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"Inside the guitar parts" Part III :: Stranger download notations (.pdf) |
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Hi! Of the Tides songs, Stranger is the one we’ve been asked about the most. Both what’s the story of the song and how to play it. Here’s the story, I got a nice acoustic guitar for a birthday present 2 months before we were about to start recording ‘Tides’. I really haven’t played an acoustic that much since the very first years of playing the guitar, and I was really inspired by the way the new guitar sounded. So I just started playing some chords, and all of a sudden found myself playing around the simple main riff of the song. Then it was like it always seems to go, one thing led to another, and a couple of days later I had the song itself pretty much done, but no idea what it would be about. All I knew was that it sounded like a very sad story. Well, we all have a sad story to tell, and once the main idea cleared, it was fairly easy to finish the song. When Pekka came in for the demo vocals, I was stunned how good the thing started to sound like. He picked it up in no time, which is always a good omen.We were both getting goose bumps listening to the finished demo, which is either us being stupid in the same way or another sign of a promising song. We worked on the structure some with the whole band, and that was all good, Pekka wanted the first chorus shorter, Torsti brought up the idea of modulating for the guitar solo, Marko did a great job with the keys, and all the accentuation of the chorus chords etc was put in place with the whole band. On the how to play it: we doubled each other on the acoustics for the intro and the first acoustic verse (bars 1 – 12). Between the 1st and 2nd verse the riff is split into harmony with Torsti staying low and me moving to a higher register. That higher part is written in bars 13 – 25. The acoustics and the electrics mesh in the last two bars before the first chorus (Ac out / El Gtrs in). Make sure you let all notes ring as long as possible, and try to keep them even in volume. Sometimes the most simple things are pretty hard, at least us clumsyfingers struggled some to get this acoustic guitar thing right. The chorus moves to the key of C minor, the first one is shorter than the following ones, the long ending of double chorus 2 is written in bars 36 – 39. Bars 36&37 are played repeatedly at the end of the last chorus creating the outro with some extra layers of guitar in octaves and if I recall correctly some almost hidden harmony lines underneath the extra choir thing. Torsti rips on his guitar here live. Speaking of which, Torsti plays the woderful solo of the song, and it is with the chorus chords but in the key of Dm. Just move all chords one whole step higher to play along, or call Torsti for help if you want play the solo. The breaks and the whole “orchestral thing”(bars 40 – 47) after the guitar solo are something that I felt the song needed to build before the last choruses, we play the melody lines live harmonized with guitars, but on the album it is obviously Marko you hear. Again, tune down one half step to play along with the album. This is not a “whole” notation, but I think with what I’ve written here it should make enough sense to guide you through this one. Later, P.S. We haven’t played “Stranger” live lately, we talked about changing that for the coming gigs. Looking forward to that. |
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