosely give structure and a guide to your teaching and allow yourself to go off on tangents as you and the students move through the book. The key thing here is to tailor your teaching to the students, because they’re all different and will require different paths to explore their own style and learning experience.
Each topic in the book is briefly covered. There is much more depth you could go into, and this is encouraged. So far, I have already released another ebook that works more on rhythms with barre chords in chord progressions at grade 3-4 level called 10 Group Chord Exercise Sheets – Grades 1-4.
The chords used in these 5 chord progressions are Em, G, Am, Bm, C, D. You could play them as is, by strumming each chord once, or you can improvise strumming patterns to fit with the timing of the music, to work on your rhythm playing.
5 chord progressions in the key of C major. For grade 5 level, play barre chords for all of the chords, as you would in the RGT grade 5, which includes chords from grades 3-5.
You can improvise your own rhythms and you could also try various tempo and dynamic changes.
This printable PDF is a nice looking printout of the 4 main barre chord shapes you need to learn for Grade 3 guitar.
Each shape is moveable, so with these 4 shapes, you are able to play any major or minor barre chord on the guitar. For example, play the first major shape on fret 3 of the E string, and that will be G major, because the root note will be on G. The root note for each chord is shown on the sheet as black circles. So, if you want to play a C minor barre chord, use the bottom right chord on the sheet (the minor shape with the root on the A string) and match up the root note with fret 3.
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