Friday, July 8, 2016

Decoding John Lawlor Part 1 - Exactly Like You on Vimeo

A few years ago I got interested in the ukulele and tenor guitar. Looking around the internet, I discovered this great tenor guitar player named John Lawlor. I like this guy's playing so much I not only went to the Tenor Guitar Gathering in Astoria to hear him, I actually paid $30 to attend a workshop to get some insight into his playing.

Everyone at the workshop wanted to know about the harmonies that John plays. He is an ear player, and doesn't really know how to explain what he does. So I thought I'd try transcribing one of his tunes and see what I could figure out.

You can watch the video here:


You can download the transcription here:


The zip file contains an mp3 of the song, and pdf's of the 2 transcriptions. The original transcription is in Bb and the other is in C with fretboards so you can try it out without re-tuning your guitar. Notation was kind of awkward, due to the range of the tenor guitar. I ended up writing it as a two-stave piano score in concert pitch. It's readable, but kind of cluttered with all the fretboards and chord names. And some of my chord labeling is kind of arbitrary. But it's all there and seems to work.

3 comments:

Andrew Lyons said...

Hi! I'd really love to see your transcriptions but when I click on download It jut goes to the vimeo page, not sure If I'm making a mistake or if the link is wrong? thanks!

andy V said...

You too, eh Andrew?

Really looking forward to seeing this.

Thanks

Andrew Lyons said...

It works, fantastic transcription, many thanks for sharing!