| | | Hey Friend,
As I continue to binge on Eagles tunes and videos in honor of Glenn Frey, I keep coming back to the first Eagles song that really grabbed me.
This was before Hotel California and The Long Run albums were a mainstay on rock radio.
The song is "Lyin' Eyes," written by Glenn Frey and Don Henley, originally released on the One of These Nights album in 1975.
The lyrics weave a story about a woman trapped in a loveless relationship. She takes up an affair to fill the void in her life.
There's a sadness in the lines, complimented by the way Henley and Frey used major and minor chords to hit you between the eyes emotionally and really feel the longing and hurt throughout the song.
For me, though, what gets me the most are the chords and riffs Don Felder plays to drive home the mixed emotions in different parts of the song.
Example:
"On the other side of town a boy is waiting,
with fiery eyes and dreams no one can steal,"
Don goes into a chord riff using inversions in a step-down pattern to lift the verse a bit. You get the sense of the anticipation the girl feels as she's heading over to see her lover. It's a combination of excitement and sadness.
I know the video quality is crap - I pulled it down from a concert video and then zoomed in to try and isolate the chord fingerings he uses. The camera footage I captured in the clip was recorded in 1977 from a fair distance away, so it is what it is. Here's the original video.
As you can see, if you had a better quality video to work with, you could get very good clips of the guitar part as it's played.
At least with Video Surgeon I can get a better idea of the neck location he played these chords and start to put together the chords he used.
This is one of the best ways we learn to to do anything - watch someone doing it and try to emulate the technique ourselves.
I know you have your own "fiery eyes and dreams" to learn how to play guitar like your heroes. You need to be willing to dig in sometimes and take a crack at learning something outside of what you're getting in your normal lessons. You can't have everything spoon-fed to you.
Take on some additional responsibility for your guitar education. You'll get more out it.
Try creating some of your own practice videos with the Video Surgeon demo and see what I'm talking about.
Peace~
Dave |
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