Here's How to Figure Out Chords to 'The House of Rising Sun'
Dear Guitar Player, Two days ago I gave you some advice on how to pick out chords: -Tune up your guitar -Try to see if Am/Dm/E chords fit anywhere in the song -Don't spend time guessing hard chords - find out the easy ones first! -Find the key chord, and try chords 5 halftones up/down -Find a single note that fits somewhere in the whole verse - it might be the key. Today I'll guide you to figure out chords to 'The House of the Rising Sun' using Chord Pickout. Perhaps you already play this song, but it's a good example to show you some handy tricks. But before we start I need you to bear one thing in mind. The more you tune your ear to guess chords without the software, the more the software will be of help. As your ear becomes more musically trained, it becomes easier to memorize songs and play them. Software is a tool to help strengthen your ear when you don't know where to start. And, of course, it makes the overall process faster as it shows you the chords if you're not completely sure how to receive them by ear. So let's start. Firstly, open the song in Chord Pickout. After it loads, you'll see a blue sound wave with chords over it. Let's hit 'Play' and listen to the song. If you listen to the first 11 seconds or more, you may have a feeling that the same chord pattern repeats again and again. This might be true so let's check it out. Chord Pickout shows us the chords it thinks are being played. It shows the root note (ie 'A', 'C'), as well as the type (major, minor or seventh). At this stage, it won't distinguish majors from minors, so let's try to play the chords it shows both in major and minor. Take your guitar, and begin to try every chord the program shows us. On the recording I have, Chord Pickout displays this: 00:00 A A7 Cm Dm ----------------------------------------- 00:07 F A Am Em A Am Em E ----------------------------------------- The song starts, and we try A, then A7. Does it fit? Maybe it fits, but we should also try Am? Strum Am - and it fits! The song definitely starts with a minor chord. Once you hear this chord fit, no other chord suggestions are required as you'll be sure that the song starts with A minor. The next chord is Cm, but it has irregular fingering, and a composer will rarely play Cm after Am (especially if Am opens the song). If a song starts with Am (and remember what I said about 90% of pop/rock songs?), then most probably more easy chords will follow like D, E, or C. With this song, it looks like C will be a good fit! So rewind the song, play Am, and then C. Bingo! The next suggestion is Dm. But did you just hear that solemn sound of D major played in standard fingering? If you play a lot of guitar, you'll know that specific and unmistakable sound of D. It is the only chord that gives you the very feeling of something bright, clear, and optimistic. Play D, then any other chord, and you'll hear how the sound differs. And - it's sonic opposite - Dm is specifically despairing and sorrowful. Once you can spot the difference, you'll never confuse Dm with D. So the third chord is D. Rewind the song, play the sequence of Am - C - D that we've found, and discover how they fit the tune. Let's look again at the chords: 00:07 F A Am Em A Am Em E ----------------------------------------- Next is F - and obviously it is. After this it might be Am or A, but once we've got Am, it most likely won't be followed by A major. So play Am - C - D - F - Am from the start and see if it fits. What's next? Next might be Em, but first you should listen to it. The bold sound of E major can never be confused with Em! Play Em, then E as they differ drastically (in the standard tuning, of course). So it looks like we just figured out the whole intro! Here it is: Am - C - D - F - Am - E. The verse begins, and we hear that the chords repeat with little modification, which are now easy to figure out on your own. Just rely on the progression we picked out, and you'll easily find out the whole song. In the next lesson we'll find out the chords to a song that shot straight to the top of charts recently, 'Resistance' by Muse. Here is the download link to Chord Pickout if you missed it in the previous email: http://www.chordpickout.com/Download_Now Please feel free to let me know if anything in this email is of use, or if you have any suggestions. Best, Chord Pickout Team www.chordpickout.com
