Bob Weir

[Heady Jam Fan]

I just watched a documentary about Bob Weir on Netflix - it was pretty awesome. When I think back to a lot of my favorite parts of Dead tunes, its Weir's rhythm work and glassy tone that grabs me. Only now and then do I play those hard-rock "chunking" power chords through a song, but rather try to play more tasteful chords with interesting inversions that provide their own melodic movement. I probably owe a lot of that to Weir and Trey.

Anyway, I saw part of this clip on the documentary and thought it was a cool interpretation of the song Lost Sailor, so I started learning a bit of this acoustic version the other day:

https://youtu.be/50nFDYNQ_-c

[Walker done done]

Saw it too and while it wasn't anything groundbreaking, I definitely loved it.  I've always loved Bobby and agree wholeheartedly with your statement about chord inversions, his tone, and his overall approach.  Anyone learning guitar should make it a point to study Bob Weir.  And also, good luck with it.  The dude has huge hands and can do thinks most players can't, but you'll still learn a lot from his approach.

[Jkendrick]

One of things I always loved about Weir's rhythm  is that it is so unobtrusive. You almost don't notice it, but if it's not there you definitely notice something is missing.

[Heady Jam Fan]

Saw it too and while it wasn't anything groundbreaking, I definitely loved it.  I've always loved Bobby and agree wholeheartedly with your statement about chord inversions, his tone, and his overall approach.  Anyone learning guitar should make it a point to study Bob Weir.  And also, good luck with it.  The dude has huge hands and can do thinks most players can't, but you'll still learn a lot from his approach.

Yeah, some of the greats have big ole hands. Never noticed Bobby's. The only thing that takes a bit of getting used to in this version of Lost Sailor (as far as I played along with it yesterday) is the transition from the Fmin to Gmaj7 chord. His voicing of the Fmin should be pretty familiar to most people I'd think.

Fmin Gmaj7
2------2
2------3
2------4
4------4
x------x
2------3

His voicing for the Emin is interesting to, with the 9th degree added in:
0
0
0
4
2
0

And the A has the #4 and Maj7:
4
4
2
2
0
0

[Buffered]

There's a real valuable lesson Bob teaches us I think. There's a part where Sammy Hagar talks about all the E chords Bob plays when they were jamming on a 12-bar blues and how he played a few different inversions of the I, IV, and V. I'm learning how to play chords with their root on the bottom four strings right now, and it's challenging but really opens up how you look at the fretboard. One of my favorite major chords is this and I think I attribute it to listening and watching Bob play over the years.

(Key of D)

2
3
2
4
5
X

[bigebeer]

There's a real valuable lesson Bob teaches us I think. There's a part where Sammy Hagar talks about all the E chords Bob plays when they were jamming on a 12-bar blues and how he played a few different inversions of the I, IV, and V. I'm learning how to play chords with their root on the bottom four strings right now, and it's challenging but really opens up how you look at the fretboard. One of my favorite major chords is this and I think I attribute it to listening and watching Bob play over the years.

(Key of D)

2
3
2
4
5
X

Check out the CAGED system for guitar if you haven't before. That's a position 1 chord. It really opens up the fretboard and shows you another way of visualizing the triads.

[Heady Jam Fan]

There's a real valuable lesson Bob teaches us I think. There's a part where Sammy Hagar talks about all the E chords Bob plays when they were jamming on a 12-bar blues and how he played a few different inversions of the I, IV, and V. I'm learning how to play chords with their root on the bottom four strings right now, and it's challenging but really opens up how you look at the fretboard. One of my favorite major chords is this and I think I attribute it to listening and watching Bob play over the years.

(Key of D)

2
3
2
4
5
X

Check out the CAGED system for guitar if you haven't before. That's a position 1 chord. It really opens up the fretboard and shows you another way of visualizing the triads.

Yes, thats the "C" Shape chord in the CAGED system. Of course there are other theoretical systems for learning your way around the fretboard, but the CAGED system is probably the most popular. Thats a shape I like a lot. I often drop the root note (ie, a first inversion of the chord) and use my pinky finger to fret "color" notes in the top of the chord, creating more melodic movement. For example, I might use my pinky to add a 9 on the B-string (5th fret when playing a D-chord as Buffered wrote out above), or the 4th on the high E-string (again, the 5th fret in the chord shown above). Here is an example:

Live
https://soundcloud.com/houdinispsychictheatre/05-travels#t=2:37
Demo
https://soundcloud.com/houdinispsychictheatre/travels-dont-lose-your-way#t=2:00

This is in E major. The first chord is the first inversion of the E. You can hear the melody starts with the E on the B-string, then goes to the 9th (F#) and back to the E. The next chord is an "E" shape Abmin chord. Then back to the C-shape E chord, and finally the A & B chords in the E-Shape.

Code Select Expand


E     Abmin   E A B
4x4x4x4x7x4x4x4xxxx
5x7x5x4x4x7x4x5x5x7
4x4x4x4x4x4x4x4x6x8
6x6x6x6x6x6x6x6x7x9
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

You can hear the bass player really creates the chord sounds by playing the root note. For example, the next part of the song features similar frettings for the guitar, but the bass line I wrote changes the key to C# minor:

Code Select Expand


C# B  A  D#*Ab7
4xx4xxxxxxxxx
5xx4xx5xx7xx7
4xx4xx6xx6xx5
6xx4xx7xx7xx6
xxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxx
*the D# is a diminished major7

Code Select Expand


C# B  A  Ab7
4xx4xxxxxx
5xx4xx5xx7
4xx4xx6xx5
6xx4xx7xx6
xxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxx
Skip the diminish chord this time.

Code Select Expand


C# B  A  D#*Ab7
4xx4xxxxxxxxx
5xx4xx5xx7xx7
4xx4xx6xx6xx5
6xx4xx7xx7xx6
xxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Code Select Expand


C# B  A  B7
4xx4xxxxxx
5xx4xx5xx7
4xx4xx6xx8
6xx4xx7xx9
xxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxx

I think the cool thing about this stuff is the wide ranging effects it has on song writing. For example, not only do the chord shapes and inversions of those shapes effect the harmony of the song, but it shapes the melody. As I mentioned above, with this C-shape chord, I tend to focus on the 4th and the 9th melodically, which, for me, not only shapes the melody of the song, but consequently the next chord I might go to. Now consider if I would have used an A-shape E chord instead of the C-shape:

Code Select Expand


E
X
9
9
9
x
x

I'd probably tend toward a melody that sounded a bit more like String-Cheese, dancing around with major pentatonic (maybe with some of the diatonic notes added). Here is the shape of the notes I might use to create melody around this 2nd-inversion A-shape E-chord:

Code Select Expand


xxxxxxx
910xx12
9xx11xx
9xx11xx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
*don't read this one like tabs, but rather like a scale or chord chart