Video: Open Chords & Zombie Chords: How to Ruin Your Guitar Covers

[Wayne Bell]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEWQNKbXHQk

[Paddy1951]

I do not entirely agree with the premise of the video.

Yes, chord inversions produce nice variations in tunes. Perhaps, bar chords do as well. To think of stardard open chords as somehow unworthy "zombie" chords is kind of... I don't know, maybe elitist?

I do think that covers done by buskers or any of us CAN be kind of ho-hum. Chord choice can be part of that. But there are other ways to make covers good, interesting, yours.

First, are you doing the song in the proper key for YOU? When I was younger, I could hit those John Denver notes cleanly. As a get off my grass young senior, my tenor voice is on the lower end of things now. Just because the original version is written in a particular key, doesn't mean you should be singing it in that key.

Tempo choice. Again, a variation can produce a different flavored version.

Phrasing. Phrasing that is different than the original can make your cover unique.

Classic folk song approach. I got this from Peggy Seeger. In a workshop of hers that I attended, she suggested that it isn't necessary to have a BRIDGE in a song and that earlier folk tunes didn't. It is a somewhat modern innovation.

Mostly, making the song yours, is a desireable goal however you go about it, IMHO. Chords are just part of it.

[HAPPYDAN]

I have a neutral opinion regarding the information presented in the video. Kind of. . . So what? I do agree with Paddy, on many points. For me, I like to "feel" the piece I'm performing. This was largely a folk technique, in which very musically basic songs became hits due to the projection of the performers. In short, there are no rules, whatever feels good and sounds good is good. Note for note, chord for chord, mechanical reproduction of a piece takes the performer's soul out of the equation. It looks like the narrator is attempting to quantify this technique, through mechanical manipulation. Perhaps the millennials who were born too late to experience the golden age of Folk, Folk Rock, and Rock 'n Roll may respond more effectively to this technique.

[Denny B]

The guy sounds like an elitist schmuck to me...

[frankmcr]

The video doesn't seem very well thought out. He starts off with the idea that if a song has a Cmaj7 chord in one place. you shouldn't play a plain C chord instead. Which is, duh, but I guess it might be worth saying for some players. But then he appears to be suggesting that any chord with a C root is "a C chord". So hey, don't play a boring ol' C, play a C dim 7 add 11! Which is, uh no.

And I left a whole bunch of "apparently"s and "seems to be"s out of that summary because it's by no means clear what he's trying to say.

[DukeX]

I open the link but ended up reading a few of the comments instead of watching the video...

[bufflehead]

Whoever wrote that misses the basic impulse behind making music.

[SunnyDee]

I listened to the whole thing carefully, and, taken as a whole, I don't think it sounds elitist. His tongue-in-cheek use of zombies and light jabs at bad buskers serves to call attention to the real point - a very real issue with the way guitar is taught.

Having just spent a couple of years teaching myself guitar from online sources, I think he's dead-on with some of those issues. For the player who has mastered open chords, this could be a very clear illustration musically of why that's not really enough and what to do about it.

Despite many raging comments, the guy is not saying at all that open chords suck and he's specifically giving people tools to better express their own interpretation so not elitist at all, imo.

"Now, just to be clear, I'm not saying that the second arrangement is better than the first, or that the standard chords are not good. I'm simply pointing out the wide possibilities for variation in harmonic language. The more of that language you have at your disposal, the better you'll be at finding something that works perfectly for you. When standard chords are simply defaulted to uncritically, that's when they become dead ossified zombie chords. So why do these chords keep creeping into places where they don't belong?" 5:15


As for being a gatekeeper, I think this is absolutely the opposite of gatekeeping. I teach, so I think gatekeeping is deciding what information people need to know to do a minimum job and giving them no more than that, rather than giving them access to the entire field of knowledge and skills they need to apply it to meet their own goals. If anything, the "gatekeepers" here are the teachers that simplify everything so much their students end up with no more than a "put your fingers here, strum like this" understanding of what they are doing. In the video, he helps beginners hear the difference between what they are playing with only default chords and what they could play with more variety without giving them too much theory at once. In effect, I think, he's opening the gate to the next stage of learning for beginners who have mastered open chords. Good job, imo.

[Paddy1951]

To what degree of proficiency a person should aspire, is up to them. There are many singers who play guitar applying pretty much, just open chords to their singing. They do just fine. Think John Prine, as an example. Then there singers like Vince Gill. An excellent player/singer whose playing goes beyond open chords, considerbly.

Being an advanced player, in itself, doesn't necessarily up the whole package.

A good example of that is Eric Johnson. Certainly an excellent technical player. But IMO, he totally lacks... well, I will call it soul.

Joe Bonamassa is another one like that. He is a master technician. But as a blues oriented player... He is no Stevie Ray Vaughn or Buddy Guy.

I do think there are some buskers that are posers. They never made an effort to learn much about playing or singing. But many can be entertaining with basic playing and singing.

[mr. beaumont]

He's wrong on so many technical and theoretical points its hard for me to agree with his basic premise, but the basic premise ACTUALLY IS correct.


There's some good stuff in there about inversions and how the top note of a chord "hears" as melody, but if you're actually going to learn this stuff, please don't learn it from this guy

[Big Band Guitar]

Originally Posted by Denny B

The guy sounds like an elitist schmuck to me...

That would be putting it mildly.

[srick]

At first, the video caught my attention, and then it wandered.

IMO, the biggest points that he misses are: the use of rhythm and the use of bass runs and fills. These simple techniques can take an up-down strum to the next level.

When I was a newbie, i was in a music store and made a disparaging remark about Neil Young and the use of just three chords. A wiser person at the counter looked me in the eyes and said, "But I'll bet you remember almost every Neil Young song you've ever heard."

True enough.

[Guitar Slim II]

Naw, dude...what's missing is the band.

The fancy inversions and tasty licks you hear the pros play are designed to be played with bass and drums at the very least.

That stuff is very much worth learning, but if you're accompanying yourself with solo guitar, you generally want to play the chords in root position. You've got no bass player, so you have to cover the chord roots yourself. And you want to play low bass notes to cover a greater range. That means "cowboy" chords and bar chords (and maybe a few CAGED chords). Fancier chords like Maj 7s and b9s, you still want to stick with root position for the same reasons, which means the clunky old bar-chord versions you learned from Mel Bay.

First position and chord-bashing bar chords definitely have their place. If you hear a busker's performance that seems to be "missing something," they probably just stink. The last one I heard on the subway, about six months ago, was excellent -- I gave him a fiver! And you better believe he was was bashing out his Cowboy Chords.

[Silly Moustache]

I discovered this video a little while ago and, I confess, he put my back up somewhat.

I've also watched his video about how to ruin Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" -and he's right again, but, well cruel.

What he says is, of course correct, but he is judging the lack of musicality of others and I don't feel that is acceptable.

I'm wondering how people that he has taken from other Y/T videos might feel about being used as bad examples?

If you have something to say about suggesting better ways to play music, fine, make a video about it.
if you want to point out the many Y/T videos of poor copies ...well the old adage applies ... "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all".

Of course as he uses so many clips from so many bits of other videos Article 13 will wipe out his channel right away, like mine of course.

Example: When I started running my Acoustic Music club, I'd originally hoped it would be a bit "elitist" getting only the better performers in the area.
I soon discovered than this strategy was denying me bums on seats so I welcomed beginners and those folks who constantly try but will never be very good.

Then I tried to give people advice .....in some cases they asked for lessons, which was fine, but also I made enemies because as one woman singer (who can't sing) said - "every time I come here you criticise my singing!" She was right of course because that's how she saw it.

I note from other videos of this chap, that he is a graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, so ......

[merlin666]

Originally Posted by Silly Moustache

I'm wondering how people that he has taken from other Y/T videos might feel about being used as bad examples?

Well I don't look much at YT videos because there are now so many plain bad ones that it's almost too much effort to find the few decent ones that are truly inspiring and entertaining. All these people who are positing their junk publicly should expect the ridicule!