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Originally Posted By: Julius
I can't ever remember an instance of him using anything other than a standard tuning. He might have used a drop D for a couple of songs during the Joad tour, but nothing jumps out at me.


Wow, dude I hope you're being sarcastic. Either that or you're not much of a musician/guitar player. I'd bet more than 2/3rds of all the stuff Bruce plays on acoustic uses alternate tunings. You can PLAY all the songs in standard tunings, but if you want the exact chord voicings that Bruce uses, you need alternate tunings.
Originally Posted By: DisplayName

Wow, dude I hope you're being sarcastic. Either that or you're not much of a musician/guitar player. I'd bet more than 2/3rds of all the stuff Bruce plays on acoustic uses alternate tunings. You can PLAY all the songs in standard tunings, but if you want the exact chord voicings that Bruce uses, you need alternate tunings.


Not necessarily true. Really good guitar players can play songs in standard tuning and make it sound verryy exotic. Take JT for instance.

one,two,three,four.........

Originally Posted By: jomuam
Originally Posted By: DisplayName

Wow, dude I hope you're being sarcastic. Either that or you're not much of a musician/guitar player. I'd bet more than 2/3rds of all the stuff Bruce plays on acoustic uses alternate tunings. You can PLAY all the songs in standard tunings, but if you want the exact chord voicings that Bruce uses, you need alternate tunings.


Not necessarily true. Really good guitar players can play songs in standard tuning and make it sound verryy exotic. Take JT for instance.


Problem #1 with your post is that you presume that Bruce belongs in the category of really good guitar players. Bizzz false.

Second, I don't care how good you are, you can't make the low E string play a D or C WITHOUT tuning it down.

Third, well, you're just wrong.
I would never piss on Bruce's musicianship. Just his acoustic guitar playing. There's simply nothing special or terribly original about it. The strength of Bruce's craft is in his songwriting and his performance. He accompanies himself on the guitar appropriately for what he's trying to do, and it works for him because the people who go ga ga over him don't really care that he's not a guitar virtuoso. I know I don't.

Dude you gotta let go of the Drop D. If you really think you know what you're talking about, go play learn to play The Line on acoustic, LIKE BRUCE PLAYS IT. Yes, as I've said before, you CAN play the song in a standard tuning (or maybe your beloved drop D), but to get the REAL voicings that Bruce uses, you HAVE to use an alternate tuning. I know because I once sat down and figured it out back when Tom Joad came out. I'm almost certain the tuning he uses is an open chord voicing, as many of his later acoustic songs use.

Just to prove a point, I actually spent a few minutes watching the Youtube videos of the recent acoustic Incident performances with my guitar in my lap. Here's the tuning Bruce uses:

C - G - D - G - B - E

And then a capo on the 2nd fret.

Drop D my ass.
Originally Posted By: ralfsturm
Originally Posted By: DisplayName

C - G - D - G - B - E
And then a capo on the 2nd fret.


Big thanks! That's how he plays the acoustic "Born to run" (1988) too?


You're welcome. Once you get tuned up, the song basically uses four chord shapes. Since the tuning is altered, the chord names are obviously different, but the the main chords are basically an Am7 shape with all strings ringing, an A2 shape with eth 6th string muted, and something close to a D/F# shape - Bruce uses his thumb to fret the 6th and 5th strings at the second fret for that one. The intro melody line is pretty easy to pick up. Let me know if you need more help.

As for BtR '88, pretty sure that one was standard tuning, nothing tricky there. Been a LONG time since I've played that one though, so I may be wrong.
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!
Originally Posted By: DisplayName
It's much harder to verbally explain than it is to play.

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.


Thanks once again, DisplayName!

Had my guitar on my lap some seconds ago and started trying, will continue over the weekend.

Yes, Bruce fucks up sometimes, but as you mentioned, his emotion always makes it something special.

I don't get why he choses such a way to play the song, though; as you mentioned, it is somewhat more difficult than it could be.
Originally Posted By: hazardfromharvard
He does but they're not free. And good a guitarist as he is, he's not a great teacher.

Best free lessons I've seen on YouTube are from this guy Marty Schwartz (martyzsongs is his channel). He has beginner lessons on a huge number of songs. His website is guitarjamz.com although I've never actually checked out his website but just seen his stuff on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/user/JustinSandercoe
http://www.justinguitar.com/
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