Reply to "Bruce's guitar tuning"

OK so here it is then:

Drop the 6th string down to C. Drop the 5th string down to G. Capo the 2nd fret. All fretting relative to the second fret capo.

X = muted string (don't play)
O = open string
number = fretted string

X - O - O - O - O - X (call this chord 1)
"Spanish Johhny ....

O - O - 2 - O - 1 - O (call this chord 2)
"drove in, from the ..."

2 - 2 - O - 2 - 3 - O (call this chord 3)
"underworld last night"

And you can figure out the rest from there. The whole song is basically these three chords.

The single note intro phrase is not that hard to figure out. It's basically a bass note on the 6th string that rings while the melody is played on the 2nd and 3rd strings. To start, Bruce frets the 6th string at 7 and starts the melody on the 2nd string at 5th fret, then slides down to the 3rd fret. There's easier ways to play it, but that's how he does it. Then the phrase continues on the 3rd string, the notes are: 4th fret, 2nd fret, open. A nice sounding chord at the end of the phrase is the 6th string fretted at 4, and 3rd string at 2/open/2/open/2 to 2nd string open. Then repeat that whole phrase again, but instead of going to the 6th string 4th fret thing, go to the "2" chord described above. WHile playing teh single notes, you can strum the open strings around the fretted string to fill out the sound. It's much harder to verbally explain than it is to play.

Then throughout the song Bruce does some hammer-ons and pull-offs here and there to add color to his voicings. To be honest, at least on the 1st time he played it live, you can see him fumbling the chords a little bit here and there, he just kinda fakes it and sings over the changes. But that goes back to his "musicianship" vs. his guitar playing. Everyone is so mesmermized by the performance and his emotion in it that they don't even realize he's fucking up.

Hope this helps you budding "acoustic Incident players" out there!